Upcoming Philadelphia World Bank/IMF Consulta
Calling all Philadelphia area anarchists, anti-authoritarians, anti-capitalists and anyone concerned about the IMF and World Bank.
Come to the
Wooden Shoe Saturday March 7th 5-7pm for an education about the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) and why we should protest them. The IMF and World Bank are planning to meet April 24-26th in Washington DC. There are already protests planned with the aim of disrupting those meetings. There will be someone here from Global Justice Action, the DC group organizing the logistics of the protest in April. After a presentation, there will be a discussion about what we, as Philadelphia-area residents can do to help with the larger strategy and what we hope to gain by doing so. Let's make this the start of something new and beautiful.
Wooden Shoe Books508 s. 5th Street
Philadelphia PA 19147
Wooden Shoe BooksEmail:
sabot@woodenshoebooks.com215-413-0999
Labels: Anarchists, Anti, Anti-Authoritarians, Anti-Capitalists, Debt, Democratic Alternative, Human Alternative, IMF, Philadelphia, World Bank
All talk and no action at G20 meeting
As expected. The party's gotten bigger with no real solution.
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THE weekend meeting of the Group of 20 (G20) did not yield any dramatic announcements or proposals to overcome the financial crisis. The verdict on the outcome was mixed. The outgoing Bush administration saw progress, others said the leaders avoided the thornier issues, yet others opined that the G20 reshaped global politics, while the London- based Economist declared that it was "not a bad weekend's work". But if anyone expected the leaders to come out with concrete initiatives for a quick fix to the global economic woes, they would have been seriously disappointed.
The nations, accounting for 85 per cent of global economy, produced no real road map or major details on solving the meltdown.
The G20, however, laid the blame for the problems that started with the subprime mortgage crisis in the United States last August on "policy makers, regulators and supervisors in some advanced countries (who) did not adequately appreciate and address the risk building up in financial markets".
The contagion has spread. The US is in recession as is the euro zone. In Asia, Singapore and Japan are in recession, technical or otherwise.
Much of the wealth created over decades, including in developing countries, has been destroyed by the meltdown, while major institutions and household names have been brought to their knees.
To be sure, no one expected the lame-duck US President George W. Bush, who chaired the meeting, to produce a sliver bullet to solve the problems that are rapidly spreading around the world.
It would be asking too much of the G20 leaders to resolve the financial problems in one day. Undoubtedly, they came to the table with their own expectations.
In the end, they issued a bland statement.
Many of the measures they outlined are being worked on or have been implemented by individual countries to tackle the crisis at home. What is needed is a global, coordinated approach to solving the crisis.
The leaders promised a "broader policy response" and to strive for a deal on the stalled Doha Round of trade talks by the end of the year. They also pledged not to raise any barriers to trade and investment.
But this is nothing new. The previous pledges on the stalled Doha Development Round have not been fulfilled and with the current meltdown in the global economy, trade takes a back seat to rescuing companies, bailing out banks and ensuring that sovereign nations do not go under.
The markets, fund managers, analysts and indeed the poorest of the poor were hoping for an immediate and powerful signal that would throw some light on the way forward out of the dark tunnel. There were no new measures or regulatory breakthroughs. But what they got was a promise of more meetings.
The leaders set out a work schedule for their finance ministers: a review of global accounting standards, colleges of supervisors for major global banks, new standards for credit rating agencies and ways to limit bankers' pay by tying it to companies' risk profiles.
The ministers are to complete their job by the end of March for another meeting of the leaders in April.
By then, Barack Obama will be the president of the US and the Czech Republic will hold the rotating European Union presidency, taking over from Nicolas Sarkozy of France.
The difference of this meeting is that for the first time some emerging and developing economies as well as some oil producers got a seat at the table.
The rapidly-declining state of the US and European economies and victors of World War 2 find themselves in a weakened economic and financial position.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown had lobbied Saudi Arabia and China to provide financial assistance to the Bretton Woods institutions.
The number of countries, including developed nations such as Iceland, going with bowl in hand to the multilateral institutions is putting greater pressure on the limited finances of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Indeed, the developed nations and their institutions are no longer the lenders of first and last resort.
