I’ve stayed away from blogging about the Paul Wolfowitz/World Bank squabble because I wish the World Bank would disappear along with all the other neo-Wilsonian paraphernalia that provides cushy, well-paying (even tax-exempt in the case of the World Bank) jobs for people who should get out and really work for a living.
The World Bank, in my humble opinion, should be abolished, along with the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and most of the agencies of the United Nations--maybe even the United Nations itself. I’m with Lou Dobbs on most globalization issues: I hate them as much as I hate the thought of Mexican trucks barreling down our interstates.
The Nation, the bomb-throwing, hate-America, Israel-can-do-no-right magazine, has published a May 14 column, “Sacrificial Wolfie,” by Naomi Klein that said it better than I can; here’s a link to the column: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070514/klein
Klein doesn’t care much for World Bank President (since 2005) Paul Wolfowitz, but she says the campaign to oust him is way off base:
“First, let's dispense with the supposed hypocrisy problem. ‘Who wants to be lectured on corruption by someone telling them to ''do as I say, not as I do''?’ asked one journalist. No one, of course. But that's a pretty good description of the game of one-way strip poker that is our global trade system, in which the United States and Europe--via the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization--tell the developing world, ‘You take down your trade barriers and we'll keep ours up.’ From farm subsidies to the Dubai Ports World scandal, hypocrisy is our economic order's guiding principle.”
Right on, Naomi! (The Nation, to its credit, has excellent book reviews and its movie critic, Stuart Klawans, is one of the best in the business.)
Klein goes on to say that “Wolfowitz's only crime was taking his institution's international posture to heart. The fact that he has responded to the scandal by hiring a celebrity lawyer and shopping for a leadership ‘coach’ is just more evidence that he has fully absorbed the World Bank way: When in doubt, blow the budget on overpriced consultants and call it aid.”
I’m amazed that The Nation printed this column; maybe I’ll take it more seriously--at least Klein’s screeds in it. Eric Alterman, Alexander Cockburn, and the fair lady Katrina vanden Heuvel--the editor--not so much.
To hear American and European liberals scream bloody murder about Wolfie and his ravishing of the pristine World Bank you’d think he was the worst thing to come down the pike since the Sheriff of Nottingham in the Robin Hood stories.
She continues: “The more serious lie at the center of the controversy is the implication that the World Bank was an institution with impeccable ethical credentials--until, according to forty-two former Bank executives, its credibility was ‘fatally compromised’ by Wolfowitz. (Many American liberals have seized on this fairy tale, addicted to the fleeting rush that comes from forcing neocons to resign.) The truth is that the bank's credibility was fatally compromised when it forced school fees on students in Ghana in exchange for a loan; when it demanded that Tanzania privatize its water system; when it made telecom privatization a condition of aid for Hurricane Mitch; when it demanded labor "flexibility" in the aftermath of the Asian tsunami in Sri Lanka; when it pushed for eliminating food subsidies in post-invasion Iraq. Ecuadoreans care little about Wolfowitz's girlfriend; more pressing is that in 2005, the Bank withheld a promised $100 million after the country dared to spend a portion of its oil revenues on health and education. Some antipoverty organization.”
She goes on to briefly tell the sordid tale of Yeltsin’s Russia and Pinochet’s Chile, among other stories of World Bank corruption. Read the entire column and think twice about having Sir Mark Malloch Brown take over after Wolfie is thrown to the sharks--or the wolves. The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, May 9, 2007 had an editorial--“Axis of Soros”--about Malloch Brown, who was just given a cushy job at the Quantum Fund, run by his billionaire buddy George Soros. Needless to say, Soros is a buddy of most of the gang at The Nation.
Malloch Brown was the right-hand man of Kofi Annan when both were up to their necks in the $100 billion Oil-for-Food scandal at the United Nations. Brown is the fair-haired boy of the Wolfowitz haters at the World Bank. Talk about Topsy-Turvy: Gilbert and Sullivan couldn’t make this up!
Klein ends her screed with two plangent and true paragraphs:
“The three main institutions at the heart of that crusade are in crisis--not because of the small hypocrisies but because of the big ones. The WTO cannot get back on track, the IMF is going broke, displaced by Venezuela and China. And now the Bank is going down.
“The Financial Times reports that when World Bank managers dispensed advice, ‘they were now laughed at.’ Perhaps we should all laugh at the Bank. What we should absolutely not do, however, is participate in the effort to cleanse the Bank's ruinous history by repeating the absurd narrative that the reputation of an otherwise laudable antipoverty organization has been sullied by one man. The Bank understandably wants to throw Wolfowitz overboard. I say, Let the ship go down with the captain.”
David Kinchen resides in Port Lavaca, Texas, and is editor of