The World Bank - "let the ship go down with the captain"

naomi klein, writing at the nation via alternet, argues, let's not spotlight wolfie and ignore the REAL problems with the world bank... the only difference between wolfie's sin and the daily, business-as-usual world bank sinning is that wolfie sinned without finesse as befitting his finesse-free persona, as an individual rather than institutionally, and, as fate would have it, while the spotlight was aimed in his direction...

The more serious lie at the center of the [Wolfowitz] controversy is the implication that the World Bank was an institution with impeccable ethical credentials -- until, according to forty-two former Bank executives, its credibility was "fatally compromised" by Wolfowitz. (Many American liberals have seized on this fairy tale, addicted to the fleeting rush that comes from forcing neocons to resign.)

The truth is that the bank's credibility was fatally compromised when it forced school fees on students in Ghana in exchange for a loan; when it demanded that Tanzania privatize its water system; when it made telecom privatization a condition of aid for Hurricane Mitch; when it demanded labor "flexibility" in the aftermath of the Asian tsunami in Sri Lanka; when it pushed for eliminating food subsidies in post-invasion Iraq. Ecuadoreans care little about Wolfowitz's girlfriend; more pressing is that in 2005, the Bank withheld a promised $100 million after the country dared to spend a portion of its oil revenues on health and education. Some antipoverty organization.

part of the overall problem...

[T]he United States and Europe -- via the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization -- tell the developing world, "You take down your trade barriers and we'll keep ours up."

anti-corruption...? it is to laugh...

The bottom line is that there is good reason that corruption has never been a high priority for the Bank and the IMF: Its officials understand that when enlisting politicians to advance an economic agenda guaranteed to win them furious enemies at home, there generally has to be a little in it for those politicians in bank accounts abroad.

Russia is far from unique: From Chile's dictator Augusto Pinochet, who accumulated more than 125 bank accounts while building the first neoliberal state, to Argentine President Carlos Menem, who drove a bright red Ferrari Testarossa while he liquidated his country, to Iraq's "missing billions" today, there is, in every country, a class of ambitious, bloody-minded politicians who are willing to act as Western subcontractors. They will take a fee, and that fee is called corruption -- the silent but ever-present partner in the crusade to privatize the developing world.

the solution...?

What we should absolutely not do, however, is participate in the effort to cleanse the Bank's ruinous history by repeating the absurd narrative that the reputation of an otherwise laudable antipoverty organization has been sullied by one man. The Bank understandably wants to throw Wolfowitz overboard. I say, Let the ship go down with the captain.

an excellent and thorough background of the global damage done by both the world bank and the international monetary fund can be found in joseph stiglitz' masterwork, "globalization and its discontents," required reading for anyone who purports to understand anything about how the u.s., the g7, and those two institutions (among others) shape the global economy and keep millions of people in poverty...

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