They, in fact, are the borrowers and the lenders are the emerging economies and their sovereign wealth funds. There has been a clear shift away from dependence on Wall Street's financial supremacy and from the theories and remedies advocated by the World Bank and IMF.
The economic power has shifted from the Group of 7 (G7) most industrialised nations to a much larger and more diversified group of countries, including Asian nations.
According to Indian Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram: "The G7 has recognised belatedly that they alone don't have the solutions to all the problems.
"The G20 has come to stay as the single most important forum to address the financial and economic issues of the world. The G20 is a much better forum than the G7."
He described the Washington summit as "a good beginning", adding: "The emerging economies are happy."
The shift in economic and financial power cannot be ignored as leaders seek solutions to the crisis and develop a new financial architecture.
The developing countries may have been given a seat at the table but their long-term role in the global economy and in decision-making must be considered.
For a start, the G20 agreed to a seat for emerging market economies on the Financial Stability Forum, the group of financial regulators and central bankers charged with the technicalities of financial supervision, whose membership has been based on that of the G7.
In the medium term, developing countries will be offered more seats at the IMF and World Bank.
Even so, it must be remembered that talk of reforming the IMF has gone on for years without much headway being made. The devil is in the details.
In the end, many saw the meeting more of talk than action.
"This is plain-vanilla stuff they could have agreed on without holding a meeting," said Simon Johnson, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a former chief economist of the IMF. "What's new, except that this is the G20 instead of the G7?"
Labels: Emerging Economies, G20, G7, IMF, World Bank
Vote for the Next WB President
MONTREAL – May 31, 2007 –The Social Justice Committee is polling people via the internet for their input on who should be the next World Bank president.
The web page asks users to provide their choice for the new president, give their nationality, and promise to vote only once. The results of the poll will be sent to the Canadian Minister of Finance.
“My personal vote is for Stephen Lewis,” said SJC Director Derek MacCuish. “I think he suits the criteria the World Bank’s Executive Directors have just set out – which we hope they’ll follow. But there are certainly lots of other good candidates out there, and we want to find out who they are.
The poll will close June 15, when the World Bank’s Board of Governors will make the final decision on the nomination. Although the World Bank governors have always accepted the United States’ nominations in the past, the stated Canadian government’s policy is for a “transparent, merit-based” process (according to the most recent report to Parliament on World Bank and IMF issues). We expect the Minister will push for other nominees to be considered.
If it is serious about getting a candidate that meets their criteria of ‘leadership, management and government reform experience, a commitment to development and multilateral cooperation, and finally political objectivity and independence,’ the World Bank needs to reform the selection process. Reform recommendations made in April 2001 have been ignored.
“The US administration has lost too much credibility to make its appointment of Robert Zoellick unchallenged,” MacCuish said. “So if the World Bank won’t follow its own reform guidelines, it’s time to look for alternatives.”
People can register their choice for World Bank president at www.worldbankpresident.ca
Technorati Tags: WorldBank, Vote and President.
Labels: President, Vote, World Bank
Urgent Appeal Against G8 Demo Ban
Last year, the World Bank and IMF chose Singapore as the venue for the meetings knowing that the country has little tolerance for demonstrations. This time, Germany follows suit.
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- G8: Urgent appeal lodged against demonstration ban. If necessary, the ’star-march’ coalition plan to take matters all the way to the federal courts.
- G8 countries’ foreign policies are given as the reason for the “police emergency”.
