The World Bank: From Bad to Worse

Which economic ministers "around the world" considered Zoellick as the first choice? Not Bolivia, Costa Rica, Venezuela, or Argentina.
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It's quite telling to watch the MSM analyze the choice of Robert Zoellick to replace the disgraced (again) Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank. The MSM have never gotten it when it comes to exploring the real scandal behind the World Bank. And Zoellick will only make things worse, not better.

As I suggested some weeks ago, the World Bank, and its financial counterpart the International Monetary Fund (IMF), are crucial players in imposing the very economic system that leaves 2 billion people on the planet earning two dollars a day. If a country wants money, in the form of a loan, it must "restructure" its economic system. That usually means opening up its economies to multi-national corporations, which then operate in a more "free market" environment. Translation: weakening of environmental laws, weakening if not outright elimination of laws having to do with foreign investment rights and, certainly, the elimination of most local government control over labor rights and basic minimum standards.

Indeed, Zoellick is a staunch advocate of the very "restructuring" policies that are the linchpin of so-called "free trade", the imposition of which Zoellick oversaw in the time he served as U.S. trade representative from February 2001 to February 2005. Among other things, he helped pave the way for China to enter into the World Trade Organization (WTO) -- which has allowed China to become the low-wage haven of the world.

Here's how The New York Times reports the story:

Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr. said Mr. Zoellick had emerged as the first choice of economic ministers around the world, who have been calling for someone to overcome the bank's credibility problems among donor and recipient countries alike.

"Bob has a very strong track record working with colleagues and leaders to get results," Mr. Paulson said in an interview after word of the appointment spread. "He's got great energy and enthusiasm and will be able to hit the ground running. I also think he's got strong management capabilities."

Interesting: which economic ministers "around the world" considered Zoellick as the first choice? The Times simply takes that piece of information and turns it into fact. In fact, The Washington Post, though it too verges on gushing over Zoellick by noting that he is "a figure widely respected in foreign capitals," does offer this:

Paulson declined to name the governments with which he spoke, but he said he was confident Zoellick would be widely embraced as "a merit-based candidate."

I suspect that those unnamed people do not include economic ministers from Bolivia, Costa Rica, Venezuela, or Argentina -- among the countries that are rejecting the so-called "free trade" model and the neo-liberal economic program that has resulted in virtually no economic growth in the past 25 years.

The fact is Zoellick -- and his counterparts in this Administration and those before him -- have been abject failures when it comes to promoting economic well-being around the world. As I noted recently, my colleague Mark Weisbrot has shown that in Latin America -- where the World Bank and the IMF have plied their agendas -- "To find a growth performance in Latin America that is even close to failure of the last 25 years, one has to go back more than a century, and choose a 25-year period that includes both World War I and start of the Great Depression."

These folks are failures. They should not be promoted. And, looking at their track record of failing to promote prosperity and, in fact, overseeing a decline in living standards in scores of countries around the world, they certainly shouldn't be in charge of our economic future.

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