Why People Hate the World Bank, But You Shouldn't

With a budget of over $20 billion, the World Bank is the largest aid organization. It's stated mission is to do good (unlike the IMF which is more geared toward government health instead of people health). So why, I always wondered, do protestors hate it so much? To me it was akin to the UN.

Yes, there are layers of bureaucratic red tape that infuriate even the most tolerant civil servants, and, yes, there are major reforms needed to provide for faster, more efficient deployment of peace keepers to stop genocide and human rights abuses, and, yes, it relies to much on American funding, but at its core it is a good force in the world.

So why hate the World Bank? Here were my thoughts:

1. It's presidential alumni list reads like a who's who of one-man destruction machines: John Jay McCloy, the Assistant Secretary of War during WWII who refused to bomb the railroads leading to Nazi concentration camps arguing they were outside the rang of U.S. bombers; Robert McNamara, (made infamous again in The Fog of War) who spent WWII advising General McArthur (one of the meanest, coldest sons of bitches since Emperor Nero) how to kill as many people as possible and whose coup de grace was the firebombing of Tokyo resulting in the deaths of 100,000 people; and newly minted President Paul Wolfowitz, incompetent Iraq War planner and winner of the one time only award, Grossest Use of Comb in a Michael Moore Documentary.
2. It's made up of 5 secretive "international financial intitutions" no one really understands or has ever heard of.
3. It advocates "the Washington Concensus," i.e. neo-liberal economic policies many blame for the gutting of Latin American economies in teh 1990s, the near destruciton of Russia in 1992, and the suppression of third world agricultural development.
4. It's prescriptions are too formulaic and does not take the particular personality of countries or the specific needs of its people into consideration.
5. It's truely terrible environmental record-- it pretty much ignored the issue until the mid-1990s.
   

All of those are honest and fair critisisms, but let me allow my SloganTron 2000 tell you why I think the World Bank is a problem: Throwing Bad Money After Bad.

As anyone working even peripherally on issues of global health will tell you that malaria is one of the tallest hurdles we face in the race to erradicate poverty. Infected adults cannot work or feed their children, and many die of dehydration. Infected children suffer the same symptoms-- vomiting, fever, diarrhea, headaches, kidney failure, seizures, mental confusion-- only worse. Many of them die, too.

And if you live on the planet Earth (and if you don't would you mind coming down here and lending a hand; we're really screwing things up), there is a 1 in 12 chance you will catch malaria. If you live outside the United States, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Canada, Greenland, Iceland, or Russia, your chances just nearly doubled. And if you are a child under the age of 5, your chances just multiplied by 9. Where is the World Bank?

Go to its website. As of this writing a big banner is advertising its latest effort to reduce malaria.

Frustratingly, the Independent is reporting today that less than half the money promised in one of those big, love-in announcements made a year ago, is actually going to malaria research. Then there's more bad news: for the 500 million people suffering from malaria, there was a permanent staff of 7. The worse news: they have all been fired.

I don't hate the World Bank, and I don't hold it responsible for every terrible disease and affliction; I wish it was better. I

We live in a world where the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has an endowment $10 billion larger than the World Bank budget. Maybe that's where we need to put our faith now, because mine is fading fast. And so are the chances for the 40% of the world population that lives in too comfortably with the legacy of malaria.