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Jude Wanniski: Wolfowitz at the World Bank
http://www.counterpunch.com/wanniski03172005.html
"The World Bank was created as an adjunct of the UN at the end of World War
II, along with its brother institution, the International Monetary Fund.."
By
Jude
Wanniski
In announcing the Wolfowitz appointment today, President Bush said the
World Bank is a big organization and Wolfowitz has experience running a
big organization, the Pentagon!!
As far as the military-industrial complex is concerned, Wolfowitz did a
FANTASTIC job. He was only expected to plan for a $30 billion war and he
screwed up so badly that it is now a $200 billion war, and counting.
Anyone who can screw up that badly deserves a promotion, to the World
Bank.
So you see it doesn't really matter that Wolfowitz doesn't know the
first thing about banking or the economics of development projects.
He will sit behind the biggest desk at the Bank and take the telephone
calls from the Big Banks and the Multinationals, telling him what to do,
and providing him with experts like John Perkins,[Confessions
of an Economic Hit Man
]who did the actual dirty work as an economic hit man, and now writes
his confessions. When the White House needs a big favor for one of its
big hitters, it need only put in a call to Wolfie, who will throw the
right switch. That's exactly the way it worked with Jim Wolfensohn these
past ten years, and if you don't believe me, look around and you will
note how many poor countries got poorer during his reign, and how many
big bucks were made at Bechtel and Halliburton.
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If you really don't know what the "World Bank" is all about, you would think
that President Bush was joking in nominating Paul Wolfowitz to be the new
president of the Bank, replacing Jim Wolfensohn.
One of the chief
architects of the Iraq war,
Wolfowitz is a political theorist, a 61-year-old man who spent most of his
adult life at blackboards and lecterns teaching students about international
politics.
He may know how to operate an Automatic Teller Machine when in need of ready
cash, but he knows absolutely nothing about banking.
Wolfensohn, who was
a New York investment banker before President Clinton named him to the post
a decade ago, at least knows something about banking. His partner in New
York, to which I suppose he will return, is Paul Volcker, the former
chairman of the Federal Reserve, our nation's central bank.
Wolfie the Warrior,
by contrast, is the lifetime sidekick, even protégé, of Richard Perle,
probably the most important intellectual in the service of the
military-industrial complex. If you want to know how Professor Wolfowitz got
the job, follow the money.
That's what the World Bank is all about. It was created as an adjunct of the
United Nations at the end of World War II, along with its brother
institution, the International Monetary Fund. On paper, its function was to
lend money to developing countries to help them grow.
Its real job has been to serve the interests of the major money-center banks
and the multinational corporations who make the big bucks in World Bank
development projects. The Bank, which is really a "fund," persuades a poor
country like Ghana, for example, to build a new industrial complex in order
to make stuff for export. It will lend the money to Ghana -- which it gets
from global taxpayers including you and me -- and arrange for the complex to
be built by one of the favored corporations in the military-industrial
complex. The list always includes Bechtel Corporation, Halliburton, and
Kellogg Brown & Root, a division of Halliburton. These outfits go in and
build the projects because the locals have no expertise.
In "Confessions
of an Economic Hit Man"
John Perkins explains in some detail the mechanics of this gigantic money
machine. It not only promotes unnecessary industrial complexes in Ghana,
which rust away in bankruptcy when they prove to be uneconomic. The aim of
the military-industrial complex is not only "industrial," but also military.
The name most closely associated with Halliburton, of course, is Vice
President Cheney, who was Defense Secretary in the first Gulf War, with Paul
Wolfowitz even then at his side (urging all-out war with Iraq even after
Saddam put up the white flag and retreated to Baghdad before the war
began!!) Rats.
The name most associated with Bechtel is George P. Shultz, once its top dog,
now a mere director. Shultz was Treasury Secretary under Richard Nixon
(helping talk him into floating the U.S. dollar), Secretary of State under
Ronald Reagan, and currently a member of the Defense Policy Board, which
until last year Richard Perle chaired.
