Re: Pray for humanist imperialists[Fwd: FWD: Henwood on Kanbur and Stiglitz]

["ÁÎ×Ó¹â Henry C.K.Liu ¹ù¤l¥ú" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

    Comments on Ravi Kanbur's resignation

    "The tussle about what the WDR should and should not emphasize
demonstrates that
    there are forces inside and outside the World Bank hostile to even a
modest
    modification of the dominant paradigm on development. The Bank may want to
signal
    that it is turning into a caring organization but, like a leopard and its
spots, it
    cannot change even if it wants to."
    The Hindu, 26 June, 2000

    "Everyone is shocked and deeply saddened that Ravi left. Many of us see
this as a
    real blow to the empowerment agenda; and if I've learned anything from my
work it's
    about the powerlessness of being poor."
    World Bank source

    "Ravi Kanbur has recently decided to leave his position as Staff Director
of the
    World Development Report "Attacking Poverty." Ravi's decision is a source
of regret
    for the Report's team, for colleagues in the Bank and for many people
outside the
    Bank who have been working on the WDR. In leaving Ravi said he had some
reservations
    on the emphasis of the main messages that were likely to emerge in the
final version
    of the Report. We believe these reservations to be unfounded."
    Jo Ritzen, Vice President, Development Economics, World Bank

    "The Washington Consensus has emerged from the Asia Crisis with its faith
in free
    markets only slightly shaken. Poverty eradication is now the menu, but the
main dish
    is still growth and market liberalisation, with social safety nets added
as a side
    dish, and social capital scattered over it as a relish. The overall
implication of
    the resignation is fairly clear. The US does not want the World Bank to
stray too far
    from its agenda of economic growth and market liberalisation. Ravi
Kanbur's draft has
    raised a few too many doubts about this agenda, and strayed too much
towards
    politics."
    The Nation, Bangkok, 5 July, 2000

    "To keep the Bank afloat Wolfensohn has to steer between two major
constituencies.
    The first are the critics, the second is the US Treasury. You don't need
to be a
    World Bank economist to do the cost benefit analysis. To save the Bank,
and his own
    reputation, it is essential that the Bank's policies and public
pronouncements do not
    err too far from its main shareholder and political protector, the US
Treasury."
    Focus on Trade, Number 51, June 2000

    "A rare individual has the courage to resign, but what about the thousands
who don't?
    We need to question all reports and documents and data coming from the
World Bank
    which the media and others use as their source of truth about the South.
This is the
    tip of the iceberg of the reports that are produced under such intense
    politicization"
    Michael Goldman, editor Privatising Nature, Political Struggles for the
Global
    Commons

    "At the World Bank, the high church of development economics, a widening
schism over
    how to fight poverty is sending ripples around the world. Ravi Kanbur, a
top Cornell
    economist and the man hired by the bank to oversee the writing of its
World
    Development Report, resigned in anger recently when he was ordered to
rewrite his
    staff's draft. The report is extremely influential among economists, and
Mr. Kanbur's
    version questioned how well developing countries adapt to capitalism. In
fact, it
    questioned whether the West's standard prescription for reform does enough
to help
    the poor."
    Joseph Kahn, New York Times, 25 June, 2000

      http://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/update/18/18a.html#2

Xxxx Xxxxx Xxxxxx wrote:

