Just got your latest lbo. Found the lead article to rather confusingly move from discussions of the World Bank (WB) to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and back, although I realize that you understand the difference between the two. Perhaps you wished to emphasize their links and similiarities and partnership in running global capitalist hegemony, but I think it is worth noting their differences.
It is very easy to confuse them, or at least profoundly link them. They were both founded at Bretton Woods in 1944 (btw, Harry Dexter White was a Soviet agent, hah hah hah, guess that makes them a part of the international communist conspiracy!). Their HQs are across the street from each other in downtown Washington, conveniently between the Fed and the White House (and US Treasury), etc.
Nevertheless, annoying as it might be, I do see considerable differences between them. Basically the IMF is the bad cop, which, as in the title of the Harry Cleaver paper you cite, should be shut down. It is the one that has imposed one-size-fits-all conditionality programs on many countries and has imposed enormous suffering on many people.
The criticisms of the WB are much more amorphous and vague, such as that lenders are protected or that grants should be made rather than loans, or that regional rather than national infrastructure should be emphasized. If one goes to the past, prior to the 1980s, one does find a tendency to support ecologically damaging large-scale projects. It can be argued that there is still a tendency to do this, although there has clearly been some effort to move away from this as well. Larry Summers did send out his nasty memo about pollution while at the WB, but I note that Herman Daly was an employee of the WB at the same time, part of the effort to redirect towards a more environmentally conscious approach.
Of course, there is ultimately a big difference between the two, although the WB certainly is ideologically pro-market capitalist and all that. The WB's mission is to eliminate poverty. The IMF's is to stabilize macroeconomies and bail out countries in debt crises. One can say the WB is bad because world poverty has not been conquered, but this strikes me as a pretty weak argument. The issue is, have its projects helped or not? Many certainly have. Indeed, although some arguably were duds or environmentally damaging, as near as I can tell a clear majority of the projects supported by the WB did work to reduce poverty, even if one might fuss about the details of their funding, etc.
This may not matter, but I suspect that you are aware of the very different atmosphere and attitude among the staffers at the two institutions. In a sense the recent role of Stiglitz, in the position of Chief Economist of the WB, criticizing the IMF (until he was removed under pressure), is a tip of the iceberg. Stiglitz had (and has) lots of support within the WB, very little at the IMF. Based on people that I know (admittedly a small, possibly biased, sample), staffers at the WB are frequently genuinely committed to reducing poverty, increasing income equality, etc. etc. Perhaps they are buffoons or tools or whatever. OTOH, Stiglitz's crack that staffers at the IMF are arrogant you-know-what who are third raters from first rate schools really hits the mark. My observation is that for many of those folks, power has gone to their heads. They may be 28 year old recent grads out of MIT, but they walk into a Third World country in a debt crisis and they have finance ministers and anybody else with any power falling all over them. The upshot is a closed-shop mentality replete with insufferable arrogance. Stiglitz really called it right.
So, anybody out there want to comment on this? Or are they just two peas in a pod along with the evil WTO? (BTW, Doug, your remarks on trade and China and the WTO look much sharper than what you were handing out last fall, :-)). Personally, I see the WB (and the WTO) as fixable. As for the IMF, shut it down!
BTW, some of my students showed up on the pages of the Washington Post in photos, dancing and getting arrested. I congratulated them on demonstrating against the IMF...... :-). Barkley Rosser Professor of Economics James Madison University Harrisonburg, VA 22807 USA http://cob.jmu.edu/rosserjb