The International Monetary Fund has used up its resources in so many bailouts that it didn't have enough money left to prop up the Russian ruble this past weekend, according to insiders. Critics hope the organization's financial bind will spur it to rethink its policies and operations.

• During the past year, the IMF has committed about $47 billion to Indonesia, South Korean, Thailand and Russia.

• By U.S. calculations, the fund has less than $10 billion left for future rescues.

• To amass an additional $11.2 billion for Russia last month, the IMF had to tap a credit line of about $24 billion -- which hadn't been used since 1978.

• An IMF official says it couldn't afford the $15 billion or $20 billion analysts say Russia needs -- and, indeed, would be hard pressed to assist in another large bailout elsewhere.

Alan Meltzer, an economist at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, says the fund wasted billions of dollars in Russia prescribing remedies that don't get to the problem's core -- a lack of well-defined property rights, commercial codes and other market structures.

Some observers wonder if countries tempted to follow ruinous financial policies, confident that the IMF will be there to bail them out, might want to reconsider their plans.