You know, its amazing to me that when an organizations own internal mechanism tells them that contracts/companies etc. they have been dealing are corrupt they would just continue to make loans and basically ignore there own findings.

It appears to me that the world bank is just another UN behemoth that moves forward inextricably carried by its own inertia absent any effective control or breaking system, running down hill with one mission, shovel money out the door in batches for one reason only, to justify its own existence hence creating its own atmosphere in which no ones job is ever at stake and everyone goes home happy, that is except the folks that fund this mess or give damn, in effect, the members who fund this just do so to assuage the usual misplaced angst regards having more than someone else and can always laud their donations as doing the ‘right thing’. Hell they are helping people right?

Of course any noise generated by the US is always pooh poohed and closeted, being sent into the maze which their bureaucracy has created to channel accountability away from those responsible, ring a bell?

Does it matter that gross corruption wastes huge amounts of money that a better run org. could use to much greater effect? I guess not. They should scrap it and start over.




World Bank Shots on Corruption
July 23, 2008; Page A16
The World Bank is nothing if not persistent. In recent weeks, the bank has announced low-interest loans of $320 million apiece to Bangladesh and Vietnam, despite their awful corruption records.

Since May, Bangladesh's military-backed government has arrested an estimated 12,000 people without charge and confined them to overcrowded prisons. Human Rights Watch reports "well-documented patterns of torture and mistreatment of detainees." The government has cancelled plans for a December election over the objections of the two main political parties, whose leaders have also been in and out of jail.

None of this has deterred the bank from going forward with a $200 million "transitional support credit," which it says the government needs to deal with rising commodity prices and last year's Cyclone Sidr. There is also a $120 million "power sector development policy credit" that will "support the government's overall power sector reform program." The bank justifies these loans partly on account of the "impressive economic and social gains" it claims Bangladesh has made, and partly because it thinks more money would actually help address the corruption problems.

For a reality check, the bank might have consulted its own experts. According to the bank's internal data on "governance indicators" in Bangladesh, measures of government effectiveness, political stability, "voice and accountability," regulatory quality and control of corruption all declined between 1998 and 2007. A report from Transparency International reaches similar judgments.

Under former President Paul Wolfowitz, the bank cancelled 14 road contracts in Bangladesh after evidence came to light of corrupt bidding. But with Mr. Wolfowitz gone, bank lending to the country under President Robert Zoellick has doubled in the past year alone, to $753 million.

Vietnam, too, has seen its cut of World Bank funds rise by more than $1 billion since 2004, to $4.1 billion this year. Mr. Zoellick is a particular fan of the country, having made Hanoi his first foreign port of call after coming to the bank last year. The bank's latest bequest consists of a $150 million budgetary support credit similar to the transitional credit given to Bangladesh. Another $170 million will go to something called the Northern Delta Transport Development Project.

This new cash is flowing despite a confidential 2007 report by the bank's anticorruption unit (INT) about two corrupt roads projects in Vietnam. In the $232 million Road Network Improvement Project -- which remains active today -- bank investigators found that "over one-half of the contracts reviewed were confirmed to have indicators of irregularities in contract procurement."

Bid-rigging, collusion and fraud also marked Vietnam's $110 million Second Rural Transport Project. This case is particularly striking because the precursor project, known as RTP1, had already been investigated by INT, which found the usual indicators of corruption. No matter. The bank is now moving ahead with RTP3, for an additional $106 million.

This corruption might be less objectionable if the projects had at least resulted in better roads for the poor. The INT found otherwise. "Inferior materials and little or no compaction gave the embankments little chance of surviving flood conditions," it reported about a road in Long An Province. In hilly Quang Binh province, "instances of poorly implemented drainage indicated poor supervision and testing regimes and/or possible corruption."

A bank spokesman says the latest Bangladesh loans will be "heavily focused on tackling critical and long-festering weaknesses in core governance functions," and there are the usual anticorruption bells and whistles in the Vietnam projects. That is what the bank always says. The problem is that it also always resumes lending, regardless of the track record, so the borrowing countries know there is no penalty for misusing bank money.

A year into his tenure, Mr. Zoellick has yet to suspend a single loan on account of corruption.

World Bank Shots on Corruption - WSJ.com

__________________
No individual can plan his own existence in their view.

So the state planners must arrogate to themselves the right to manipulate any sector of the economic system if the good of “society” or the “general welfare” is paramount.

Ipso- if the rights of the individual get in the way, the rights of the individual must be sublimated.

The Road to Serfdom
FA Hayek (interpretation)


Mortgage Backed Security survivor

Its hardly surprising. The WB and IMF were created by the rich nations to help develop the poor nations. But the rich only got richer and now we have even more poor starving people on the planet than in all of human history.

The WB/IMF loans have never brought a nation out of poverty, they have forced nations to privatize healthcare, education, and other government services, and open up their resources to foreign investment. This has created only a native elite who are willing to fuck over their fellow countrymen for a few dollars while the cost of living for the poor has skyrocketed. Meanwhile, it is the massive multinats who get the contracts and literally rape the poor countries and transfer most of the wealth to american and european banks.

Yet they still operate under this same model to this very moment. Thank to a religious fanatical belief in the philosophies of Milton Friedman.

Andrew

__________________
Ethanol is a fabulous solution to our energy dilemma because it will provide more fuel for us to drive around and look for food.

-- Unknown

in this we agree, though freidman isn't here to defend himself. He wouldnt agree on the way they are going about it I think.

__________________
No individual can plan his own existence in their view.

So the state planners must arrogate to themselves the right to manipulate any sector of the economic system if the good of “society” or the “general welfare” is paramount.

Ipso- if the rights of the individual get in the way, the rights of the individual must be sublimated.

The Road to Serfdom
FA Hayek (interpretation)


Mortgage Backed Security survivor

I agree with that. He can't be blamed for their zealotry.

So what do we do now? If neo-liberal economics is all but dead, what other economic model will replace it?

There are some indications that many poor countries are turning to China for lessons on how to come out of poverty. Interesting to see how that pans out.

Andrew

__________________
Ethanol is a fabulous solution to our energy dilemma because it will provide more fuel for us to drive around and look for food.

-- Unknown

An interesting book I read called ;“white mans burden “ basically took this all to task. The author had spent years trying to fit the round peg in the square hole. His answer in short- is to fund on the ground entrepreneurship, leaving it to the locals, and NOT the local government. Our models on a basic scale work but we insist on treating everyone and everything on a one sizes fits all basis, which results in much waste and corruption.

He had many interesting charts etc. re: money we have spent as results accrued, it doesn’t work, if we had extended for instance small biz loans on our own to the locals they would have reaped as a people far more benefits than shoveling money towards the governments in the top down fashion we do.

__________________
No individual can plan his own existence in their view.

So the state planners must arrogate to themselves the right to manipulate any sector of the economic system if the good of “society” or the “general welfare” is paramount.

Ipso- if the rights of the individual get in the way, the rights of the individual must be sublimated.

The Road to Serfdom
FA Hayek (interpretation)


Mortgage Backed Security survivor