----- Original Message -----
From: "Vikash Yadav" <vikash1 at ssc.upenn.edu>
> I would rather reform the World Bank than destroy it.
As a former Wharton student myself, I say, "jolly good for you". Who do you speak for? Which Third World groups share your view?
> Where will the
> concessional loans for development come from if these institutions are
> destroyed?
Concessional? When the currency crashes, even a 0.75% IDA loan becomes wickedly expensive.
Who needs hard-currency loans to meet the basic needs that are denied so many billions of people? What hard-currency component is required for building a school, or hiring a teacher, in rural Tanzania? What damage is done to an economy, pushing it to maximum-export mode, so as to repay those "concessional" loans?
> (I am not convinced by those who believe that development aid is
> the problem, as their target seems to be corruption
No, the critique is multifold: that development aid mainly (i.e., more than 50%) goes back to the donor nation and its corpos/consultants; that the donor apparatus distorts local economies by establishing a luxury-enclave dual economy (especially in capital cities); that the aid is tied to brutal neoliberal conditionality ranging from policies to projects (US AID, GTZ and DFID are sometimes harder-line than the BWIs); and that in terms of "corruption," even if it's a "clean" grant it typically leads to compradorisation and demobilisation of progressive organic social forces/institutions (in all sorts of ways). One of the best studies is Joe Hanlon's "Who Calls the Shots" (James Currey, 1996 I think) about my neighbour Mozambique -- read it and I predict you'll never support ODA or int'l NGOs again.
> but they still have no
> solution for actually addressing poverty alleviation).
Sure we do. Virtually every Southern African society's left social movements have put forward detailed alternatives to neoliberalism. (You can get a sense of some of the main players by going to http://www.aidc.org.za where the Southern African People's Solidarity Movement puts out its various platform positions, including full debt cancellation, lifeline services, massive land reform, etc etc. I'll be speaking about these up I95 from you next Thursday, at the Columbia U. Inst of African Studies at noontime if you want to debate in person.
> Others on this list have mentioned using commercial loans from
institutions
> that either have their own history of corruption and high rates (JBIC) or
> little experience with development policies (EIB) in the South.
Others in the rest of the world speak, far more convincingly, about deglobalisation from commercial bank loans and portfolio flows.
> Who will invest in the poorest and
> lowest rated sovereign countries?
Who needs foreign investors? What kinds of projects do they do, that reach the masses of people who barely survive? Deglobalisation from FDI is also part of the progressive agenda.
> Rather than creating new multilateral
> institutions
Forget new institutions, until the balance of international forces becomes favourable to human/enviro values. The main job is to close the existing ones.
> or leaving developing countries to rely on commercial markets,
No need for that.
> I would rather fix the multi-lateral institutions we have.
That's utopian; it can't be done. Two decades of trying -- environmental, gender, community-participation, transparency, post-WashCon economic policy -- have demonstrably failed. I used to be a fixer too, but after many campaigns of banging my head against the Bank/IMF wall, I've realised that the only feasible project is defunding (http://www.worldbankboycott.org)
Privatise the Bank's economists. Cancel the debt. If there's anything left over, pay reparations for horrible BWI projects (e.g., billions of dollars in loans to apartheid).
> If you have a realistic solution for promoting development for 80% of the
> world's population without (at least) the current resources of the World
> Bank, I would be more than willing to hear it.
Domestic financial resource mobilisation is the key. The Bank and IMF suck more resources out, and distort their clients' economies in disastrous ways, doing untold social and environmental damage, that to talk of "current resources" is truly Orwellian.
> As it stands the UNDP is
> predicting that the goal of halving the number of people living in
absolute
> poverty by 2015 will fail without doubling aid from donor nations.
Let's think about why the UNDP would say something like that. Are they bound up in the ODA system? Is their leader Mark Malloch Brown the former VP for public relations for the World Bank? Do they promote privatisation of the world's water? Do they have any interest in promoting the disempowerment of the mass-organisations of low-income people, from Argentina to Zimbabwe, who have been screwed by the BWIs?
If yes to the above, should we add them to the Nix It agenda? This last is not a merely theoretical query, as anyone coming to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Jo'burg will learn...
Cheers, Patrick
> Best,
>
> Vikash Yadav
> Philadelphia, PA
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of Doug Henwood
> Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2002 10:50 PM
> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Subject: RE: O'Neill: "WB has driven poor countries into a ditch"
>
> Vikash Yadav wrote:
>
> >Below is a very similar article by the New York Times on O'Neill's
> >statement... It does appear that this "international compassionate
> >conservatism" is really a devious plan to destroy the World Bank.
>
> And that's bad?
>
> Doug
>
>