Readers’ Responses to Our Question (34)

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World bank? It is the most prestigious face value but low level mentalyity stuffed institution.knowledge with negative output will result in being categorized with Satan.We in developing nations long came to know that world bank is just another instrument of misuse, limiting freedom of oppresed people under thieve statesmen supported by the "world police" for their trash proxy role in its endless global conflicts.

Most amazingly,I feel much embarased when I see characters of most worlbank "professional workers" to behave as brokers in steeling biz proposals from poor nation applicants and offering others while misinforming that poor applicant with bereucracy and problems.

Particularly,most carbon finance people in world bank are more of "project spies" than Climate mitigation & clean development assistants.Shameful!

Reduce the price of oil on a global scale. With the present prices only the wealthy are benefitting by controlling the stock market while the poor people suffer every day to put gasoline in their vehicles.

"Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries."
-Douglas Casey

How about dissolving the IMF and World Bank? They seem to bully eveloping countries anyway, and now every country that has repaid their loans wants nothing to with them. Look at South America, especially Ecuador and Argentina.

If I could have one economic concern addressed by the World Bank, it has to be free trade. Tarriffs in America are especially crippling to our prices and they have placed severe limits on the way we do business in America. We must have free trade worldwide if we mean to weaken impoverished nations' stresses. There is no reason we cannot have free trade in today's marketplace.

I think it would behoof us the world over if we work on how exactly we can open up free trade worldwide, including here in our country.

The World Bank needs urgently to move most of its staff to the developing countries. You can't really understand the problems and opportunities of these countries if you are only visiting these countries for a few weeks on a mission as opposed to experiencing them every day. No wonder you have numerous failed World Bank projects across the globe.

My suggestion to the Global Economic Wizards is to follow a simple "Mantra": "Adopt an "inclusive" economic policy without any bias of gender or geography. ... Let women also become "partners-in-progress" and witness the world turn into a paradise!

"Microcredit" is a successful economic idea and it should be emulated by all developing nations in order to economically empower poor people.

Enhanced and sincere spendings (corruption free) should be undertaken (implementation of which to be ensured by the funding bodies) in the basic areas of education, health, sanitation, clean water and housing, which would ultimately make people capable of contributing towards creating wealth and in bringing prosperity to their own lives and their nations' as well.

Also, the "developed" nations should help the "under-developed" countries - e.g., in the African continent - with "interest free" loans and technological support so that they too can come out of their abject poverty.

One of the "main" routes towards sustainable peace on our Earth surely is through sustainable economic prosperity!

With the G8 countries consuming an estimated 65 percent of the world's nonrenewable energy, even though they represent only 30 percent of the world's population, any attempt to develop the remaining 75 percent of the world will fail unless the imbalance in energy consumption is corrected. China and India are on the right track because they have internal domestic trade on a level that generates new, state of the art technology. Most of Africa, Southeast Asia and South and Central America do not have enough internal economic diversity to heat up their domestic economies. World Bank policies have encouraged that trend, which has proven futile for their economic development since they cannot develop technology, only consume it, from the developed world until they have begun to diversify their domestic economies. Generally today, poor countries tend to sell their raw commodities to rich countries for pennies so that the rich countries can value add technology to the imported commodities, refine and transform them, and sell them back to the poor countries for dollars(i.e., trading oil to purchase gasoline and other petroleum based manufactured goods, or armaments) It would be better for sub-Saharan African countries to only trade among themselves and other third-world developing countries, manufacturing goods from their own commodities to sell among themselves, so that they learn why they need the rule of just laws impartially governing them, why political corruption hurts them, why taxation burdens and benefits must be equitable, and the role of government as a referee, administration, and enforcer of the rules governing everyone is necessary to national regional prosperity. To mimic the developed Western countries in their stages of economic growth in only needed within nations and regions. That growth is difficult, if not impossible, through international trade between developed regions and developing ones. Poor countries will never be able to compete with rich countries by trading their basic commodities for manufactured goods from the rich countries.