Press Release May 18th 2007 [Gipfelsoli Infogruppe | International Press Group]
All demonstrations in the vicinity of Heiligendamm have been prohibited under a General Ban issued by the German Office for Association. The grounds behind the fence and a 4 kilometre area around the perimetre of the fence fall under the ban. With this ban, the protests are to be held at a 6 kilometre distance.The planned ’star march’ is one of the initiatives that is affected by these measures. With the motto, ‘taking the protest to Heiligendamm’, the star march is intended to end with a closing rally in Heiligendamm. Today, the star march coalition is lodging an urgent appeal against the ruling. A decision is expected at the end of next week. “If necessary, we will have our right to protest confirmed by the federal courts”, a speaker for the star march coalition said. The prohibited area stretches from the camp in Reddelich almost all the way to the camp in Wichmannsdorf. A speaker of the BAO “Kavala” has declared that a congregation of 3 people within this area is illegal under the ruling. “This means that we can’t even leave the camp in groups of 3 and walk next to one another without the police breaking us up”, says a camp participant of the WomenLesbianTransgender Network. The rationale for the ban, according to “Kavala”, lies with the foreign policies of the G8 countries. A “latent threat situation” exists for the representatives of the G8 countries because of the wars in “Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Palestine”. Even the German Government is perceived as endangered, because of its “increasing engagement in conflict regions”. What is meant is the war in Afghanistan.
Hanne Jobst of the Gipfelsoli Infogruppe finds this reasoning absurd: “Protest is forbidden because it would have negative effects for foreign decision-makers. The G8 makes decisions that affect the lives of millions of people every day, without the legitimacy to do so, yet inthe opinion of the police, the G8 should not have to be subjected to these people’s anger”.
Even popstar Herbert Groenemeyer has to admit this: “There is real anger”, he explained in the German newspaper ‘taz’ the day before yesterday.
Conicidentally, this week in Scotland, charges against five activists who were arrested and detained on their way to a closing demonstration at the conference hotel in Gleneagles during the 2005 G8 summit, were dropped. “As always during summit protests the police use arbitrary and often illegal measures to prevent protest from reaching those it seeks to criticise”, Gerda Achterhuis of the Dutch Dissent network argues.
“The move to ban the demonstration does not surprise us. However, we will not let ourselves be intimidated and will continue to mobilise for the star march and all other actions against the G8 meeting.”
Gipfelsoli Infogruppe: +49 0160 95314023
International Press Group: +49 160 92437902
Background:
Public statement of the police department Rostock (detailed justification for the ban, 23 pages)
Technorati Tags: G8, Appeal, Protest, Ban, Dissent and Oppress.
Labels: Appeal, Dissent, G8, Oppress, Protest, World Bank
Wolfowitz Quits
A very accurate article, Wolfowitz simplified. Good riddance.
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Paul Wolfowitz, master mind of the Iraq War, left his post as U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary, after he got the destruction of Iraq that he and his Ziocon conspirators wanted. Bush then handed him the job of president of the World Bank where he and others thought he would advance the bank's debt and exploitation of the third world. But a man who cannot control his own sex urges cannot be expected manage the coffers of the Global Corporate Empire. His "resignation" and the chaotic struggle within the World Bank comes as one more piece of evidence that the empire is in crisis.
The hatred his World Bank colleagues quickly developed for him turned into an internicine, capitalist battle that left Wolfowitz vulnerable. When he was first trapped with his corruption, he pouted, a pathetic sullen figure - complaining that a "smear campaign" was being executed against him. Then he turned rabid against his colleagues at the World Bank, "If they fuck with me or Shaha, I have enough on them to fuck them too." Finally, today, he was cornered and this Bush-backed rat caved in and resigned. Bush was quoted in the news today saying, "I'm sorry it turned out this way".
Tonight, U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson attempted to defend him on the PBS Jim Lehrer show. A stumbling, fumbling Paulson side-stepped every question asked him by Jim Lehrer, knowing full-well that Wolfowitz stood naked and without a credible defense. In a last desperate attempt to salvage something-Wolfowitz, Paulson told Lehrer that Wolfowitz "planted seeds" in Africa that will bear fruit in the future, attempting to depict him as a humanitarian. If Paul Wolfowitz planted any seeds in Africa during his brief tenure, they will only produce more enslaving third-world debt for which the Bank is now well-known.
