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World Bank and the development delusion (October 20 2012) World Bank and the development delusion (October 20 2012)

Jim Yong Kim the 52 year old Korean-American physician, anthropologist and current President of the World Bank has been the subject of review by Jason Hickel in an article published on Aljazeera titled ‘The World Bank and the development delusion’. Hickel states “When Jim Yong Kim took the helm of the World Bank in July, progressives in the development community hailed it as a turning point in the fight against poverty. For once the Bank is headed not by a US military boss or a Wall Street executive, but by an actual expert in the field of development. …I have deep respect for Kim and his past accomplishments, but I do not share the optimism that has overcome the development community. I find it astounding that we continue to place our hope for the end of poverty in an international financial institution that is fundamentally beholden to the interests of Wall Street and the US government. And we do so against all the available evidence. History shows that most of the countries that have come under the sway of the World Bank – and its sister institution, the IMF – have experienced declining development outcomes over the past 30 years or so.  …Kim probably won’t be able to accomplish these reforms because they would run up against enormously powerful economic interests. Real change will require rebuilding the global justice movement by linking together organisations that have been working on these issues for decades. As neoliberal policy has ravaged the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world, there’s a lot of anger out there ready to be mobilised. A revolution lies waiting in the wings; we have only to call it forth.”

 

Inspired by Jason Hickel ow.ly/eoiDC image source NIH ow.ly/eoiBc

Jason Hickel a USA Anthropologist specializing in democracy, violence, globalization, and ritual has published an article on Sham Media speaking of today’s dominant economic ideology ‘ neoliberalism’ being taken for granted as natural and inevitable.  In the article Hickel states “In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher had to convince people that there was “no alternative” to neoliberalism.  Today, this assumption comes ready-made; it’s in the water, part of the common-sense furniture of everyday life, and generally accepted as given by the Right and Left alike.  But it has not always been this way.  Neoliberalism has a specific history, and knowing that history is an important antidote to its hegemony, for it shows that the present order is not natural or inevitable, but rather that it is new, that it came from somewhere, and that it was designed by particular people with particular interests. If an economist living in the 1950s had seriously proposed any of the ideas and policies in today’s standard neoliberal toolkit, they would have been laughed right off the stage. At that time pretty much everyone was a Keynesian, a social democrat, or some shade of Marxist. … neoliberal policy is directly responsible for declining economic growth and rapidly increasing rates of social inequality – both in the West and internationally.”

 

Inspired by Jason Hickel http://ow.ly/anIJb image source Sham Media http://ow.ly/anJps

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