The International Monetary Fund was blasted Tuesday by its own auditor for endorsing belt-tightening in the world’s largest economies too soon, saying the advice undermined the global recovery.

“The call for fiscal consolidation proved to be premature, as the recovery turned out to be modest in most advanced economies and short-lived in many European countries,” the IMF’s Independent Evaluation Office said in a review of the fund’s response to the global financial crisis, which began in 2007.

IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde rejected the criticism, which she said “misses relevant elements and context of the institution’s undertakings” during the crisis.

“This assessment is benefiting from hindsight,” she said, pointing to the fund’s own admission in 2012 that it had erred in some austerity calls.

The IEO praised the fund’s initial response to the financial crisis, when it coordinated a massive increase in emergency reserves and backed a global stimulus drive in 2008 and 2009. But in a response letter to Ms. Lagarde, the IEO said the IMFs top economists should have known better than to call for cuts to the government cash injections into the economy.