World Bank and IMF - Yay or Nay

Great Debates
1

Hello all, long time lurker, first time poster.

So - the World Bank and the IMF - do these organizations really go good for the world or are they evil?

I’m in the process of completing my MBA and the World Bank is one of my top choices of employment. It stems from a somewhat naive opiniont that the WB does some good in the World and I would like to contribute my skills to improving the welfare of the poor in the world.

I’m getting the usual reactions - what? World Bank is a terrible orgnaization trying to spread American capitalism and actually hurts the countries ir is trying to help.

Is there any vailidity to these negative opinions or are they merely rabid left wing shouts.

I’d like to get a good debate going ont he World Bank to help me in my research and also decide whether it is good or bad.

I wasn’t sure where to look so I came to the most informed people in the online world - you guys.

Thanks for your help …

MM

2

The WB and IMF catch all this flack because they are committed to enforcing the economic doctrines of neoliberalism, in brief:

  1. All Third World countries must drop all barriers to trade with the industrialized countries. (This simplifies exploitation of their resources, as well as the outsourcing of factories and jobs from the G-8 countries to places with cheaper labor and weaker environmental regulations – protection of workers and the environment not being included in these “neoliberal” policies.)

  2. All Third World countries must keep up payments on their debts to the industrialized countries, the WB, and/or the IMF, no matter how that affects their domestic economies.

  3. All Third World countries must Privatize Everything, Commercialize Everything, and roll back any socialist or socialist-tending policies they have enacted since they became independent.

Does this hurt the countries they are “trying to help”? Perhaps in the long run it will aid their economic development. But in the short run, yeah, it’s really hurting – them and us. We Americans lose good manufacturing jobs, Indonesians get to make Nikes in sweatshops, and everybody’s planet gets more polluted. Only the multinational corporations are really benefitting from this arrangement.