>I would rather reform the World Bank than destroy it. Where will the
>concessional loans for development come from if these institutions are
>destroyed? (I am not convinced by those who believe that development aid is
>the problem, as their target seems to be corruption but they still have no
>solution for actually addressing poverty alleviation).
The WB isn't entirely a bad thing, but it mostly is. It lends largely for export-oriented projects, which means satisfying the needs of foreign markets before domestic populations - in hard currencies, which means debtors have to export, or they can't service the loans. So you have countries exporting food where people are hungry, and wood where people lack houses. And over the last 10-20 years, it's moved way beyond project lending to structural adjustment - coerced austerity plans and privatization that have driven hundreds of millions into penury. Its latest obsessions include commodifying nature - charging people for air, creating tradeable pollution credits, etc. If Patrick Bond is listening, he could tell us about the 130,000 cases of cholera in SA because of WB-mandated water fees, which forced people to drink dirty water because they couldn't pay the bills. With the WB out of the way, many of these things wouldn't happen.
Doug