In his career death-throes, Wolfowitz used the U.S. government to leverage a few face-saving words on his behalf and no doubt he will leave with money in his pocket. But Paul Wolfowitz will always be known for the millions of lives he has destroyed in Iraq and the destruction he has wrought in the Middle East and throughout the world. He thought his escape from the Iraqi War was clean, leaving the failure in the lap of George Walker Bush. But oh how the mighty are fallen. We share the knowledge with millions of others that the natural order of things and the new world revolution has brought down this enemy of the people. But the real reason Wolfowitz was canned is much deeper than his tawdry sex life. One has to look at the corruption and international exploitation of the World Bank to understand.
Technorati Tags: WorldBank, Wolfowitz and Quits.
Labels: Paul Wolfowitz, Quits, World Bank
Democrats Urge Bush to End World Bank Crisis
Senior U.S. Democrats urged President George W. Bush to step in to end the "historic crisis" over Paul Wolfowitz's World Bank leadership as pressure mounted for him to resign to avoid a possible divisive vote.
The World Bank's 24-nation board of member countries is set to meet on Friday to decide Wolfowitz's fate over a controversial pay and promotion deal that he approved in 2005 for his companion, bank Middle East expert Shaha Riza.
The board is divided. European countries are pushing for Wolfowitz to step down and the United States is shoring up support for him among a clutch of allies like Canada and a few Asian and African countries.
In a letter to Bush, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Democratic Sens. Patty Murray, Richard Durbin and Charles Schumer warned that the crisis was damaging the institution and undermining U.S. interests, especially its traditional role in choosing the bank's president.
"We urge you to take decisive action quickly to bring this crisis to a close," they told Bush, echoing concerns expressed by other prominent Democrats, including presidential candidates Bill Richardson and John Edwards.
The Democratic senators said the bank's board may be compelled to take an unprecedented step and vote on Wolfowitz's fate.
There are no rules for the dismissal of a World Bank chief because it has never happened in the bank's 62-year history and could either be put to a vote or decided by consensus.
"We do not believe the bank's mission or U.S. interests would be advanced by such a vote," the senators wrote.
They questioned the manner in which the crisis had been handled and in part blamed Wolfowitz, who has always been controversial because of his leading role in the Iraq war.
"The current situation is complex and unfortunately may be fueled in part by views toward Mr Wolfowitz unrelated to his tenure at the bank," the senators said.
"At the same time, it is likely that, at least by adding to confusion about the facts, Mr Wolfowitz played a role in aggravating the crisis."
The furore has paralysed the World Bank for more than a month since leaked documents emerged over Wolfowitz's handling of Riza's high-paying promotion. That unleashed widespread anger among bank staff and prompted an inquiry.
The bank's employee association said the institution's credibility depended on how the crisis was resolved.
The White House, which had previously deferred questions over the Wolfowitz matter to the U.S. Treasury, insisted on Wednesday it was not "hanging Paul Wolfowitz out to dry" and that he had the Bush administration's strong support.
"We still support him fully," White House spokesman Tony Snow told reporters on board Air Force One as he flew with Bush to visit parts of Kansas devastated by tornadoes last week.
The Treasury is officially responsible for U.S. World Bank policy, but Wolfowitz is strongly identified with the White House as an architect of the American-led invasion of Iraq.
Both the White House and the Treasury have urged that Wolfowitz be given time to properly explain his actions.
Wolfowitz had until the close of business Wednesday to respond to findings in a 600-page report by a bank panel that concluded his conduct over the promotion broke rules and represented a conflict of interest.
Meanwhile, Germany, which heads the World Bank board, said it had called for Wolfowitz to step down.
Karin Kortmann, a state secretary for German development ministry, said Minister Heidemarie Wiezorek-Zeul told Wolfowitz during meetings of the World Bank in April she was worried about the bank and urged him to quit.
"She made it clear to (Wolfowitz) that his voluntary resignation was the best solution for the bank and its goals," Kortmann told lawmakers in the German parliament.
Kortmann said Germany was not looking for a confrontation with the United States and that pushing through any solution against Washington's wishes would be difficult.
"The United States should rather be given room to react to the current leadership crisis in the bank," Kortmann added.
Technorati Tags: Democrats, Bush, WorldBank and Wolfowitz.
