Vice president of programs and senior fellow Todd Moss is quoted in a Financial Times article on funding for the global development banks.
In early June, the US Treasury department hosted a big celebration of the role played by multilateral development banks. Tim Geithner, the treasury secretary, said their projects “often go unrecognised despite their importance” – as his agency handed out, for the first time, four awards to the best projects chosen after a lengthy competition.
But the party was not just about rewarding the best work of the global development banks. It was also about marking the successful conclusion – six months earlier – of a capital increase for the banks of which the Obama administration was able to secure nearly 100 per cent of the funding it was asking for from Congress.
It had not been an easy ride.
With the US running annual budget deficits in excess of $1tn and Republicans and Democrats at loggerheads over many aspects of fiscal policy, it was a bigger struggle than usual to secure the required monies.
“It was a major accomplishment,” says Lael Brainard, undersecretary of the Treasury for international affairs. “What is remarkable is the bipartisan support we got in Congress.”
Todd Moss, vice-president for programmes at the Center for Global Development in Washington, says it was not just in the US that the desire to fund the banks was harder to muster, but across the developed world. “It was a very big lift because everyone was facing their own financial crisis,” Mr Moss says.
Ultimately, however, the funds from the US were approved just before Christmas last year. The Obama administration’s determination may have played a role in ensuring a successful outcome, suggests Ms Brainard: “The president made a very fundamental commitment to these institutions because he could see their value from his first days in office.”