As a very slow news week limps to a close, we wonder: Will we or won’t we? The spring meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund kick off tomorrow and run through Sunday (check out the agendas here). The big question on our minds this morning isn’t whether the assembled luminaries will help find a way out of the economic malaise (and turbulence) that’s gripping the globe, but whether the Egyptian delegation will seize the opportunity to open talks on an IMF package. We’re not holding our breath despite — or perhaps because of? — the evergreen view around the cabinet table dating back several years that “we’re doing everything the IMF would ask, anyway.” Finance Minister Amr El Garhy, Central Bank Governor Tarek Amer and International Cooperation Minister Sahar Nasr will head the Egyptian contingent. Also on the agenda, the local press tells us, is the status of the World Bank’s USD 8 bn loan package, and the answer there is even simpler: Not one penny will flow to the state’s coffers until the learned gentlemen in the House of Representatives sign off on the Ismail government’s economic program — the value-added tax, in particular.