Answer to this weeks's question: See how poverty disappears, graft significantly reduces and development takes hold in third world countries when you require that the bonafide financial institutions do not do business with offshore and unregulatred banks and require that one can have a bank account only in his country of citizenship.

New ideas for the global economy? This is a false premise. How about dumping the global economy. It's a fiction perpetuated by multinational corporations that either are in the U.S. or "are" but their headquarters is an offshore postal box to avoid paying taxes. No one in Europe plays this game. No one in Asia is playing it. They aparently understand that jobs and critical tehnology are a part of their national interest and prevent foreign workers unless necessary to fill a position for which a native cannot be found. ANd they flat out forbid the export of technologies like aircraft manufacturing, computers and software, records and databases, and much else. Only in the U.S. and in a very few of our third world cousins do they practice this sort of insanity.

They could begin to break both the world's addiction to oil and the cycle of poverty in much of the developing world by promoting the cultivation of Jatropha Curcas--an ideal feedstock crop for production of non-polluting, non-toxic biodiesel, the world's fastest growing alternative fuel. One hectare (2.4 acres) of Jatropha can yield enough seed-oil to make about 1500 liters (nearly 400 gallons) of biodiesel--roughly four times the output of soy.

A rugged perennial--plant in once and it will grow for 50 years--Jatropha can grow in infertile soil, even in drought conditions, from West Africa to West Texas. The bushy tree stops--and may even reverse--desertification. Animals do not graze on Jatropha. Most important, the poorest people on earth could earn a living from sustainable Jatropha cultivation and processing.

Experts say more than half the land in Africa might be used for Jatropha cultivation. In principle, if 25 percent of the 50 percent were to be used for this purpose, Africa could supply enough Jatropha oil-based biodiesel to meet America's annual petroleum needs.

Some 30 million hectares of wasteland in India--about half the county's total infertile land--could be allocated to Jatropha. The cost of producing biodiesel from Jatropha in India is estimated at US$0.43–US$0.54 per liter. The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) of India is undertaking a 10-year pilot project, in conjunction with BP, to cultivate 8,000 hectares of wasteland with Jatropha and install the equipment necessary to produce nine million liters of biodiesel a year. The TERI project hopes to expand to eventually produce 10 times that quantity; and the Indian government is considering a national initiative to plant 400,000 hectares of Jatropha in 22 of India's 28 states.

Jatropha originated in the Caribbean and has spread all over the world. Jatropha plantations already exist on the island of Hispaniola, in the Dominican Repubic. Across the border, in impoverished, Haiti, Chinese state-owned companies are trying to lease one of the region's largest land tracts for cultivating the miracle crop.

-China Confidential
http://chinaconfidential.blogspot.com

Ideas for the IMF and the WB? Well, why should the world keep them open in the first place?

Certainly, the IMF has helped ease one world crisis after another. But the perception of incompetence and corruption will not disappear tomorrow.

The IMF has made huge mistakes. Lending money to corrupt, incompetent governments, in a consistent basis, is not exactly a role model for any bank. But we should remember why the IMF has been involved in such a tricky business for such a long time: to keep its doors open, to justify its very existence. So, they had to lend money to anyone who steps at the door, often the finance minister of a soon-to-become failed state, whose leader had made a mess of the country's finances. When everything failed, those messy, corrupt, over-indebted governments, with no cash to pay state workers's wages or interests on bonds, had always an open door at IMF headquarters. In a couple of days, finance ministers went back home with enough cash to stay alive for another month; the country had suddenly acquired more debt while offering stringent collaterals. Next mont, same story.

The WB is a similar story. Good intentions, bright minds, some money... and you get... not very much. After decades of financing world development, what are the outcomes? Some infrastructure; plenty of experiments, some successful, most failed; and an international bureaucracy that fights for survival. Scholars turned into consultants, then turned into project administrators, then turned into evaluators; then back to academia... to devise the new generation of projects aimed at solving the problems the previous generation did not. With their salaries, their research, their conference and travel expenses representing the largest chunck of every WB-funded project, no wonder why those projects have little or no effect in alleviating poverty, promoting development, or strengthtening democracy.

