The World Bank and its alms

Jul 02, 2021 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Fellow Guyanese, let us not beat around the bush. The World Bank is not a friend of Guyana. For when the World Bank, and others like it, bring their alms, they function as another very skillfully disguised arm of the foreign companies based in North America and Western Europe that rip-off poverty stricken underdeveloped countries. It is why we warn: the World Bank should be compared to Greeks bearing gifts.
Like the Greeks who took their Trojan horse inside the fortified Troy, grants and loans and emergency relief programmes and provisions made available are enticements for poor countries to let their guard down. Those charitable gifts have poisoned teeth, and are intended to lull Guyanese into a false sense of complacency, that all is well. All is not well, when the great bulk of this country’s oil and other natural resources wealth is being carted away to enrich already prosperous societies, while leaving the hungry and vulnerable poorer and more endangered than before.
All the leaders of the Word Bank are doing, with bright shiny smiles that light up the world of the unsuspecting, is to take the money of (the unwary and unwise and give them a small fraction of it back in the form of this and that aid. The way this works is that the rich countries benefit so much from how their highflying corporations and money managers perform and profit on the back and sweat and treasure of billions of poor people, coloured people, the world over that those advanced countries can turn around and contribute from their loaded Treasuries to the coffers of the World Bank. Their advanced societies have it so good that they can prop up financially the World Bank and others like it, which then give alms to needy societies. This is a vital aspect of a world class Ponzi scheme that robs the poor to give to the rich, who can then hold their noses and calm their consciences with a little charity amid much fanfare.
For those who think otherwise, we encourage a quick look at some of the past World Bank presidents. With a rare exception, they are either from that capitalist stronghold Wall Street, which many a Third World country regret having anything to do with; or very powerful figures from mainly that major American political force, the Republican party. The work of the World Bank cannot be trusted to outsiders, no matter how respected the economists may be, or how proven others are in different fields, and which their record supports unerringly.
To support our position, we offer a roster of the cream of the American Establishment that served as past World Bank presidents. They would put on their Top Hats and white gloves, and best faces, and deal benevolently with exploited coloured people around the globe, who don’t know better. It was then and remains today part of the charade. There was former president John J. McCloy, all the way back from the days of President Harry Truman, a renowned mover and shaker in the highest American power circles. Later, there came Paul Wolfowitz and Robert Zoellick, who were famed or notorious as Vulcans in President George W. Bush’s time; they were part of a radical neocon group that believed in the projection of American power, military and economic, to express most forcefully America’s foreign policy visions and interests. Before them came, that now departed Vietnam warhorse, the Ford whiz kid, Robert McNamara. And dotting the World Bank’s presidential red carpet were Lewis Preston, A.W. Clausen, and Eugene Black of JP Morgan, Bank of America, and Chase National Bank respectively.
We are sure that no Guyanese needs convincing that those names represent an honour guard of American corporate rapacity and the primacy of American economic and political supremacy globally. For those still thinking kindly of the charitable exercises of the World Bank to Guyana for COVID-19 and education and whatever else, these are the leaders who live by one mantra only: the biggest, richest return. What is best for America and American powerhouses, like Exxon and Schlumberger and Goldman Sachs. If any Guyanese thinks that World Bank generosity is enriching, then he or she should be quarantined full-time.

Discover more from Kaieteur News

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Latest News