I checked my bank account, I'm not missing $200,000 and I don't recal being forced to sleep with his robo-ugly mistress so no harm no foul eyemo.
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I checked my bank account, I'm not missing $200,000 and I don't recal being forced to sleep with his robo-ugly mistress so no harm no foul eyemo.
Oh dear , now the board is investigating these two , something about their grade of pay being way in excess of the level it should been set at according to their level of experience .Quote:
It did not help that he relied heavily on a pair of aides drawn from the Bush administration, Robin Cleveland and Kevin Kellems,
They should investigate the Bank's policies for Iraq, Afghanistan &cetera as well. Manipulation of the World Bank for U.S. policy purposes is part of the Bush administration's security doctrine and Wolfowitz and his companions in the Bank are proponents of that doctrine. How much Bank money has disappeared down the black hole of American private contractors in Iraq?Quote:
Originally Posted by Tribesman
And while we are at it, why don't we just scrap this institute as a whole? The WorldBank is a totally useless estabishment, except for some of its statistics and analyses.
Eek, Adrian II, you are starting to sound like some of our American "fans" of the UN. Personally, I don't think the World Bank does a bad job. It's basically a polygot organisation of economists who do at least try to base their decisions on the statistics and analyses that you recognise are not useless. The fact that the staff have picked up on Mr Wolfowitz's failings surely says something to their credit?Quote:
Originally Posted by Adrian II
Currently, the World Bank is the lead institution for channelling and overseeing the vast sums of aid that go to Africa and many other places. Africa desperately needs that money - in some countries like Uganda, it pays for half of the health, education etc budgets. Yes, a lot more could be done with the money than currently is being done, but we have to be realistic: the Bank are dealing with sovereign states and there is a limit to what you can do given the politics on the ground. I'd still rather see that money go to Africa than be returned to the pockets of fellow rich country taxpayers who would scarcely notice it.
Without the Bank, some of the aid money would probably dry up but you would still have to find an alternative way of channelling the rest. What's the alternative? The IMF, with its narrow and blinkered approach? Other UN agencies, whose statistics and analyses are often truly useless? Direct bilateral aid, with all its ties and political motivations?
If you look at their policies, that nice picture explodes right in your face.Quote:
Originally Posted by econ21
The Worldbank uses its clout with poor nations to impose extremely short-sighted, destructive 'structural adjustment' packages on them. Such packages include rogue privatization, deregulation, and cuts in spending on essential infrastructure such as health care and education. Such packages create economic benefits, but the downside is that those benefits end up in the hands of an elite. Like most development 'aid', it is really aid to the rich and corrupt.
I don't feel like going into all the details right now. Here is a good overview of the issues involved: The Policy Roots of Economic Crisis and Poverty.
The Bank is essentially an instrument of U.S. economic policy, it makes the same mistakes and fails to learn from them for the same reason: free market extremism. If you want to learn more about the causes and consequences of this extremism (for instance the rise of anarcho-capitalism in Russia after the Worldbank's 'shock therapy') you may want to read John Gray's False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism as a back-grounder.
Don't believe all you read, Adrian. I've done bits of work for the Bank on and off for twenty years and you would not believe the amount of ill-informed blinkered twaddle that is peddled about it. BTW, I believe the correct term nowadays is "Poverty Reduction Strategy Programmes", not "structural adjustment".Quote:
Originally Posted by Adrian II
It really does vary by country - the typical SA package had 50-100 conditions, hammered out by negotiation between the Bank and the country. The country had the ultimate veto and typically did less than half what is signed up to anyway. Yes, privatisation and deregulation are commonly advocated by the Bank but that's often because the governments are running services with lamentable inefficiency and their regulations stop the private sector filling the gap. (On the services, the Ghanaian cocoa marketing board at its worst employing about 30,000 ghost works and another 30,000 that could be dismissed without affecting performance. On the regulations, Kenya had law that required new entrants to a market get letters of "no objection" from incumbent firms.)Quote:
Such packages include rogue privatization, deregulation, and cuts in spending on essential infrastructure such as health care and education.
As for health and education, where the country was facing declining income, then yes sometimes spending on health care and education fell. But the fall in income would have happened with or without the programme, and statistically the spending would have fallen with or without it too. (Take Zimbabwe, for example - do you really think anything the Bank did or did not do in that country would have much impact given its current leadership?) The Bank did not tend to target spending on health and education for specific cuts. That was a myth circa 1987, based on a few examples blown way out of proportion by critics. Much more common was the Bank insisting that the sectors be protected and that money be shifted from the tertiary facilities (universities and urban hospitals) that did tend to serve the elite to primary facilities that served most people.
That's not proven. For example, more than half the Ugandan primary health budget comes from donors; it does not all benefit the rich and corrupt. Conversely, a lot of liberalisation often hurts the rich and corrupt, because it removes important sources of kickbacks (e.g. liberalising foreign exchange stopped corrupt officials getting a black market premiums).Quote:
Such packages create economic benefits, but the downside is that those benefits end up in the hands of an elite. Like most development 'aid', it is really aid to the rich and corrupt.
Thanks for the reference, I will read it. But be aware that, unlike most World Bank output, what passes for evidence and analysis in much NGO commentary would not meet basic quality control standards in most economic journals.Quote:
I don't feel like going into all the details right now. Here is a good overview of the issues involved: The Policy Roots of Economic Crisis and Poverty.
A current list of Bush appointees who either left under suspicion or are facing conflict-of-interest charges. Seems Wolfie is pretty average for this bunch.
Thanks for the heads-up, I was just about to. :bow:Quote:
Originally Posted by econ21
It seems almost intentional (on their part) that so many high ranking Bush appointees are being outted for corruption, or at the very least incompetence and political agenda building. For me it is as if they are daring someone (the Dems, hopefully?) to do something about it, as though it will give them the focus to counter the negativity by having an open opponent to attack for their own corruption.
One of the things I keep hearing from interviews with Whitehouse reps is, "if they think we did anything wrong, then impeach". It is as if this might allow some kind of diversion from their reality, or force a rallying around the Prez reaction from those that were once "true believers" but now feel cheated by the everyday exposure of new corruption in the administration. Personally, I can't remember a President's reps asking for impeachment - can anyone?
As to Wolfie - something I saw on Mojo-blog - that I had to laugh at, but ... It seems she is an Arab feminist, the article goes on about her agenda and ends that it was curious to put a Zionist in charge of the bank. Did laugh about the last part.
http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/...wolfowitz.html
Update: Wolfie sends letter to board of directors, very concerned about fairness.
— Escalating his campaign to remain president of the World Bank, Paul D. Wolfowitz accused the bank’s board on Wednesday of treating him “shabbily and unfairly,” and appealed for more time to defend himself against allegations of favoritism and other matters.
Mr. Wolfowitz, increasingly isolated at the bank and facing a board seemingly determined to force his resignation, sent a letter to the head of a board panel dealing with issues affecting his leadership, asking to appear before the board next week in the interest of “fairness to me” and “good governance” at the bank.