Now... why do we need something like the IMF and the WB in the 21st century, when there are hundreds of other global, regional and even virtual financial institutions that do the same work a lot better?

On top of that... Wolfowitz!!!

The IMF and the WB have lost their relevance. It is time to free that valuable office space.

To improve the global economy one should first eliminate the world's spiritual, moral, and economic poverties! To do this we need true, independent visionaries that cannot be found even at the best universities, like Oxford, Cambridge and the like. At the universities, endowed by Cambridge Gates scholarships and Carlos Slim's and Warren Buffett's, the students do the bidding of the faculties and of their wealthy donnors! No independent and truly creative thinking is allowed! Neither are the true problem solvers found in monasteries. There, the poor monks know a lot, but are also controlled by Superiors who do not want them to think independently! Rather, the true visionaries and the truly gifted analysts of the problems I mentioned, like myself, are found starving in a single room without ability to pay the rent the next month! They may be retired and destitute and disabled, spending most of their time trying to survive till the end of each month! But their minds, brightest than the sun, empowered by God Himself, His Holy Spirit, had they been freed to dedicate themselves full-time to in-depth analysis, would quickly come up with more solutions for the global problems than all the universities endowed by Messers. Slim, Buffett, and Gates ... all of whom, by their own admission, stringently refuse to help such people! Sorry, but I have to think where I will sleep next week, and what I shall eat! Please show the world bankers this post! BJS

To improve the global economy one should first eliminate the world's spiritual, moral, and economic poverties! To do this we need true, independent visionaries that cannot be found even at the best universities, like Oxford, Cambridge and the like. At the universities, endowed by Cambridge Gates scholarships and Carlos Slim's and Warren Buffett's, the students do the bidding of the faculties and of their wealthy donnors! No independent and truly creative thinking is allowed! Neither are the true problem solvers found in monasteries. There, the poor monks know a lot, but are also controlled by Superiors who do not want them to think independently! Rather, the true visionaries and the truly gifted analysts of the problems I mentioned, like myself, are found starving in a single room without ability to pay the rent the next month! They may be retired and destitute and disabled, spending most of their time trying to survive till the end of each month! But their minds, brightest than the sun, empowered by God Himself, His Holy Spirit, had they been freed to dedicate themselves full-time to in-depth analysis, would quickly come up with more solutions for the global problems than all the universities endowed by Messers. Slim, Buffett, and Gates ... all of whom, by their own admission, stringently refuse to help such people! Sorry, but I have to think where I will sleep next week, and what I shall eat! Please show the world bankers this post! BJS

As the world faces Global Warming, and as most of the suffering will be borne by the poorer areas of Spaceship Earth; therefore, the IMF and World bank should use their yearly allocation as investment [gratis] in reducing the probable suffering in those areas, not by giving "aid/Loan" to be disposed by the ruling elites of these poor countries, but by investing in areas which will need attention as per IPCC forecast.

This would be morally right, for it was the developed countries which caused most of the CO2/Methane problems since the Industrial Revolution. It would be proper that The Rich Countries forego any "Intellectual Property" aspects of these investments, for the monopolists holding these "properties" have sufficient income from "developed/developing" countries to allow them to be generous to the most needy.

Neal Jettpace,
Very good suggestion. The one issue i see is lack of business knowledge by those getting the microloans. It seems to me that many people in developing countries have the funding issues but also have a lack of knowledge about best practices in their business area. The IMF currently provides technical assistance but they state that "demand for technical assistance consistently exceeds supply". They also currently focus on "macroeconomic policy, tax policy and revenue administration, expenditure management, monetary policy, the exchange rate system, financial sector sustainability, and macroeconomic and financial statistics." This should be expanded to focus on more microeconomic areas and business "know how". And they should invest in this so that supply is met.

To the other posters that think the IMF = Devil, the question posed was not what is your biggest gripe about the IMF, it was to suggest a good economic idea that the global big shots should consider. The IMF was established to promote international monetary cooperation, exchange stability, and orderly exchange arrangements; to foster economic growth and high levels of employment; and to provide temporary financial assistance to countries to help ease balance of payments adjustment. If you don't think the IMF is living up to those goals, then try coming up with a suggestion for improvement that is half as creative as some of the gripes...

