Chile Slams World Bank Amid Charges of Political Bias
Source: New York Times
By Pascale Bonnefoy and Ernesto Londoño
Jan. 13, 2018
SANTIAGO, Chile Chiles outgoing president, Michelle Bachelet, criticized the World Bank on Saturday after an economist said that her countrys poor showing in an influential survey of global business conditions may actually have reflected a political bias against her left-leaning government.
The outcry came after the banks chief economist, Paul Romer, told The Wall Street Journal in an interview on Friday that while Chiles ranking has fallen in the banks yearly Doing Business report, which investors watch closely, business conditions did not get worse in Chile during the Bachelet era.
He added that he did not have confidence in the integrity of the data and methodology that led to Chiles negative assessments and offered a personal apology to the country.
The statement has started a political firestorm in Chile, where the candidate from Ms. Bachelets leftist coalition was defeated in last months presidential election, a race in which economic policy was a decisive issue. Ms. Bachelet, who leaves office in March, was barred by term limits from seeking re-election.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/13/world/americas/chile-world-bank-michelle-bachelet-augusto-lopez-claros.html
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)There has always been a political-financial-military bias in "the West" against the right of people to vote to put human need before(or at least equal to)private profit.
And Chile has left bleeding by this "bias" in the past(something our leaders STILL need to apologize for, btw).
burrowowl
(17,648 posts)diva77
(7,656 posts)The Globalizer Who Came In
From the Cold
Joe Stiglitz:
Todays Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics
Wednesday, October 10, 2001
by Greg Palast
SNIP
Here in Washington we completed the last of several hours of exclusive interviews for The Observer and BBC TV's Newsnight about the real, often hidden, workings of the IMF, World Bank, and the bank's 51% owner, the US Treasury.
And here, from sources unnamable (not Stiglitz), we obtained a cache of documents marked, "confidential," "restricted," and "not otherwise (to be) disclosed without World Bank authorization."
Stiglitz helped translate one from bureaucratise, a "Country Assistance Strategy." There's an Assistance Strategy for every poorer nation, designed, says the World Bank, after careful in-country investigation. But according to insider Stiglitz, the Bank's staff 'investigation' consists of close inspection of a nation's 5-star hotels. It concludes with the Bank staff meeting some begging, busted finance minister who is handed a 'restructuring agreement' pre-drafted for his 'voluntary' signature (I have a selection of these).
Each nation's economy is individually analyzed, then, says Stiglitz, the Bank hands every minister the same exact four-step program.
Step One is Privatization - which Stiglitz said could more accurately be called, 'Briberization.' Rather than object to the sell-offs of state industries, he said national leaders - using the World Bank's demands to silence local critics - happily flogged their electricity and water companies. "You could see their eyes widen" at the prospect of 10% commissions paid to Swiss bank accounts for simply shaving a few billion off the sale price of national assets.
And the US government knew it, charges Stiglitz, at least in the case of the biggest 'briberization' of all, the 1995 Russian sell-off. "The US Treasury view was this was great as we wanted Yeltsin re-elected. We don't care if it's a corrupt election. We want the money to go to Yeltzin" via kick-backs for his campaign.
SNIP