The tottering global economy was waiting for a credible plan from Jackson Hole, Wyo. And it got it but not from the voice that had been expected.

America's central banker, Ben Bernanke, gave a cautious, steady-as-she-goes speech that didn't harm but planted no signposts. The bold and clear-headed, and even electrifying, speech came from the top woman on the global financial front, new head of the International Monetary Fund Christine Lagarde.

The former French finance minister kindly knocked congressional heads together by telling Republicans and Democrats that they were both right. And since she was the first female head of international law firm of Baker and McKenzie, which has headquarters in Chicago, and in her youth a congressional intern, she has the U.S. credentials that might just get them to listen.

"In the United States, policymakers must strike the right balance between reducing public debt and sustaining the recovery -- especially by making a serious dent in long-term unemployment," she said.

"While fiscal consolidation remains an imperative, macroeconomic policies must support growth," she told the annual assembly of top economic policy officials at Jackson Hole. "Fiscal policy must navigate between the twin perils of losing credibility and undercutting recovery."

"The precise path is different for each country. But to meet the credibility test, each country needs a dual focus: a primary emphasis on durable measures that will deliver savings tomorrow which, in turn, will help to create as much space as possible for supporting growth today."

Then she slammed the Chinese. Everybody in the audience knew whom she meant when she said, "In some key emerging economies, policies keep domestic demand growth too slow and currency appreciation too modest, if not blocked outright -- even if this is not in their own or the global interest."

Lagarde, who took over the IMF from Dominique Strauss-Kahn after he resigned when charged with sexual assault on a New York hotel housekeeper, a charge since dropped, said there was no real choice but to pursue policies that pursued growth now and savings later.

Echoing some of the more alarmist voices about the immediate threat of a European banking crisis, she pulled no punches and called for the mandatory re-capitalization of the banks.

"We need urgent and decisive action to remove the cloud of uncertainty hanging over banks and sovereigns," she said. "Financial exposures across the continent are transmitting weakness and spreading fear from market to market, country to country, periphery to core."

She didn't say so but everyone in her audience knew that the money market funds have stopped lending to European banks, which are looking desperately for funds. At least one bank has turned to the European Central Bank for a paltry $5 million and instead of 6-month or 12-month funding, European banks are counting themselves lucky to get it for a week or two at a time.

According to Morgan Stanley, almost half of the $11.6 trillion funding being used for the largest 91 eurozone banks needs to be rolled over within a year. This was the problem that forced Lehman Brothers into bankruptcy.

"Banks need urgent recapitalization," Lagarde went on and, as France's last finance minister, she knows what she's talking about. "They must be strong enough to withstand the risks of sovereigns and weak growth. This is key to cutting the chains of contagion. If it is not addressed, we could easily see the further spread of economic weakness to core countries or even a debilitating liquidity crisis."

But Europe's banks were only one part of a triple problem, starting with high levels of sovereign debt in most advanced economies, followed by the banks in Europe and households in the United States where the enfeebled housing sector is dragging down the rest of the economy. Specifically, she called for "halting the downward spiral of foreclosures, falling house prices and deteriorating household spending."

"In these advanced economies, weak growth and weak balance sheets -- of governments, financial institutions and households -- are feeding negatively on each other," she said, in a concise summary of the problem combined with a warning that it is likely to worsen. "If growth continues to lose momentum, balance sheet problems will worsen, fiscal sustainability will be threatened and policy instruments will lose their ability to sustain the recovery."

This was the speech that might have been expected from the man who heads the U.S. Federal Reserve. Instead, it came from a woman, and from a woman with the political credentials to stress that her colleagues were part of the problem. She warned of "a growing sense that policymakers do not have the conviction, or simply are not willing, to take the decisions that are needed."

What she didn't address was the nuclear option being threatened in two key European countries. Finland is demanding collateral that Greece doesn't have to go ahead with its share of the latest eurozone bailout. And German President Christian Wulff last week fired a very noisy warning shot across the eurozone's bows by saying publicly that the European Central Bank's policy of buying up bonds from indebted eurozone countries like Greece, Spain and Italy was "legally questionable."

Either one of those two policies would sink the eurozone rescue plan, plunge Greece into default and bankruptcy and set off a cascade of banking crises and probable defaults across Europe. And the crisis wouldn't stop there.

But at least the warning, the vision and the boldness was heard at Jackson Hole over the weekend. How unexpected that it came a female French accent.

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