首页
登录
职称英语
The World Bank’s Real Problem The World Bank is undeniably
The World Bank’s Real Problem The World Bank is undeniably
游客
2024-11-07
0
管理
问题
The World Bank’s Real Problem
The World Bank is undeniably in crisis. But not because its president, Paul Wolfowitz, got his girlfriend a raise.
It is the Wolfowitz saga that has been grabbing all the headlines, of course. The Iraq-war architect was plucked from the Defense Department and deposited by President George W. Bush at the World Bank in 2005 (by tradition, the U.S. President picks the bank’s chief). At the time, Wolfowitz informed the bank’s ethics committee that he was seeing Shaha Riza, a communication adviser at the bank, and the in-house ethicists told him she should be moved to another agency and given a raise for her troubles. But the size of the pay hike (from $133,000 to $180,000, tax free) and other details about Riza’s transfer raised hackles among bank staff and sparked an investigation. The bank’s board will decide any day now whether Wolfowitz stays or goes.
This dragged-out mess, though, is a distraction. The bigger issue is that the Washington-based bank and its sister organization, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), are struggling to justify their continued existence.
The situation is most pressing for the smaller IMF, which pays its bills with the profits it makes by lending money to middle-income countries in financial trouble. With hardly any such countries in trouble these days, the organization is projecting a $224 million deficit for this fiscal year and asking its member nations if they can start selling off some of the gold they deposited with it after World War II (the answer so far: no).
The World Bank isn’t that desperate, but it faces similar pressure. Both organizations were created in 1944 by the soon-to-be-victorious Allied powers. At the time, says Harvard professor and former IMF chief economist Kenneth Rogoff, "global financial markets barely existed, and domestic financial markets barely existed in Europe."
The World Bank’s initial job was to finance reconstruction in Europe. The Marshall Plan rendered that task superfluous, so the bank—in the first of several reinventions— moved on to bankroll development in other countries. The idea was to lend to governments that were creditworthy but had no access to rich-country capital markets. "Now we live in a world where there are huge global capital markets, where, if anything, investors are too willing to invest in developing countries," says Adam Lerrick, a former investment banker who teaches economics at Carnegie Mellon University. The World Bank’s net lending has plummeted over the past few years, even as it keeps shopping loans to the likes of Brazil, Turkey, Russia and China, sometimes on hugely generous terms.
This is the work of the biggest part of the World Bank, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Member countries make deposits (the U.S. share is $2 billion down and $30 billion pledged); the bank sells bonds backed by those deposits and pledges, then lends the money out at a small profit. The other main arm of the World Bank, the International Development Association, gets regular infusions of cash from rich countries and lends funds on near giveaway terms to truly poor countries, mostly in Africa (the U.S. contribution is just under $1 billion a year, or 0.04% of federal spending).
Lerrick wants the World Bank to stop lending to middle-income countries and restructure its loans to the poorest nations as outright grants. Nancy Birdsall, a former World Banker who run a Washington think tank called the Center for Global Development, argues that the bank could have more impact on poverty by making better use of its best assets: the expertise of its staff and its ability to coordinate global action. "Lending and grantmaking at the country level should not be the end-all and be-all," she says. "It should be the vehicle for advice and constant rebuilding of the bank’s knowledge." Birdsall is a World Bank fan but agrees with critics like Lerrick that it must become smaller (it has a staff of 10,000) and less banklike to remain relevant.
Wolfowitz’s allies say he is the victim of backlash from entrenched bank staff upset that he is turning up the heat on an anticorruption campaign begun by his predecessor, James Wolfensohn. That’s probably overstating things. But the potential backlash against slashing the bank’s staff and getting it out of lending would surely be epic. Which may explain why no World Bank president, Wolfowitz included, has attempted it. [br] According to the passage, the World Bank should do the following EXCEPT______.
选项
A、reducing staff
B、coordinating global action
C、increasing the profit it makes
D、offering advice to poor countries
答案
C
解析
由第八段可知,世行应给贫穷国家提供专业知识(D),协调全球的经济运作(B),以及缩减工作人员(A)。故C为正确答案。
转载请注明原文地址:https://tihaiku.com/zcyy/3835604.html
相关试题推荐
Thedebateaboutproblemdrinkingandhowtostopitnowadayscentresmosto
Thedebateaboutproblemdrinkingandhowtostopitnowadayscentresmosto
Thedebateaboutproblemdrinkingandhowtostopitnowadayscentresmosto
Thedebateaboutproblemdrinkingandhowtostopitnowadayscentresmosto
Fundingpublictransitisoneofthebiggestproblemsfacingcitiestoday.Ofte
Fundingpublictransitisoneofthebiggestproblemsfacingcitiestoday.Ofte
Fundingpublictransitisoneofthebiggestproblemsfacingcitiestoday.Ofte
Fundingpublictransitisoneofthebiggestproblemsfacingcitiestoday.Ofte
Fundingpublictransitisoneofthebiggestproblemsfacingcitiestoday.Ofte
Fundingpublictransitisoneofthebiggestproblemsfacingcitiestoday.Ofte
随机试题
AllovertheworldmentionoftheBritisheducationsuggestsapictureofth
Ifhehadfollowedthedoctor’sinstructionand______inbedtorest,he______
保障人体健康,人身、财产安全的标准和法律、行政法规规定强行执行的标准是()。A.
下列有关合同的表述,不正确的是()。A:当受要约人以订立合同的意图接受要约时合同
一些公益广告是请非常有影响力的明星制作的,根据班杜拉的理论,这种做法关注的是观察
风险预警程序不包括()。A.信用信息的收集和传递 B.事后评价 C.风险处
下列选项中属于公司制期货交易所董事会行使的职权的有()。A.召集股东大会会议
康杰公司是一家大型医疗器械连锁集团,品牌连锁店主要攻占美国和亚洲市场,分别占公司
计算企业应纳税所得额时,允许从收入中扣除的支出是()。A.销售成本 B.赞助
混合痔是指A、痔与瘘同时存在 B、两个以上内痔 C、直肠上下静脉丛彼此相通所
最新回复
(
0
)