WB? no, thanks!

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

At 03:49 PM 5/1/01 -0400, Patrick wrote:
>
>More seriously, several African economists are engaged in interesting
>debate over what to do without a WB; i.e., the need for *local*
>(not foreign) development finance (i.e. in soft not hard currency)
>for basic-needs development that doesn't require foreign inputs. (I
>recently finished a long paper on this if anyone's interested.) But
>the silly people at the UN Financing for Development conference (and
>lead expert Ernesto Zedillo), as well as the UN Economic Commission
>on Africa (once a dependencia kind of outfit, now a mere puppet of
>Washington), won't even consider this logical principle.
>

I hate to act like a wet blanket, but autarky-based development has been
tried without much success - x-USSR, China to name a few.  Isolation is bad
for development since the beginning of history.  Methinks that these "local
initiatives' are the latter-days version of utopian socialism of the 19th
century.

The problem is not global institutions in general, but global institutions
as policy tools of the government in Washington, which singularly is the
most serious obstacle to human progress today.  Attacking WB is like biting
a stick instead of the man who wields it.

wojtek