The problem it seems to me is that the bank needs to see results and fast. In the pursuit of growth, the pursuit of equity takes a back seat.

I blogged about this new report here:
http://mesocosm.blogspot.com/2006/12/does-india-need-world-bank.html

The only times “poor” people/nations will receive any meaningful assistance from the World Bank and other such agencies will be WHEN THOSE AGENCIES CAN BE CERTAIN OF MAKING A PROFIT DOING SO.

Any organization with “bank” in their title is interested in ONE THING - PROFIT. Better yet… BIG PROFIT with LITTLE OR NO RISK. Even better… CONSISTENTLY OBSCENE LEVELS OF HUGE PROFITS, year after year after year WITHOUT FAIL.

Guess where all this money comes from? (If you guessed it comes from the RICH, you need your head examined.) Of course… it’s scammed from the POOREST. One way or another, the powerless guy at the bottom of the financial totem pole WILL GET SCREWED. Bet on it.

But you gotta admit. These “world banks” and similar institutions are MASTERS at camoflaging their REAL OBJECTIVES. They nearly always present themselves as philanthropic do-gooders whose only objective is help “little” people to join them in the financial stratosphere.

Strange… you’d think that with all that money they’d be able to actually ACHIEVE their stated goals… but nope… in spite of all their efforts, the POOR JUST GET POORER. Guess there must be something fundamentally wrong with the poor. Very strange.

The World Bank failed to address the poverty because it reserved money for big borrower : China.

I just wrote a personal blog entry about this:

http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-Mff23hgidqmHGqbcv.lfskakEtS6qLVHUEMFUG4-?cq=1&p=218

It was a reaction to the temporal proximity of this story to the report of Yunis accepting the Nobel Peace Prize.  My argument is that Grameen has succeeded where the World Bank has failed because the former knows how to operate on an individual-to-individual basis while the latter can only operate on an institution-to-institution basis.  The blog entry includes a pointer to my previous writing about this problem.

Is anybody really surprised? Let’s remember who the President of the World Bank currently is and has been for nearly two year now—one Paul Wolfowitz, formerly the Deputy Secretary of Defense for the current Bush administration and known member of PNAC (Project for the New American Century). Given that Wolfowitz played an influential role in the buildup leading to the War In Iraq, especially with regard to the number of troops that would be required and the suggestion that Iraqi oil would help pay for the war—and we all know how successful THAT turned out to be, or rather not to be—should we really expect Wolfowitz to be any more effective at combating global poverty?  For that matter, why should anyone believe that a fervent neoconservative like Wolfowitz really gives a damn about poor people?