> This piece has emerged on the _International Political Economy_ listserv
> today, and originally appeared in the _Nation_ magazine, where the
> author of the article presents an overly positive view of the former
> chief economists of the World Bank, Stiglitz and Kanbur, and praise them
> for being "humane reformers who sincerely care about the world's poor".
> I am posting the article as an evidence of the left liberal position on
> international affairs and "humanist imperialism" of the World Bank. This
> is evidently a pro-system journalism, so I am telling _in advance_ to
> avoid another _Business Week_ friction. Since this is the trendy
> position among the left in the US today, It is always important to be
> updated about their views.
>
> Xxxx
>
> --
>
> Xxxx Xxxxx Xxxxxx
> PhD Student
> Department of Political Science
> SUNY at Albany
> Nelson A. Rockefeller College
> 135 Western Ave.; Milne 102
> Albany, NY 12222
>
>   ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Subject: FWD: Henwood on Kanbur and Stiglitz
> Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 14:45:58 +0000
> From: mckeever <mckeever@xxxxxxxxx>
> To: ipe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> This article presents one view of the policies at the WB and IMF.
>
> McKeever
>
> The Nation - October 2, 2000
>
> Stiglitz and the Limits of 'Reform'
> Doug Henwood
>
> It's global protest time again. When Bill Gates and other members of
> the global elite gathered in mid-September for the World Economic
> Forum in Melbourne, Australia, thousands of union members and
> activists filled the streets to protest the effects of unfettered
> free trade. The next opportunity to trouble a convocation of the
> world's bigwigs is in Prague at the end of September, when the World
> Bank and International Monetary Fund hold their annual meetings. In
> April, their midyear meetings brought thousands to Washington and
> shut down the city
>
> There's a long-standing split among those who protest and criticize
> these institutions - and their close relative, the World Trade
> Organization - between those who'd reform them and those who'd prefer
> to shut them down. Two forced departures from the World Bank have
> made the limits of reform irrefutably clear.
>
> The first was the exit of former chief economist Joseph Stiglitz at
> the end of 1999. Stiglitz had made one too many public criticisms of
> the economic policies preferred by the bank and its ultimate master,
> the US government. And more recently, Ravi Kanbur, an outside
> economist whom Stiglitz brought aboard to supervise the writing of
> the bank's annual World Development Report, resigned "in anger" (as
> the New York Times put it) in June when he was ordered to revise the
> document to conform to the party line that growth is the highest good
> of economic policy.
>
> Stiglitz was appointed to his World Bank post in December 1996. Long
> regarded as one of the leading theorists in his field - and
> frequently tipped as a future Nobelist - he served on Bill Clinton's
> Council of Economic Advisers from 1993 until his move over to the
> bank. Despite this respectable pedigree, Stiglitz started causing
> trouble almost from the first.
>
> He attracted worldwide notice with a January 1998 lecture in Helsinki
> in which he criticized the "Washington consensus" - the austerity,
> privatization and deregulation agenda that had become the standard
> policy prescription for much of the world - as misguided and often
> disastrous. He pointed out that the historically unprecedented rapid
> economic growth in East Asia - and with it the increases in life
> expectancy, literacy and other social indicators - was the result of
> the sort of state intervention that the bank frowns on. He also
> pointed out that the 1997 financial crisis that interrupted that
> growth was in large part the result of the reckless decisions of
> private investors. But instead of drawing the proper conclusions,
> Stiglitz noted, market ideologues were using the crisis to discredit
> state intervention and promote more market liberalization. He further
> argued that moderate inflation is pretty harmless, budget deficits
> aren't necessarily evil, privatization isn't a panacea and
> deregulation of domestic and international financial markets can do
> serious harm. For a senior World Bank official to say these things is
> a bit like a Pope denying the Virgin birth.
>
> As his tenure progressed, Stiglitz elaborated on these themes. He
> publicly rued the fact that workers and small businesses were
> "getting screwed" because they were inadequately represented in
> decision-making. He criticized the IMF - without mentioning it by
> name - for making the Asia crisis worse by imposing austerity
> programs instead of stimulating imploding economies and shoring up
> social safety nets. He proposed that restricting the freedom of
> global capital movements could make the world less crisis-prone. He
> mused that the disastrous results of economic reform in Russia were
> "not just due to sound policies being poorly implemented" but to "a
> misunderstanding of the foundations of a market economy"earning him a
> public rebuke from World Bank president James Wolfensohn.
>
> The accumulation of sacrileges became too much, and Stiglitz's
> "resignation" was announced last November, an occasion that led
> Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers to praise Stiglitz as a "major
> creative and intellectual force." The Clinton Administration said it
> had played no role in the exit. In fact, according to World Bank
> insiders Summers informed Wolfensohn that if he wanted another term
> as World Bank president, Stiglitz had to go - so Stiglitz went.
>
> Stiglitz was kept on as a consultant, but his contract was terminated
> in May. It's said the last straw was an article he wrote for The New
> Republic that, aside from reiterating his policy criticisms,
> contained this, passage: "The older men who staff the fund ... act as
> if they are shouldering Rudyard Kipling's white man's burden. IMF
> experts believe they are brighter, more educated, and less
> politically motivated than the economists in the countries they
> visit. In fact, the economic leaders from those countries are ...
> brighter or better-educated than the IMF staff, which frequently
> consists of third-rank students from first-rate universities." Policy
> disputes are one thing, but this was just too harsh a truth to utter
> in public.
>
> Ravi Kanbur was an inconvenient leftover from the Stiglitz days.
> Together they had opened up the drafting of the World Bank's annual
> World Development Report, its flagship document. A draft was posted
> on the web, and public comments were actively sought, Its drift was
> that contrary to standard development doctrine, growth wasn't enough
> to lift the poor out of poverty - policy had to be actively tilted in
> their favor. (It should be remembered that we're not talking about
> people who skip a meal now and then: The bank's definition of poverty
> is an income of less than $1 a day, a ration on which 1.2 billion of
> the world's people subsist.) This openness was a departure from past
> practice, in which the reports were written by staff economists under
> the supervision of elite journalists on loan from The Economist or
> the Financial Times.
>
> The US government, in the person of Summers, was outraged by Kanbur &
> Co.'s draft. As one participant in the process put it, the Clinton
> Administration had essentially embraced the trickle-down economics
> that Democrats had run against for decades. Kanbur was ordered to
> rewrite the report to be more "pro-growth." He resigned instead. In
> the final version, among other changes, discussion of the importance
> of income distribution to poverty reduction largely disappeared.
>
> A lot of bank staffers were upset by the departures of Stiglitz and
> Kanbur (though even Stiglitz's supporters concede he was a poor
> manager), but the public executions were a clear warning to any
> future dissenters. None of the sources for this article, for example,
> wanted to be quoted by name, even though the bank's mission statement
> swears that it is an institution based on an ethic of "personal
> honesty, integrity, commitment; working together in teams - with
> openness and trust; empowering others and respecting differences."
>
> Though ostensibly multilateral institutions, and formally part of the
> United Nations, the World Bank and IMF are essentially run by the US
> government. As MIT economist Rudiger Dombusch put it a few years ago,
> "The IMF is a tool of the United States to pursue its economic policy
> offshore." The bank has a reputation for being a bit softer than its
> neighbor across Washington's 19th Street; it is, by its mission and
> by the preferences of many of its staffers, devoted to poverty
> reduction and economic development, while the IMF is the guardian of
> financial stability and political orthodoxy. There are some good
> people with good intentions working for the bank; the fund is staffed
> mainly by disciplinarians. But the fates of Stiglitz and Kanbur make
> it clear that there are severe limits on how much good can be talked
> about, much less done, by the World Bank.
>
> Treasury Secretary Summers, who purged Stiglitz and Kanbur, was
> himself chief economist at the World Bank from 1991 to 1993. In that
> role, Summers made headlines when a memo attributed to him -
> suggesting that Africa was "vastly under-polluted" and that "the
> economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest
> wage country is impeccable" - was leaked to the press. This past
> April, when I asked Summers whether Africa was still vastly
> underpolluted, he said, after conceding that this was a "fair if not
> friendly question," that it's long established that he was merely
> being ironic and provocative. He also praised the 'moral energy" of
> the protesters who'd come to Washington to complain about the World
> Bank and the IMF, unaware that I'd overheard him just an hour earlier
> celebrating the "proactive" arrest of hundreds of them who hadn't
> committed any crime.
>
> Neither Stiglitz nor Kanbur is a radical by any standard; both are
> humane reformers who sincerely care about the world's poor. But even
> that was too much for the World Bank and the IMF. The impeccable
> logic by which they operate will hear no appeals; their decisions are
> final.
>
> ----
>
> Doug Henwood, a Nation contributing editor edits the Left Business
> Observer. His latest book, A New Economy?, is due out late this year
> from Verso.
>
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