U2 Can B A Rock Star Prez. The president of the World Bank is traditionally an American. But in a recent editorial the L.A. Times nominated third-world debt relief activitist and Nobel Peace Prize nominee and--oh yeah--U2 frontman for the soon-to-be-vacant position. With economic tutoring from "probably the most important economist in the world", the singer/activist (and self-confessed egomaniac) has spent the last 5 years lobbying the World Bank and IMF to help African nations break the decades' old cycle of debt by combining debt relief with improved trade and AIDS assistance. After a stint as celebrity spokesmodel for Jubilee2000, then founding a similar DATA Agenda funded by Bill Gates, he's developed cred as "a serious player on Third World debt". "It's about the right to begin again," Bono says. "The right to be free of your past..." President Bono: a chance to reform the World Bank from the inside, or celebrity poser? Readers' response... [BugMeNot for the reg-only sites]
posted by nakedcodemonkey on Mar 1, 2005 - 32 comments

Worse Than the World Bank? Export Credit Agencies--The Secret Engine of Globalization The amount of investment that export credit agencies (ECA) support worldwide is significantly greater than the total amount of lending from the World Bank, IMF and all other multilateral institutions combined. ECA's account for the single biggest component of developing country debt and half of all new greenhouse gas-emitting industrial projects in developing countries have some sort of ECA support. Investments in places like Guatemala, South Africa, Pakistan, Chile [PDF], have had unacceptable social, environmental and economic consequences. Administered or backed by a government, an ECA uses taxpayer money to make it cheaper and less risky for domestic corporations to export or invest overseas. ECAs privatize the profit and socialize the risk while negatively impacting indigenous cultures and enironments, all with little or no governmental oversight or public awareness of the matter. So what can we do about it? [PDF]
posted by faux ami on Nov 26, 2004 - 14 comments

TRAPPED, CUFFED & BUSSED Two Diamondback (Univ. of Maryland student newspaper)reporters covering the IMF-World Bank protests were arrested Friday morning and manacled for 23 hours. Surrounded by hundreds of protesters in Pershing Park, Washington Metropolitan Police circled and arrested the entire group. Jason Flanagan and Debra Kahn were there as impartial observers, and despite the newspaper's efforts to release them, they were stripped of all their possessions - even their shoelaces. What follows is a first-person account of their arrest and detention.
posted by Ty Webb on Oct 2, 2002 - 71 comments

"We have a dysfunctional global currency and economic system, in which the whole world is set up to sell to the American consumer." As stocks collapse and banks take hits for their Enron complicity, market skeptics like Prudent Bear's David Tice are getting attention. Bears love ripping into herd euphoria and shady Wall Street practices, but deny any joy when businesses fail. Try the Credit Bubble Bulletin, which points out Enron-style vulnerabilities at institutions like J.P. Morgan, then move to the great 401(k) hoax, the myth of accounting reform and Thailand's so-far successful anti-IMF economic strategy. Things will soon get much worse, promise the investors who sneer at "a fascinating intellectual environment where weak analysis continues to dominate discourse."
posted by mediareport on Jul 30, 2002 - 27 comments

Did you hear about the Trash Bloc? Some anti-authoritarians are planning a bloc for the weekend of the IMF/World Bank protests that would go around Washington DC neighborhoods and pick up trash. I think we can all get down with that.
posted by sudama on Aug 20, 2001 - 4 comments

No way but to decommission the World Bank and IMF -- BusinessWorld columnist Walden Bello explains why the policies of these two institutions have magnified world poverty and inequality, and traces the opposition movement from its origins in the Global South, to Seattle, Prague and beyond:

"The historic Prague Spring of 1968 spelled the beginning of the end of the Soviet Empire. Will Prague, the site of the World Bank-IMF annual meeting for the year 2000, join Seattle in December 1998 and Washington, D.C. in April of this year as one of the catalytic events ushering the beginning of the end of hegemony of corporate-driven globalization?..."
posted by johnb on Sep 26, 2000 - 8 comments

Protest the IMF and World Bank April 16 and 17. Info on a non-violent rally/protest in DC, and other actions around the US. Also ... Michael Moore is going to be the emcee.
posted by E-Boogie on Apr 4, 2000 - 1 comment