> What damage has the "Whirled Bank" done?
>Please be precise, no general mumbling about
>"globalization" or "world capitalism," please.
I try not to use the word "globalization," but why not "world capitalism"? The WB is one of the primary institutions that work to incorporate countries into the global economic hierarchy. "Oh, need hard currency do you? Here, take a loan. Reform your agricultural sector (i.e., reorient it toward market-driven exports) or build a dam (to provide power to an export-oriented industrial zone). Then earn some FX to you can pay back your loan. Need schools? Environment a wreck? Gender relations all screwy? Borrow some more - we got special facilities for all of them. Of course, you'll have to export even more to service the loans, but, hey, that's the cost of doing business." In other words, the WB is central to a whole array of temptation and constraints, carrots and sticks, that keep poorer countries from networking with each other first, rather than their creditors, and hooked on the whole export model, which is, of coure, a nice holdover from colonial days.
Doug