The IMF, Perhaps a Glorified Lobby Group

I am not sure if I am the only person who gets this feeling from looking at the IMF's website, but upon reading the "about us" and "what we do" sections, the descriptions sound very similar to many large lobby groups I have seen. The only key difference appears to be that the IMF has a large supply of money that it lends out on a discretionary basis. While other lobby groups may use their supplies of money for other purposes, the IMF lends its out. Sometimes this comes with success, other times it devastates an emerging economy. As a quote from the IMF's website, their second key function is to perform "research, statistics, forecasts, and analysis based on tracking of global, regional, and individual economies and markets." Slightly reminiscent of a think tank right? There are many people who remain skeptical of the IMF as an ineffective institution even though its basic goals seem sound through macroeconomic theory. Maybe its past failures show that the base assumptions that are undertaken by economic models, such as perfect markets, perfect information, etc. are jumps that are too great to allow for these models to apply to lesser developed nations. It is possible that it is, in fact, the lack of effective financial institutions in these nations that makes it so that this global financial institution becomes less effective than predicted. The goals of the IMF are solid. Fostering growth in lesser developed countries becomes beneficial for all of society in the long run but sometimes artificial attempts to create a functional and thriving economy backfire and create even more dismay and distrust of the international community among the poor. If this is the case and the trust in both the IMF and the international community erode among lesser developed countries, maybe the IMF will have to become even more like a lobby group and truly sell itself to these nations whom it tries to help.