A good economic idea that the global big shots should consider?

They should raise Shaha Riza's salary. Only $193,590 a year for making love to Wolfowitz! Clearly the lady is being exploited!

Bush al Baghdadi and Cheney al Kirkuk along with friend Tony al Basra can solve all the world's problems.

http://www.aljazeera.com/me.asp?service_ID=13502
Please goto the link above...and shed some light on it. How come these news and iformation do not reach us citizens here in usa, why we have to go to the outside press to read about it. Looks like that there is a black out on world news.

I am not an economist neither a banker and when comes to money matter i only know how to spend it.

Recently one Bangladeshi banker revolutionarised the idea of giving loan to children of lesser God.
This is really a fantastic idea and if adopted universally it will benefit middle and lower middle class.

The world's bankers and finance ministers are meeting in Washington this weekend. Suggest a good economic idea that the global big shots should consider.

I claim total ignorance when it comes to economics. Economics, physics--beyond my brainpower. But simply proceeding from basics, I wonder how difficult it will be to get the world to operate as we read an advanced nation operates--which is to say operating by structures which can inflate or depress an economy at will.

In advanced democracies--at least America--we are used to reading and experiencing events such as layoffs, that the monetary supply is reduced and interest rates are raised, and vice-versa--that the economy expands in a variety of ways and that inflation sneaks in in a variety of ways (lately in America with the housing bubble).

But how do we get the world as a whole used to this process, to division of labor, to total world conception which is primarily economical and not ideological in the sense of the various total political and religious structures we are familiar with? In an advanced democracy with sophisticated economics we have an open structure which does not like total group structures such as ideologies present (whether political or religious) and which prefers small and constantly inventive combinations--or if large structures, inventive and constantly changing corporate structures.

Religion and even modern conceptions such as left and right politics are becoming subordinate to a rapidly evolving and transformative state which expects substantial individuals who are capable of combining in a variety of sophisticated ways. How to get the world to accept this process consistent with modern science, democracy, political analysis, economics?

And within this problem we have of course the problem of energy and somehow regulating the economy with respect to the natural environment. And even if we make strides solving this problem, still leaking out the sides as if in a continuum with the problem of say, global warming, we have the possibility of local "global incinerations" what with the spread of powerful weaponry to smaller and smaller groups of people.

I would say the problems are many and difficult for the world's bankers and finance ministers. Particularly though do I want to concentrate on the problem of what has become known as the global war on terror. As is well known, there are many that object to this characterization. The argument runs that terrorism is just a tactic and there can be no war on a tactic--or something like that. But I would say the tactic is precisely the problem--increasingly inventive tactics coupled with increasingly powerful weaponry to be used for an increasing variety of reasons as nations and civilizations close in on one another and interact in ever more life changing ways.

Furthermore, as I already more than hinted, the problem of global warming and terrorism are interlinked in a continuum which can be described as man not really coming to terms with his technology. We have man destroying the enviroment by the methods he uses to energize the economy, and shot through this system we have the proliferation of weaponry which is the possibility of the increased incineration of the environment. In the United States we have the left wing party against the global warming but largely taking it for granted that if this problem can be solved--and of course also with left wing economics--man will take a profound step forward. The right wing in contrast is afraid of the "outer extremities of global warming" which is the proliferation of incendiary technology--and is even willing to tolerate global warming to keep the advanced economies well positioned in military formation to deal with proliferation...

All these checks and balances and degrees, etc. will have to be well studied...

What if global warming is addressed to such a degree that the advanced economies cannot function to prevent the spread of increasingly dangerous weaponry to nations and peoples we today take for granted are "good people needing only economic advancement"? But what if global warming is not addressed at all and this leads to virtually the same thing as the above as ecosystems and economies collapse and man becomes increasingly angry and mad? The question is some sort of regulation that prevents the outer extremities of global warming, that prevents global incineration...