Labels: Bush, Democrats, Paul Wolfowitz, World Bank
Venezuela says NO to IMF and WB
The
best May Day present ever
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VENEZUELAN President Hugo Chavez has announced Venezuela will quit the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
The practical impact of the move is unclear. But withdrawing from the world's two premier financial institutions, which have been associated since World War II with US economic policies, would send a powerful political statement.
It also might embolden activists throughout the world who are opposed to privatisation and fiscal austerity, two courses that the institutions often require of economically troubled nations.
It was unclear how much money the World Bank and the IMF would have to hand over to Caracas.
Venezuela's share of the IMF is worth $US3.9 billion, though it wasn't known whether the IMF would be expected to pay Venezuela that much when its membership is terminated.
In a defiant speech yesterday, Mr Chavez demanded that the World Bank pay oil-rich Venezuela its contributions. "Now it is they that owe us," he said.
There was no reaction from either organisation today, but the US State Department said Mr Chavez was only digging a deeper hole for his people.
"Look, you can't take the shovel out of the man's hand," said spokesman Sean McCormack. "He just keeps on digging. So, and sadly, it's the Venezuelan people who are victimized by this."
The World Bank and the IMF were established near the end of World War II to help rebuild war damage.
The World Bank helps countries finance development projects, while the IMF tries to ensure orderly world trade by regulating exchange rates and providing assistance to countries unable to pay their debts.
Traditionally, the World Bank is led by an American, and the IMF head is a European.
In recent years, both organisations have refrained from criticising Mr Chavez's economic policies, including re-nationalisations of the oil and telecommunications industry, in hopes of quietly persuading his government to stick with more market-friendly policies.
The latest World Economic Outlook, the IMF's assessment of the world economy, barely mentioned Venezuela when it was issued a month ago.
No IMF mission has visited Venezuela since 2004, though Anoop Singh, the IMF's top Latin American official, told reporters last month that the IMF hoped to send a mission to Caracas to discuss inflation control later this year.
Nations rarely walk away from the IMF or the World Bank. One of the last to do so was Cuba, in 1964.
Liliana Rojas-Suarez, a former IMF official now with the Washington-based Center for Global Development think tank, said Chavez's move is consistent with his vision of creating a system independent of US influence.
"This is definitely political and consistent with Chavez's strategy," she said, pointing out that Mr Chavez is founding a new Bank for the South, which would play a role similar to the World Bank but under Latin American control.
Venezuela has bought more than $US3 billion in Argentine bonds, allowing Argentina to pay off the IMF.
Mr Chavez also has pledged money to Ecuador so that the Andean nation can reduce its debt to both institutions.
Last month, Venezuela finished paying off its debts, and the IMF closed its office in Caracas last year.
Technorati Tags: Venezuela, IMF and WB.
Labels: IMF, Venezuela, World Bank
The Real Scandal At The World Bank
The Real Scandal At The World Bank
The Bank is Killing Thousands of the Poorest People in The Worldby Johann Hari
While the world’s press has been fixated on the teeny-weeny scandal over whether the World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz helped to get his girlfriend a $300,000-a-year gig next door, they have been ignoring the rancid stench of a far bigger scandal wafting from Wolfie’s Washington offices.
This slo-mo scandal isn’t about apparent petty corruption in DC. It’s about how Wolfowitz’s World Bank is killing thousands of the poorest people in the world, and knowingly worsening our worst crisis - global warming - every day.
Let’s start with the victims. Meet Hawa Amadu, 70-something, living in the muddy slums of Accra, the capital of Ghana, and trying to raise her grandkids as best she can. Hawa has a problem - a massive problem - and the World Bank put it there.
She can’t afford water or electricity any more. Why? The World Bank threatened to refuse to lend any more money to her government, which would effectively make it a leper to governmental donors and international business, unless it stopped subsidising the cost of these necessities. The subsidies stopped. The cost doubled. Now Hawa goes thirsty so her grandchildren can drink, and weeps: “Am I supposed to drink air?”She is not alone. Half a world away, in Bolivia, Maxima Cari - a mother - is also thirsty. “The World Bank took away my right to clean water,” she explains. In 1997 the World Bank demanded the Bolivian government privatise the country’s water supply. So Maxima couldn’t afford it any more. Now she has to use dirty water from a well her villagers dug. This dirty water is making her children sick, and she is sullen. “I wash my children weekly,” Maxima says. “Sometimes there’s only enough water to wash their hands and faces, not their whole body … This is not a nice way to live.” The newly elected socialist government of Evo Morales is planning to take the water back - and he is, of course, condemned and threatened by the World Bank.
