“I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means – except by getting off his back." (Tolstoy qtd in Jere-Malanda 2). This is a quote by the famous Russian author and philosopher Leo Tolstoy, and it perfectly depicts the current world situation; how those in developed countries say that they will do all they can to help those in the third world, and at the same time make their situation much worse. One of the chief problems for these developing countries is Third World debt, which is that debt that the governments of Third World owe to foreign banks, governments, and international bodies, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. The World Bank and the IMF both came into existence in 1944 at the Bretton Woods Conference, which was a meeting to discuss how to help the world recover after the Second World War (World Bank Archives 1). At the time, both the World Bank and the IMF did what they were intended to do; they helped the post war world recover and rebuild. Today the economic landscape of the world looks much different than it did at the close of WWII, and the goals and ideals of these two monetary behemoths have changed. Now, they are lending to the Third World, where there is a huge market for foreign investment and “aid”. This aid is not working. In 1970 the debt owed by the world’s poorest countries was approximately twenty five billion dollars U.S. in external debt, but this debt had increased to over five hundred billion dollars U.S. by 2002 (Shah 1). Therefore, the World Bank and the IMF do not help the third world get out of debt, as they are meant to, but rather keep th...
... middle of paper ...
...s. 27 Dec. 2008. Web. 05 June 2010.
.
Shah, Anup. "The Scale of the Debt Crisis." Global.org. 02 July 2005. Web. 26 May 2010.
.
Tolstoy, Leo. "Leo Tolstoy Quotes." Famous Quotes and Quotations at BrainyQuote. Web. 29
May 2010. .
Trumbull, Mark. "World Bank Faces Setback to War on Corruption." Christian Science Monitor. 23 Apr
2007: n.p. SIRS Researcher. Web. 07 Jun 2010
World Bank Archives. "Archives - World Bank History." The World Bank. 2010. Web. 31 May
2010..
Sovereign lending, throughout history, has been marked by occurrences of partial default and repudiation by governments of all kind; from medieval princes to dictators to democratic regimes. In the 1970s lending to lesser-developed countries led to the rescheduling and partial defaults in the 1980s. Even the sustainability of the debt of nations such as Belgium, Canada, Italy and even the United States is not free from suspect.
"History, UN, United Nations, Charter, Chronology." UN News Center. UN, n.d. Web. 28 Nov. 2013. .
“The National Debt (sidebar).” Issues and Controversies. Facts on File News Services, 23 Jan. 2009. Web. 25 May 2011. .
Bosshard states that the “World Bank was set to receive its first grant on February 11th, 2014 but removed the project from its board calendar the previous week.” (Bosshard, 2014) Bosshard’s concerns for the project range from financial stress on the poorest inhabitants of the region to environmental issues.
Preston, A. (2012). You eat what you kill: from scandal to catastrophe, the rise and fall of the investment bank. New Statesman, 141, 22
The July 1944 United Nations Financial and Monetary Conference, known as the Bretton Woods Conference, who created the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the forerunner of the World Bank, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD). The “Bretton Woods system” was bolstered in 1947 with the addition of the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), forerunner of the World Trade
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (2000). The IMF and the World Bank: puppets of the neoliberalism onslaught. Retrieved April 05, 2014, from MIT website: http://www.mit.edu/~thistle/v13/2/imf.html
The Web. 11 Mar. 2014. The 'Standard' of the 'Standard'. http://policydialogue.org/files/publications/The_Latin_American_Debt_Crisis_in_Historical_Perspective_Jos_Antonio_Ocampo.pdf>. Pastor, Manuel, Jr. "Latin America, the Debt Crisis, and the International Monetary Fund.
Historically, financial crises have been followed by a wave of governments defaulting on their debt obligations. The global economic history has experienced sovereign debt crisis such as in Latin America during the 80s, in Russia at the end of the 90s and in Argentina in the beginning of the 00s. The European debt crisis is the most significant of its kind that the economic world was seen started from 2010. Financial crises tend to lead to, or exacerbate, sharp economic downturns, low government revenues, widening government deficits, and high levels of debt, pushing many governments into default. Greece is currently facing such a sovereign debt crisis and Europe’s most indebted country despite its surplus in the early 2000s. Greece accumulated high levels of debt during the decade before the crisis, when the capital markets were highly liquid. As the crisis has unfolded, and capital markets have become more illiquid, Greece may no longer be able to roll over its maturing debt obligations. Investment by both the private and the public sectors has ground to a halt. Public sector debt has increased substantially as the state had to rely on official assistance to payroll expenses, fiscal deficit and fund social payments.
Weiss, M.A. (2009) ‘The Global Financial Crisis: The Role of the International Monetary Fund’, CRS Report for Congress.
The roots of the colonial history of Kenya travels back to the Berlin Conference in 1885, whe...
the effect that the work of the IMF and the World Bank have had on the
Warwick J. McKibbin, and Andrew Stoeckel. “The Global Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences.” Lowy Institute for International Policy 2.09 (2009): 1. PDF file.
...tries. These ideas were discussed in lecture on February 16th, 2011, as well as explored in Manfred B. Steger's, Globalization: A Very Short Introduction, and I.B. Logan and Kidane Mengisteab's article, "IMF – World Bank Adjustment and Structural Transformation in Sub-Saharan Africa." Instead of globalization as a positive system for SSA, it did the opposite, and made the region stagnant in economic terms. It was about expanding relationships among countries, but adjustments were creating barriers that prevented SSA from economic communications with other countries. Therefore, it contributed to colonialism after World War II; colonial powers were able to indirectly control what SSA could do, and whom they were able to contact. The World Bank as a financial institution affected SSA's economic industry, and was partly responsible for the control colonial powers had.
Kearney, A.T. (2001). Corruption and the Globalization Index. Last access on 27 March 2005 at URL: http://www.globalcorruptionreport.org/download/gcr2001/data_and_research.pdf NAIM, Mois´s (1995). Corruption Eruption. Last accessed on 2 April 2005 at URL: http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=648 MORAN, Robert T. and RIESENBERGER, John R. (1994)