Shultz also introduced Governor George W. Bush to Condoleezza Rice, who in
turn introduced Paul Wolfowitz to Governor Bush back in 1999. Shultz of
course knew at the time that
Wolfie and Perle and
their neo-con Cabal were planning a war in Iraq,
and we know nice, little "doable" wars (Wolfie's word), are meat and
potatoes for the military-industrial complex.
Instead of squeezing nickels and dimes out of the taxpayers to persuade
Ghana to build a steel mill it doesn't need and can't run,
even little wars run into the billions. And
everyone gets into the act. The arms makers who produce airplanes,
tanks, guns, jeeps and humvees get to blow up a country (like Iraq) and
Bechtel and Halliburton come in right behind to rebuild it.
In announcing the Wolfowitz appointment today, President Bush said the World
Bank is a big organization and Wolfowitz has experience running a big
organization, the Pentagon!! As far as the military-industrial complex is
concerned, Wolfowitz did a FANTASTIC job. He was only expected to plan for a
$30 billion war and he screwed up so badly that it is now a $200 billion
war, and counting. Anyone who can screw up that badly deserves a promotion,
to the World Bank.
So you see it doesn't really matter that Wolfowitz doesn't know the first
thing about banking or the economics of development projects. He will sit
behind the biggest desk at the Bank and take the telephone calls from the
Big Banks and the Multinationals, telling him what to do, and providing him
with experts like John Perkins, who did the actual dirty work as an economic
hit man, and now writes his confessions. When the White House needs a big
favor for one of its big hitters, it need only put in a call to Wolfie, who
will throw the right switch. That's exactly the way it worked with Jim
Wolfensohn these past ten years, and if you don't believe me, look around
and you will note how many poor countries got poorer during his reign, and
how many big bucks were made at Bechtel and Halliburton.
There will of course
be complaints from various global diplomats about the obvious incompetence
of Wolfowitz, just as there were puzzled head-scratchings around the world
about the incompetence of Condi Rice as Secretary of State or John Bolton as
UN Ambassador. But money talks in all the places where the directors of the
World Bank live, and they will be advised to clam up by the local
military-industrial money machines.
Perle will also have his pals at The Weekly Standard and Fox News speculate
that when Condi is President, Wolfie will be her veep (which is how it
happened we’ve seen talk of Condi for President in 2008). Nor can we expect
any complaints from Congress, because in one way or another there is too
much money at stake, too many reputations looking toward bigtime lobbying
jobs when its time to give up a seat in Congress.
If this seems harsh, as if I'm writing about something new under the rocks
on which our Uncle Sam perches,
I suggest you read my 1978 book, "The Way the World Works," which describes
how the British Empire worked in exactly this fashion.
My best example was the first multinational corporations, the British
railroad builders. Once they ran out of places to build rail lines in the
U.K., they persuaded Parliament to promote railroads in the colonies, and
were enormously successful in talking the Raj into criss-crossing India with
railroads in the mid-19th century. It was one thing in England, where the
companies could only build where there was a clear sign the line would be
profitable, because it was their own money at risk. In India, the locals
borrowed the money from the Bank of England and hired the builders to put in
rail lines that couldn't possibly be profitable. India was burdened with
debts from these schemes well into the 20th century.
Even
after it gained independence in 1948, India was persuaded by British and
American economists to keep tax rates high and to devalue the rupee, to keep
them poor and unable to compete with the big guys. Who did the British and
American economists work for? Why the World Bank, of course, and also the
IMF, whose job is to go into the poor countries when they can't pay back
their loans, and lend them the money to do so -- as long as they agree to
raise taxes again, devalue their currency, and build new industrial
complexes that are constructed by Bechtel and Halliburton.
So you see why it makes perfect sense to have Wolfowitz at the World Bank.
He's terrific at doing wars, and wars are
much more profitable than nickel-and-dime industrial projects.
That's the way the
world works. Always has been.
-Jude Wanniski is a
former associate editor of The Wall Street Journal, expert on supply-side
economics and founder of Polyconomics, which helps to interpret the impact
of political events on financial markets. This article was published in
CounterPunch.org at:
http://www.counterpunch.com/wanniski03172005.html
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