Meet some more victims. I have met hundreds, from Africa to Latin America to the Middle East. Muracin Claircin is a rice farmer in Haiti - only he can’t grow rice any more. In 1995, the World Bank demanded Haiti drop all restrictions on imports. The country was immediately flooded with rice from the US, which has been lavishly subsidised by the US government. The Haitian government barely exists and can’t offer rival subsidies anyway: the World Bank forbids it. So now Muracin is jobless and his family are starving.
Some 5,000 miles away, Charles Avaala in Ghana is watching his tomatoes rot. He used to grow them for a government-owned community tomato cannery that provided employment for his entire community. The World Bank ordered his government to close it down, and to open the country’s markets to international competition. Now he can’t compete with the subsidy-fattened tomatoes from Europe. He, too, is starving.
How would Hawa and Maxima and Muracin and Charles feel if you told them none of this is considered a scandal, but business as usual?
These victims are not merely an anecdote soup; they are an accurate summary of the World Bank’s effect on the poor. Don’t take my word for it. The World Bank’s own Independent Evaluation Group just found that barely one in ten of its borrowers experienced persistent growth between 1995 and 2005 - a much smaller proportion than those who stagnated or slid deeper into poverty. The bank’s own former chief economist, Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz, says this approach “has condemned people to death… They don’t care if people live or die.”
Why? Why would a body that claims to help the poor actually thrash them? Because its mission to end poverty has always been mythical. As George Monbiot explains in his book The Age of Consent, the World Bank was created in the 1940s by US economist Henry Dexter White to be a further projection of US power. The bank’s head is invariably American, the bank is based in Washington, and the US has a permanent veto on policies. It does not promote a sensible mix of markets and state action - the real path to development. No: the World Bank pursues the interests of US corporations over the poor, every time.
The bank’s staff salve their consciences by pickling themselves in an ideology - neoliberalism - that says there is never a conflict between business rights and human rights. If it’s good for Shell, it must be good for poor people - right?
This ideology also backfires on us in the rich world. In 2000, the World Bank was finally forced to undertake a review of its energy policies. It did its best to rig it, putting the former energy minister of the corporation-licking Indonesian dictator General Suharto in charge. Emil Salim was even serving on the board of a coal company at the time he was appointed. But - to everyone’s astonishment - Salim concluded by opposing the carbon-pumping oil and gas projects that make up 94 per cent of all the bank’s energy projects. He said they should be stopped altogether by 2008.
The bank’s response? It ignored its own report and carried on warming. The business climate, it seems, trumps the actual climate. Feel the heat.
While the elites huff and puff about Wolfowitz’s alleged small corruption and ignore his organisation’s proven immense corruption, there is something we - ordinary citizens - can do. In the summer of 2001, at the global justice protests in Genoa, I met Dennis Brutus, a former inmate of Robben Island prison alongside Nelson Mandela. He had been repelled by the bank’s actions in South Africa, and started his protests against them by asking a very basic question: who owns the World Bank? It turns out we do. Ordinary people in the West - through their trade unions, churches, town councils, universities and private investments - own it. The bank raises nearly all its funds by issuing bonds on the private market. They are often held by socially minded institutions, the kind who signed up to Make Poverty History. So, Brutus realised, we have a simple power: to sell the bonds and bankrupt the World Bank. “We need to break the power of the World Bank over developing countries just as the disinvestment movement helped break the power of the apartheid regime in South Africa,” he explained.
The campaign to make World Bank bonds as untouchable as apartheid-era investments has already begun. The cities of San Francisco, Boulder, Oakland and Berkeley have sold theirs. Several US unions have also joined. Even this small ripple has caused anxiety within the bank about the threat to its “AAA” bond rating.
