Christine Lagarde on Europe’s Next Battle

A roller-coaster day in Europe’s finances ended in Greece reaching a bond-swap deal to narrowly avoid default and begin paying down its mountain of public debt. That sets up the continent’s leaders for the next showdown: how much money European nations need to provide in emergency funds for the union’s underwater economies.

IMF director Christine Lagarde has called for $1 trillion from European partners before her organization asks for raising more money from its members. That puts her on track to collide with German chancellor Angela Merkel, who is held back by a domestic constitutiency viciously opposed to giving more money to bail out ailing neighbors.Lagarde made her case for the emergency funds in an exclusive interview on the cover of Newsweek in January, and touched on the subject Thursday night at Newsweek and The Daily Beast’s Women in the World summit in New York. In a wide-ranging interview with Niall Ferguson, Lagarde commented on why she believes having more women in finance would have made the global financial crisis much less extreme, and why she is confident that Italy’s economy shouldn’t be left for dead. See the full video below.