The IMF versus the Arab spring | Austin Mackell. In the midst of the media storm surrounding IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn last week, my feelings were perfectly expressed in a tweet by Paul Kingsnorth: "Could someone please arrest the head of the IMF for screwing the poor for 60 years? " Without diminishing the seriousness of the sexual allegations against Strauss-Kahn, the role of the IMF, over past decades and at present, is a far bigger story.
Of particular importance is its role at this crucial moment in the Middle East. The new loans being negotiated for Egypt and Tunisia will lock both countries into long-term economic strategies even before the first post-revolution elections have been held. Given the IMF's history, we should expect these to have devastating consequences on the Egyptian and Tunisian people. You wouldn't guess it though, from the scant and largely fawning coverage the negotiations have so far received. The pattern is to depict the IMF like a rich uncle showing up to save the day for some wayward child. IFIwatchnet. The Daily Star Web Edition Vol. 5 Num 329, 5/1/05 - JS body okays bill for blanket WB immunity. JS body okays bill for blanket WB immunityParliament may pass the controversial bill this monthShakhawat Liton The parliament is likely to pass this month the much-talked-about bill proposing blanket immunity to the World Bank (WB) in Bangladesh, after a parliamentary watchdog yesterday okayed the bill amid strong opposition protest.
The representative of the main opposition Awami League (AL) in the parliamentary standing committee on finance ministry gave a note of dissent and walked out of the meeting while the parliamentary panel was scrutinising the bill, terming it a violation of the constitution and democracy The committee later finalised the bill without bringing major changes and is to submit a report recommending its passage in the next parliament session slated for May 12, meeting sources said. Once passed, the bill will put the Bretton Woods institution beyond any legal action, a privilege the multilateral lending agency enjoys in no other country of operations.
Guardian Unlimited | Columnists | George Monbiot: Why Wolfowitz is right for the World Bank. It's about as close to consensus as the left is ever likely to come. Everyone this side of Atilla the Hun and the Wall Street Journal agrees that Paul Wolfowitz's appointment as president of the World Bank is a catastrophe. Except me.
Under Wolfowitz, my fellow progressives lament, the World Bank will work for America. If only someone else were chosen, it would work for the world's poor. The World Bank and the IMF were conceived by the US economist Harry Dexter White. Both the undemocratic voting arrangement and the US veto remain to this day. At the time, no one doubted that these bodies were designed as instruments of US economic policy, but all this has been airbrushed from history. From the perspective of the world's poor, there has never been a good president of the World Bank. It was he who argued that the bank should not fund land reform because it "would affect the power base of the traditional elite groups".
Wolfowitz's appointment is a good thing for three reasons. Bretton Woods Project.