In the Genoa sun, as tear gas fired by the Italian police hissed in the background, Brutus told me: “I lived to see the death of political apartheid. Now I want to live to see the end of global financial apartheid.”
This is the fight we should join. Not some petty squabble over which Washington technocrat is morally pure enough to lead the forces of subsidy-slashing and starvation.Technorati Tags: WorldBank, PaulWolfowitz and .
Labels: Global Warming, Paul Wolfowitz, World Bank
Wolfowitz Struggles to remain as WB President
Petition to sack Wolfowitz here! Paul D. Wolfowitz’s struggle to remain as president of the World Bank was dealt a setback on Sunday when a group of two dozen of the world’s finance ministers and leaders of other international organizations delivered an unusually public rebuke of his leadership, expressing “great concern” about the institution’s future and the need to preserve its credibility and the morale of its staff.
Mr. Wolfowitz, responding at a news conference, vowed to stay on at the bank, however, saying that he too cared about the bank’s ethical standards. “Look, I believe in the mission of this organization, and I believe I can carry it out,” he said.
The extraordinary exchange between Mr. Wolfowitz and the ministers and officials on a global committee that oversees both the bank and the International Monetary Fund, deepened the uncertainty over Mr. Wolfowitz’s future, which was thrown into doubt by the disclosure that he played a direct role in granting a pay raise and promotion to a female companion when she was transferred in 2005.
The events of the day, in which top officials took time out from discussing issues like poverty, set up a clear impasse between Mr. Wolfowitz and the leadership of the bank, as represented by what seemed to be most of the world’s finance ministers and most of the members of a separate 24-member executive board that governs its day-to-day affairs.
The rebuke of Mr. Wolfowitz came in the form of bureaucratic language in a series of sentences in the board’s communiqué that asserted “the current situation is of great concern to all of us,” an unusually blunt statement for a circumspect institution.
“We have to ensure that the bank can effectively carry out its mandate and maintain its credibility and reputation as well as the motivation of its staff,” the committee said. “We expect the bank to adhere to a high standard of internal governance.”
Though the language was indirect, the message it sent was unmistakable, according to officials who have been meeting in Washington the last few days. “Words like ‘concerned,’ ‘credibility’ and ‘reputation’ are pretty unprecedented for a communiqué from a place like the World Bank,” said an official involved in the drafting of the statement.
At issue in these statements was a crisis arising from
Mr. Wolfowitz’s involvement in decisions to transfer his companion, Shaha Ali Riza, to a new job and give her a raise.
Officially, Mr. Wolfowitz and the bank are now to wait for a full report by the bank’s board on his leadership and charges of favoritism in dealing with Ms. Riza, who was employed at the bank until 2005. But bank officials said that in delaying a finding on the matter, the board seemed to be buying time for Mr. Wolfowitz to consider resigning.European officials close to the bank said that if anything, Mr. Wolfowitz’s apparent dismissal of the criticism on Sunday would increase the determination of the wealthy European donor nations of the bank especially Britain, France and Germany that he needed to step aside for the good of the bank.
Several European officials said their concern now was that Mr. Wolfowitz would not be able to carry out the job of raising $30 billion over the next three years for the International Development Agency, the arm of the bank that provides low-cost loans and assistance to the world’s poorest countries.
Mr. Wolfowitz signaled that raising the $30 billion was already a major challenge over the last year, not because of recent events. “The donors are now unfortunately in a position of not fulfilling their promises,” he said. Concerns about the future of this money were conveyed during the weekend to Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., European officials said.
“This was a point conveyed in several meetings,” said a bank official. “I think Paulson knows this.”
Late Sunday, a Treasury spokeswoman, Brookly McLaughlin, said Mr. Paulson “is counseling all parties to allow the process to proceed in a fair and respectful manner.”
Mr. Wolfowitz’s comments came after a top steering committee of the bank and the International Monetary Fund declared that “the current situation is of great concern to all of us.”
“We have to ensure that the bank can effectively carry out its mandate and maintain its credibility and reputation as well as the motivation of its staff,” the committee said. “We expect the bank to adhere to a high standard of internal governance.”
