You could sum up the IMF's views on the euro zone debt crisis with one phrase - "enough of this madness!".
Olivier Blanchard, the fund's chief economist said financial markets were "schizophrenic" - attacking countries until they started consolidating their budgets, then attacking them because the consolidation was having a negative impact on growth. "You're damned if you do and damned if you don't", he said.
That's very much the case of Spain - the country at the centre of the storm right now.
But what should a sane government be doing in the midst of such madness - a country like Ireland, for example? The IMF recommends protecting and prioritising growth.
Consolidation is needed - and a meaningful start had to be made to catch markets attention - but what was important now was to have a "credible medium and long term plan" to reduce debt and close deficits over time - not slash and burn to impress the market, which won't be impressed anyway.
That's why the IMF likes the Euro area's Fiscal Compact - it sets up strong rules to cut debt and deficits over the long run.
In the short run it recognises most states can't really boost spending - that's why it wants the ECB to cut interest rates again to support consumers and businesses.
This is consistent with the advice it gave to Ireland earlier this year, when it said the government should not introduce a mini-budget even if growth fails to live up to expectations and the budget deficit looks like missing its 8.6% target.
But the fund sees the fiscal compact as just the start of a process that it believes should include common debt issuance - Eurobonds.
In fact the European Commission published a discussion paper on Eurobonds last november, but the IMF thinks there is no reason not to forge ahead and begin the process now, with short-term rather than long-term borrowing. And there should be mechanisms for common risk sharing - i.e. ways of spreading the pain.
Perhaps of most interest to Ireland is the funds call for the euro area states to set up a common fund for investing in banks that need fresh capital - rather than calling directly on the taxpayers.
There should also be a European level deposit insurance scheme, which again lifts the burden from taxpayers in small states with big bank problems by spreading the risk to the European level. And there would be a European level bank supervisor, and a euro area system for dealing with bust banks -again sparing individual states from most of the consequences.
But the fund makes no bones about it - such goodies would be there to sugar the bitter pill of a permanent loss of sovereignty over a significant part of budget making.
States would have to give up some of their discretionary powers over tax and spend policies in favour of an - as yet undefined - European system of governance.
Referendum, anyone?
And there were some other things the government might not want to hear in Mr Blanchard's discourse - including the preference for making structural reforms to lower costs and increase competitiveness in an economy.
His barb that "doing something that everyone agrees should have been done years ago but wasn't, to avoid a political row will gain a government far more credibility than cutting another one percent off the capital budget" will no doubt resonate in a country trying to introduce water charges and property taxes, and in which the main budget fine-tuning measure is the capital account.
These are big questions for the countries of the Euro area to face, and the IMF warns we don't have time to sit around thinking about them much longer.
Describing the "uneasy calm" that has descended on Europe since ECB's massive intervention, the Greek default, the Fiscal Treaty Agreement and the ESM bailout fund agreement - all of which combined to steady the ship last winter - Mr Blanchard said he has the feeling that "at any moment things could get very bad again".
