首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
The World Bank’s Real Problem The World Bank is undeniably in crisis. But not because its president, Paul Wolfowitz, got his
The World Bank’s Real Problem The World Bank is undeniably in crisis. But not because its president, Paul Wolfowitz, got his
admin
2020-05-01
71
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.
Which of the following can be inferred from the passage about the World Bank?
选项
A、Its anticorruption campaign is still going on.
B、It should readjust its role in combating poverty.
C、It has satisfied its initial job to finance reconstruction in Europe.
D、It is playing a more and more important role in lending to developing countries.
答案
B
解析
本文的主题是世行是否有必要继续存在下去。第六、第七和第八段说明了世行的历史、现状,以及今后的方向。由于马歇尔计划,世行成立之初的目的已成为多余。而近年来,给发展中国家贷款的净额大幅下跌,说明其贷款这一职能越来越不重要。第八段里,专家建议世行应在帮助贫穷国家摆脱贫困方面产生更大的影响。故B为正确答案。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/ErbK777K
0
专业英语八级
相关试题推荐
StructureoftheCanadianGovernmentI.Introduction—Canada’ssystemofgovernmentwasbasedontheBritishsystemofparliam
ReadingTipsI.Three【T1】______phasesofreading【T1】______—beforereading—duringreading—afterreadingⅡ.Pre-readingt
ThePurposesofLiteraryAnalysisI.IntroductionLiteraryanalysisisinitselfauniversalnecessity.—reason1:enablesrea
A、Thelinguisticpartofcomplaining.B、Theculturalbehaviorofbeingforthright.C、Takingaproductbacktoastore.D、Underst
(1)Afteralongdayattheoffice,manyofusfindourselvestakingoutourstressonfriends,children,orsignificantothers.
(1)It’sagoldenageforstudyinginequality.ThomasPiketty,aFrencheconomist,setthebenchmarkin2014whenhisbook,"Capi
(1)SocialmobilityintheU.K.couldbereversedunlessthegovernmentanduniversitiesmakechangestoencourageandpayform
Althoughthefirstyearisreallyimportantforlanguagedevelopmentinchildren,majorlearningcontinuesthroughoutachild’s
Itneverrainsbutitpours.Justasbossesandboardshavefinallysortedouttheirworstaccountingandcompliancetroubles,
Thefactthattheworld’scitiesaregettingmoreandmorecrowdedisawell-documenteddemographicfact.CitiessuchasTokyo
随机试题
某封隔器型号为Y341—114,其中114表示()。
简述《共产党宣言》的主要内容。
MIGA的投资促进业务包括()
A.咳嗽,或咳血,胸胁灼痛,易怒,伴见实火内炽之象B.腰膝酸软,胁痛,耳鸣遗精,眩晕,伴见虚热之象C.胸胁胀满,腹痛肠鸣,纳呆便溏D.胸胁、胃脘胀痛,或窜痛,呃逆嗳气E.泻痢浮肿,腰腹冷痛,伴见虚寒之象
A.患者教育欠缺B.沟通失误C.产品缺陷D.剂量计算错误E.给药时间、途径或剂型错误关于用药错误的原因错过正常的给药时间,错将口服或外用剂型注射给药导致的用药错误属于()。
(2010年)D触发器的应用电路如图8—77所示,设输出端Q的初值为0,那么在时钟脉冲CP的作用下,输出Q为()。
背景资料:某承包人承接了一段长为19km的高速公路路基工程。该项目位于微丘地区,路基填为土方。为确保项目的工期、质量、安全和成本,项目部制定了施工方案和一系列的规章制度。在路基施工中特别强调了土方路基施工的如下质量控制关键点:(1)施工
分部工程验收签证由()负责填写。
下列选项中。()表明投资者对公募基金合同的承认和接受。
古往今来,人们对于信息加密的探索从未停止。古时候,人们在信封上滴蜡盖上火印,但仍防不住有人拆开、读完再复原。现代,人们用电磁波传递秘密,但“音量”再低,也防不住精细的窃听。后来,科学家设法将“音量”调低到如此程度:只依靠一颗颗光子,任何窃密者去测量都会破坏
最新回复
(
0
)