Any corrupt official or company who siphons money from the World Bank’s development assistance fund will now be publicly exposed, wrote a statement by the international financial institution on May 30th, following the inaugural publication of a set of decisions issued by the World Bank Group’s Sanctions Board in cases of alleged fraud and corruption.
Rumours suggest that the US is likely to insist on maintaining the perverse selection process in which it gets to pick the World Bank’s president. But while Jim Yong Kim may be a good candidate, no single country should effectively decide who gets the job. Should America continue to insist on controlling the selection process, it is the Bank itself that would suffer.
The BRICS nations must be united in backing a single nominee as the next World Bank president, said Brazil’s finance minister Guido Mantega on Thursday.
Though Mantega was speaking after a meeting with the US nominee Jim Yong Kim, he insisted that his government had not made up its mind on whom it would back; and he would try to seek a consensus among all the BRICS as to whom the best candidate for the post should be.
Until now, the United States had been given a kind of carte blanche to nominate anyone it wanted to the World Bank presidency. That is how the Bank ended up with several inappropriate leaders, including several bankers and political insiders who lacked the knowledge and interest to lead the fight against poverty. But the nomination now of Jim Yong Kim could be a breakthrough for the US, and most importantly, the World Bank.
The Korea-U.S. free trade agreement, first signed in 2007, has come into effect with the leaders of both countries calling it a good economic model that will help boost the strategic partnership between the two sides. However, activists are worried that South Korea’s agriculture and services industry might be compromised with the trade pact.
The World Bank’s central mission, when it was established in 1944, was to reduce global poverty and ensure that global development was environmentally sound and socially inclusive. However, since then the Bank has only served as an extension of US foreign policy and commercial interests.
NEW YORK – The world is at a crossroads. Either the global community will join together to fight poverty, resource depletion, and climate change, or it will face a generation of resource wars, political instability, and environmental ruin.
With Robert Zoellick departing in June as President of the World Bank, the Bank requires a new selection process that will enable it to choose the most qualified person, regardless of nationality. More importantly, it needs to identify the qualifications needed to run the Bank at a time when its role must be adapted to far-reaching global changes.
China and India could be the next economies bound for an imminent crash, claimed a report by Barclays Capital Research on Wednesday – whose annual Skyscraper Index survey cite an “unhealthy correlation” between the construction of skyscrapers and economic slowdowns.
The United States Treasury has once again raised objections over the Japanese yen and the Chinese yuan, but has stopped short of labelling China a currency manipulator.
The statements, recorded in a semiannual currency report, comes after China and Japan announced a wide-ranging currency accord on Christmas day, mostly aimed at giving the Chinese yuan a more prominent role in international trade.
The key highlight from the currency accord involves the promotion of a direct yen-yuan trade, rather than converting their currencies to the dollar.
The U.S. Senate has approved a bill that would increase the pressure on China and other countries to allow the value of their currencies to rise; in a move that supporters have said would create American jobs but that both American and Chinese leaders have warned could lead to a trade war.
