An Even Poorer World

Editor,

The increase in poverty world-wide that the World Bank has sanctimoniously noted is a direct result, from Argentina to Zambia, of World Bank dicta known as "Structural Adjustments" that developing economies have been forced to implement for the last 30 years in order to qualify for World Bank loans.

These include privatization of resources and privatization of social services, like water systems, prohibitions against spending government money to provide health care or education, fiscal rules guaranteeing that international investors are paid before anybody else, and of course "national treatment" of multinational corporations so that no preference is given to hiring local workers or contracting with local companies, let alone ensuring any modicum of local content in products assembled in "Free Trade Zones" by sweatshop labor.

re: "An Even Poorer World " (9/2/2008)