Dismal anniversary greetings go out to World Bank
By Jacquie Calnan
The 50th anniversary of the founding of the World Bank and
International Monetary Fund (IMF) is not a golden one.
These international agencies are supported by U.S. tax dollars,
and yet few taxpayers realize that policies of the Bank and the
Fund are not only harming the environment and the poor of
developing countries, but American workers as well.
A new report by the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) and the 50
Years Is Enough Campaign reveals that the policies of the World
Bank and IMF are responsible for the loss of over 20,000 American
jobs a year.
The World Bank and IMF frequently impose free market economic
policies called "structural adjustment programs" on indebted
countries as a condition for receiving aid. These programs can
include cuts in social spending in areas such as health and
education, the elimination of price supports and imposition of wage
controls, currency devaluation and trade liberalization. These
conditions cut the purchasing power of consumers while making U.S
imports more expensive.
Of the 54 countries that received major World Bank and IMF
policy-based loans in the 1980s, 33 reduced their imports of U.S.
goods and cost American jobs, according to the IPS-50 Years Is
Enough study.
So not only have structural adjustment programs bred illiteracy,
malnutrition, disintegration of economies, environmental
degradation and death in Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia
 they have also dealt a blow to the U.S. labor force.
This is one of the "boomerang effects" in which the heavy debt
burden of poor countries hits Americans. There are others. Global
warming has intensified because of accelerated harvesting of rain
forests for timber as countries seek ways to earn hard currency for
their debt payments. Cocaine traffic has increased as growing coca
becomes one of the very few options for survival of peasants in
Columbia, Bolivia and Peru, while governments seeking dollars look
the other way. The ranks of those seeking to emigrate to the United
States and other rich countries swell as thousands seek to escape
the dire economic conditions by the structural adjustment programs
in their countries.
The irony is that poor countries have actually provided the rich
countries with much more money in debt payments than the rich
countries have given to the poor countries in aid.
The World Bank continues to fund large, flashy mega-projects
such as roads, dams and power plants that have devastating social
and environmental consequences, including the forced displacement
of millions of people. This type of lending does more to line the
pockets of the elite than fill the stomachs of the poor.
The World Bank and IMF have wandered far from their original
mandates and have taken upon themselves vast powers which they are
unwilling to give up. Today they are massive, bloated institutions
operating in secret and paying little regard to the impact of their
programs on the poor of the countries they are supposed to be
helping. These multilateral institutions are untouchable by
national laws and claim to operate outside the realm of
international laws.
It is time for profound change in the World Bank and IMF. They
need to be smaller, decentralized, democratically run and based on
the principles of openness and accountability. Poverty reduction
and ecological sustainability should become the centerpiece of
their operations at every level.
Such reforms will come only through sustained public pressure
and a refusal to continue funding the World Bank and IMF with
American tax dollars until new standards are met. Congress has made
a start by imposing conditions of reform on the release of some of
its 1995 budget appropriations for the Bank and the Fund. This
financial tourniquet must be tightened until the hemorrhaging of
dollars into programs which hurt us all is stopped.
Americans need to tell Congress and the Administration that "50
Years Is Enough!" To request an information packet containing
suggested messages to Congress and the Administration, position
papers, action ideas and/or other resources, contact the 50 Year Is
Enough Campaign at (202) 463-2265 or write to the Campaign at Suite
300, 1025 Vermont Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005.
Calnan is media director of the U.S. 50 Years Is Enough
campaign, a coalition of more than 100 citizen groups working to
bring substantial reform to the World Bank and IMF.