Ideas to Action:
Independent research for global prosperity
Advocates for a competitive, meritocratic selection process for the President of the World Bank are dead right. Allowing the White House to just pick is deeply unfair, inefficient, and a relic of a by-gone age. But why stop there? Here’s my list of international patronage anachronisms that should also go:
Good question as the world prepares for the September summit to assess progress. But this is a slightly odd debate here at The Africa Report. The UN Millennium Promise’s Charles Abugre Akelyira seems to think the MDGs are a rejection of economic policy reform:
This is a joint post with Benjamin Leo.
A special new lending facility was announced in July 2009 with the objective of providing up to $17 billion in new loans through 2014 and, to entice cash-strapped borrowers, the lender is waiving interest payments for the first two years. This may sound like dangerous new short-term teaser offers for sub-prime borrowers. But this isn’t coming from Countrywide Financial. It actually is a new IMF facility for low-income countries, including some of heavily indebted poor countries (HIPCs) who are just barely coming out of the last debt crisis.
The stated objectives of the new IMF facility are laudable: to offset the effects of the global economic crisis by boosting international reserves and supporting adjustment policies. And yes, the overall terms are more concessional than past IMF loans. Nonetheless, the net impact on national debt levels may be significant. And it was just four years ago that the IMF committed to cancel roughly $6 billion in bad loans to many of these very same countries.
CGD president Nancy Birdsall urged the United States to exercise leadership at the upcoming G20 Summit in Pittsburgh in a speech today at the Center for Global Development.
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