Michael Yates
Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> J. Barkley Rosser, Jr wrote:
>
> > 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