has been pushing for years. Coincidentally, Common Dreams published this article today:
Published on Tuesday, May 31, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
Wolfowitz’s Move to the World Bank Presidency and the Sharpening of Economic Policy as a Weapon of Mass Impoverishment
by Njoki Njoroge Njehu & Leslie Cagan The World Bank is a powerful multilateral institution, lending and investing billions of dollars annually for projects like dams and pipelines as well as for "adjustment” packages for countries with economic problems. Its president, unilaterally appointed by the U.S., is the most prominent figure in the world of international economic development. As World Bank campaigners have been arguing for decades - and especially in the last 10 years, the World Bank is already overstuffed with ideological rigidities that supplant quality analysis, and is unshakably committed to economic policies that benefit large corporations and wealthy countries at the expense of the ostensible beneficiaries -- the impoverished majorities in borrowing countries.
From the legislatures to the streets, citizens in many of the countries that borrow from the World Bank have vigorously opposed the policies it demands --privatization of basic services like water provision, health care, and education; massive public-sector lay-offs; drastic trade and investment deregulation; dismantling established protections for workers. Now a man already notorious around the world for his leading role in the Iraq war has been appointed by President Bush to lead the World Bank. It makes the link between U.S. military and economic policy clear: they are two sides of the same coin.
For the billions of people living in the countries marginalized by contemporary economic and political structures, the actions and motivations of the United States look pretty simple. It will do what is necessary to control whatever resources it considers essential, and it will use the available political, military, and economic tools to ensure that its dominance is never threatened, and in fact extended however possible. People in Africa, Asia, and Latin America have long seen that the culmination of any intervention by the United States and its allies in their countries, whether economic or military, is the re-structuring of their economies to serve foreign and corporate interests. Sometimes that means preserving unsavory regimes; occasionally it means overthrowing them. Most often it requires less violent means -- the enforcement of economic contracts by international institutions like the World Bank.
The World Bank has long been a vital part of building and maintaining a global economy that uses poorly-paid workers and farmers in poor countries to maintain the comfort of consumers in rich ones. The World Bank and its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have long exploited poor countries' debt burdens to impose the policies that maintain this system. The most vulnerable people in the world are in essence paying off debts for failed policies and projects and the whims of old dictatorial regimes which they never wanted nor benefited from.
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0531-33.htmHere is another article about the World Bank that I posted in Editorials a couple of days ago:
Published on Monday, May 30, 2005 by the Los Angeles Times
True Believers at the World Bank
Rigid ideology is a threat, not an asset.
by Barbara Garson To get ready for privatization, South African communities followed the World Bank/IMF suggestion that water rates be raised so consumers would get used to paying the full cost. The water of many people was cut off when they couldn't pay their bills. In some places they started taking water from rivers. The result was a cholera epidemic.
Cholera is an extreme result for a development scheme. But then, privatizing water in Africa is an extreme application of the World Bank's private investment theory. After all, a private company has to have some way of making money.
How is a private water company supposed to recoup the expense of extending pipelines to people who are simply too poor to pay the real cost? If you buy a Third World water company, it's far easier, you'll quickly discover, to recoup the investment by siphoning the water out to be bottled and consumed elsewhere.
Even in the First World, it's often more profitable to siphon off than to "develop." For a few years, the Suez Co. also owned the water system in Bergen County, N.J. During its stewardship, it sold off land around the reservoir to private builders. Then it turned around and sold the whole water system to another company. We shareholders took the money and ran. Technically that's called "asset stripping." And it's perfectly legal.
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0530-28.htm
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