I would say the world's bankers and finance ministers have a lot on their mind. A good and simple beginning though would be to get the U.S., European Union, Russia, China, India--the major economies--truly locked in an embrace which discusses the issues in a rational manner.

I believe the issues can be discussed in a rational manner because we are, after all, dealing with men used to problems of money--calculating men--and as I believe Stendhal said (to paraphrase him) men made to be philosophers precisely for having the minds of bankers...Actually he said a philosopher should have the mind of a banker (exact and no nonsense). It should not be too much to ask bankers to become philosophers.

Most of the worlds people just don't get it. )A few of those that do have made comments previous to mine. Hello, Mike B.)
You will not get an answer to the world's monatary problems from the I.(freaking)M.F.. The IMF OWNs the US govt. The IMF OWNs the canadian Govt. The IMF owns just about every govt. on the planet. The IMF has backed every war, Inssurection, battle, whatever you want to call it, since, oh! about 1905. (Maby before that.)It's been called a couple of different things over the years but it's still the IMF. It is also the IRS, the Federal reserve, the Council on foreign relations, the WTO, and on and on and on. THEY make money by keeping US (as in you and me) in a perpetual state of war. They print money to suit THEIR purpous. Their is NO gold or other precious metal to back it up. The American dollar is worth about 4 cents today BECAUSE of the IMF.
Knock, Knock! Anybody out there?? Anybody awake??
Don't look to your National Governments for answers, Look to yourselves. Make your views and consernes known to your Province or State reps. Blast them with letters, e-mail, fax's, phone calls. Get involved any way you can. There's millions of us. There's only thousands of them.

The world bankers should acknowlege that 1% of the world population control about 90% of the world's wealth, and that this situation may be ultimately explosive.
They should realize that 99% of the population of the world which has increased exponentially in just 100 years - January 1st 1900 the total population was about 1.5 billion and on January 1st 2000 it had jumped to about 6 billion and is now about 6.5 billion !!! - will not accept to continue to be hungry, not have access to drinkable clean water and not be able to afford to buy the medication necessary to their many diseases. They will try to emigrate to all countries which offer better life conditions and take all the risks to reach their destinations.
Consequently, it becomes urgent that the people holding the power decide to do something about it, if they wish to avoid the innumerable problems the above situation may generate.
It is sad to note that the corruption at the hightest levels in numerous countries, leave the population without the basic needs they should be entitled to and that wars and arms absorb trillions of dollars which could alleviate and solve so many of the problems most countries experience.
Let us hope the meeting can achieve a consensus on a constructive programme, with a determination to implement it and not have most of it lost on the way.

How about letting them take over the Holy Land and make it like visiting Disneyland, where no lives and only visitors can spend time and money.
In effect, we solve the problem in Jerusalem by telling everyone that no one can keep the holy ground. Then, we can just relocate all the Jews, arabs, palestinans and the like to some place else with all the ticket revenues. Simple soulution, nobody wins!

International Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Kompromat at IMF and World Bank since inceptions.

Russia would disclose its files on academic kompromat involving profs in the West. The universities would disclose their misconduct including plagiarism, grant fraud, immigration fraud, and allowing Russia, China, Pakistan, India, etc. to build networks in academia and financial services.

The Clinton and Bush administrations including antitrust division of DOJ, Fed, DOJ leadership, etc. would admit they withheld info from USAO Mass.

Any use of this info during Bush v. Gore, Clinton impeachment, trading by hedge funds during 1990's of Russian government bonds, or subsequent use by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia after 9-11, India to get our nuclear technology, Pakistan to harbor bin Laden, China to keep building its networks, Russia to sell arms to Iran and Syria, etc. would all be revealed.

In exchange for testimony, they would get immunity from criminal prosecution, but would owe restitution.

Create a "World Environmental Amortization Fund" (WEAF).

By considering exclusively the growth of both Gross Domestic Product and of International Trade, we are given a false sense of world economic growth and prosperity. That is because what we choose to call "economic growth" does not take into account the massive destruction of the environment, i.e. that "cost of doing business" in our non-sustainable way (loss of natural capital).

