Development circles were not shocked last year when two studies detailed how the World Bank’s research unit had been systematically manipulating data to show that neoliberal market reforms were promoting growth and reducing poverty in developing countries. They merely saw these devastating findings, one by American University Professor Robin Broad, the other by Princeton University […]
Ten years after the Asian financial cataclysm of 1997, the economies of the Western Pacific Rim are growing, though not at the rates they enjoyed before the crisis. The region has been indelibly scarred by the crisis. There is greater poverty, inequality, and social destabilization than before the crisis. South Korea’s painful labor market reforms, for instance, have produced the quiet desperation behind one of the highest suicide rates among developed countries.
In contrast to the circus atmosphere that surrounded the World Bank presidency, a surprise handover of the reins at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) should prove to be a quiet affair. It will be conducted mostly out of the media spotlight and by the prevailing tradition, meaning that another European male will govern an institution that because of its checkered past is facing serious questions about its future. If the United States and Europe continue to throw away chances for reform, the IMF will become even more marginalized.
It’s all but official. Paul Wolfowitz, the neocon who helped give us the Iraq War only to be sidelined to the World Bank where he ended his presidency mired in a corruption scandal that led to his forced resignation, will officially step down on June 30. The next day, on July 1, he will be replaced by Robert Zoellick, another neocon who advocated invading Iraq in the 1990s. This is a man who ran amok in his role as U.S. Trade Representative.
The problem with the World Bank is much bigger than its president, Paul Wolfowitz.
Before Robert Zoellick is confirmed as president of the World Bank Group, his bosses on the World Bank’s board should ask him a simple question: Are you, like your predecessor Paul Wolfowitz, aiming to get rich off of eliminating poverty?
Nine days after the September 11 terrorist attacks, I opened up The Washington Post and stared right into the flinty mind of one Robert B. Zoellick, the Bush administration’s pick for new World Bank president.
The scandal over the salaries paid to World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz’s friends and lover opened the door to good questions about both the bank and its president. Wolfowitz’s resignation answered some of them, but one of the best questions of all has yet to be asked: is there a larger problem with an institution claiming to be “working for a world free of poverty” paying those salaries to anyone?
Noam Chomsky is a noted linguist, author, and foreign policy expert. On April 26, Michael Shank interviewed him about the conflict between Congress and the U.S. president over Iraq and Syria, the scandal enveloping World Bank head Paul Wolfowitz, and the nature of foreign debt.
As the controversy around Iraq War architect Paul Wolfowitz’s uncertain future as president of the World Bank intensifies, the financial institution is not only losing supporters. It’s also losing victims. In Latin America, countries are paying off their World Bank loans early, cutting off ties with the Bank, and creating their own financing instruments to replace the world’s oldest multilateral lending agency.