Bank officials and others close to the executive board said they hoped that Mr. Paulson, who they said mostly listened to complaints about Mr. Wolfowitz over the past three days and counseled patience on his future, would play a crucial role in persuading him to step down eventually.
A senior European official in the meetings said this was possible because Mr. Paulson went along with a communiqué that criticized Mr. Wolfowitz.
By all accounts, Mr. Wolfowitz spent the weekend churning through meetings with a determination to project confidence that he could weather the crisis.
“I think he has just wanted to tough it out,” said a bank official who watched him. “He’s clearly hoping that once everyone leaves town, he can go on and that all this will fade away. That has not happened and it is not going to happen.”
Mr. Wolfowitz made his public comments about intending to stay on at a news conference with Rodrigo de Rato, the head of the International Monetary Fund, and the chairman of the steering committee, Agustín Carstens, the finance minister of Mexico.
Each time he tried to steer the discussion into the importance of eradicating poverty in Africa and elsewhere, he was brought back to questions about whether he could lead an institution that, fairly or not, was in virtual revolt against him.In response, Mr. Wolfowitz said that he agreed with the communique’s conclusion that the integrity of the bank was important and that he, like the bank’s policy supervisors, would await the conclusions of the bank board.
“The board is looking into the matter, and we’ll let them complete their work,” he said with a pained smile.
An earlier indication of Mr. Wolfowitz’s defiant approach came Saturday night, when he sent an e-mail message to World Bank employees with a link to selected documents that came to light on Friday relating to his handling of the case of Ms. Riza.
The documents he referred to showed that Mr. Wolfowitz had wanted to remove himself from handling Ms. Riza’s transfer and raise but was forced to make the arrangements himself because top lawyers and ethics officials at the bank said they did not want to get involved.
The e-mail seemed to increase the anger on the bank board and staff. A top official involved in the board meetings, which occurred on and off throughout the weekend, said, “It has backfired.”
That was also the view of others who more bluntly have called for Mr. Wolfowitz’s dismissal.
“We have not heard anything that will change our minds,” said April Cave, chairwoman of the association that represents most of the bank’s 7,000 employees in Washington. “He has apologized, but he hasn’t shown how he can restore trust at the bank.”
Some bank officials said that as a practical matter, Mr. Wolfowitz’s future may be decided by a complicated interplay of Bush administration and European politics.
The antipathy to his leadership is especially high in Britain, France and Germany, they said. The British chancellor of the exchequer, Gordon Brown, who is expected to succeed Tony Blair as prime minister as early as this summer, is under pressure from his own political base to stand up to the United States more than Mr. Blair has.
Technorati Tags: WorldBank and PaulWolfowitz.
Labels: Paul Wolfowitz, World Bank
Illegitimate Debt in D.C. and the Democratic Republic of the Congo
This Saturday, on the occasion of the IMF / World Bank Spring Meetings, join us for a evening of film and discussion!
When: April 14th, 5:00-7:00pm
Where: GWU Campus, Elliot School of International Affairs
1957 E Street NW, Lidner Family Commons Suite 602
Who: *Jean-Louis Peta Ikambana*
American Friends Service Committee
* Charles Lowery*
Center for Responsible Lending
Film: * Congo's Tin Miners*
*What are the origins of the debt regimes in Washington, DC and the Democratic Republic of the Congo?
* How is the debt crisis in Congo linked to the crisis of predatory lending in low-income communities and communities of color in the U.S?
*What are the economic and political consequences of debt and how has debt played a role in systematic impoverishment?
*Who are the players and who has the power?
*How are the communities affected fighting back?
Sponsors: Friends of the Congo, Mobilization for Global Justice, Africa Action, 50 Years Is Enough, Washington Peace Center, TransAfrica Forum, Jubilee USA, Coalition of Pluralists and Congolese Patriots.
Technorati Tags: IllegitimateDebt, IMF, WorldBank and SpringMeeting.
Labels: Illegitimate Debt, IMF, SpringMeeting, World Bank