Every year, a Comprehensive World Economic Report should therefore be produced, showing how much each country need contribute to the World Environmental Amortization Fund, out of its own Gross Domestic Product, given the extent to which it has been responsible for destroying the environment and the planet. That WEAF could then be used to fund projects aimed at restoring the environment and the planet to their original healthy state.

Reference: Hervé Kempf, "La catastrophe. Et alors" ("Catastrophe. So what?"), in "Comment les riches détruisent la planète" ("How the Rich are Destoying the Planet", Seuil, 2007) -- THE RICH ARE US.

Would, if I may, offer the following quote from Thomas Jefferson. They pertain to corporations and banks and finance ministers today, as much as they did when he wrote this:

"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
- Thomas Jefferson

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a moneyed aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power (of money) should be taken away from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs."
- Thomas Jefferson

"The system of banking we have both equally and ever reprobated. I contemplate it as a blot left in all our constitutions, which, if not covered, will end in their destruction. I sincerely believe, with you...that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."
- Thomas Jefferson

Actually, having them all in one place, provides an idea opportunity to arrest this entire collection of parasites at one time. Corporations and the swine that operate banks and finance ministries that cater to them are the cause of most of the world's misery. Take a look at Iraq. No sooner had our troops arrived than Dick Cheney buddies invaded the country with their brief cases and hired goons. The result is 50% more private contract employees than troops, every one of them feeding at the slop trough provided by the U.S. government. It has become quite evident that the whole reason we invaded Iraq was to create nusiness for these swine. Halliburton and its subsidiaries served our troops spiled food, ran Walter Reed and other military hospitals, pay a sitting Vice President of the U.S. at least $2,000,000 a year, and is responsible for a whole host of other evils. Run down a list of "multinational" corporations served by these rats and it is nothing more than a list of America's nightmare come true - Microsoft, Dell, IBM, Intel, ITT, General Electric, Boeing, Amercian Express,and on and on. What these have in common are, every one of them is under investigation or indictment for corporate wrong doing, they are proponents of globalization, and every one of them has done damage to ordinary working ment and women all the while awarding their officers hundrreds of millions of dollars for doing so. These blood sucking parasites that have sold people on the idea of "globalization", which is nothing more than an excuse they use to rob people all over the world of jobs and dignity. I would argue that these people are worse than peodophiles and certainly ought to be treated as harshly as we would treat peodophiles and traitors. So, "welcome to Washington", swine. We are getting rid of that collection of sociopaths you installed in the Whoite House in the near future....and then YOU wont have one.

Economies in developing nations have to be built from the ground up, not the top down. Though this takes time and patience, it cannot be circumvented. Organic economic growth is both more robust and sustainable; characteristics that a top-down industrial-capital approach lack.

The primary obstacle with organic growth in developing nations is the scale at which it happens. It is micro in the sense that most users of capital need it in small amounts. It is extensive in the sense that lots of people need it that way.

This poses a problem for any commercial lender. Namely, the fixed costs associated with these types of loans quickly overwhelm any chance for profit. No commercial lender in their right mind will participate in such a market.

This is a golden opportunity for institutions like the IMF, however. The most effective use of such capital would be to fund the so-called "micro lenders" so that their operational expenses would be met.

Rather than a loan to the micro-lenders, this should be seen as an investment in future markets. For the first few decades the IMF would simply see no return. Eventually these economies will develop to the stage where the traditional top-down industrial approach works.

Given current demographic trends these new economies would quickly return the initial investments with interest. Though this model requires both patience and a long term view, perhaps that is a good thing. We could use more of each these days.

It is high time that we have a really new international financial architecture that is not cosmetic (last year's marginal redistribution of quotas) and addresses the question of an alternative reserve asset to the US dollar. A Gold Standard won't do but might, in the face of continuing American profligacy, gold might well became the de facto new reserve asset. The Euro won't do either, because the largest balance of payments surpluses are not European but Asian. The proposition of the SDR as alternative reserve asset died following the Reagan era.
The question of a viable alternative reserve asset is vital to continuing world economic prosperity.