International Monetary Fund

Cathleen Falsani 3-23-2012
 Photo via Getty Images.

Dr. Jim Yong Kim, nominee for president of the World Bank, at the White House Friday 3/23/12. Photo via Getty Images.

In a move that surprised many in the world of economics and politics, on Friday morning President Obama nominated Jim Yong Kim, the South Korea-born physician, anthropologist and president of Dartmouth College, to be the next president of the World Bank.

Prior to taking the helm at Dartmouth in 2009, Kim, 52, led the global health and social medicine department at Harvard Medical School, of which he is a graduate. Widely considered one of the leading minds in world health, Kim also has served as a director of the HIV/AIDS department at the World Health Organization, where he focused on helping developing countries improve treatment and prevention programs.

Obama called Kim, “an innovative leader whose groundbreaking work to fight disease and combat poverty has saved lives around the globe.” The President said Kim is exceptionally well qualified for the position but brings “more to the role than an impressive record of designing new ways to solve entrenched problems.

“Development is his lifetime commitment, and it is his passion,” Obama said. “And in a world with so much potential to improve living standards, we have a unique opportunity to harness that passion and experience at the helm of the World Bank.”

Jim Wallis 5-26-2011
It's a constant storyline in the media involving powerful men in politics, sports, business, and even religion: Men behave with utter disregard for the dignity and humanity of women -- using and ab
Hannah Lythe 10-14-2010
In April 2009, following the global financial crisis in late 2008, leaders of the G20 (the world's 19 largest economies plus the European Union) designated the http://blog.sojo.net/tag/int
Hayley Hathaway 2-02-2010
Over the last few weeks, we have seen an incredible international response to the tragic earthquake in Haiti. U.S. citizens are generously giving; the U.S.
Alfonso Wieland 1-19-2010
[En español] Haiti is an example of how both flesh and bones politicians as well as countries can look convincingly l
Alfonso Wieland 1-19-2010
[English version] Haití es ejemplo de cómo los políticos de carne y hueso pero también las nacio
Hayley Hathaway 9-22-2009
As pundits and politicians wield fighting words over the domestic health-care crisis, another group is getting ready to combat a different crisis -- one which, unless it's resolved quickly, will ca
Hayley Hathaway 6-04-2009
Earlier last month, President Obama requested $108 billion in new money for the International Monetary Fund to show the world that we stood up for our commitments to fighting the global recession.
Bob Goudzwaard 6-01-2009

How the out-of-control buying and selling of money led to our current crisis.

Elizabeth Palmberg 5-01-2007
Trade technocrats try to hide behind a veil of boring, but you can get beyond the jargon.
The IMF/World Bank protests raised long-neglected issues.
Martin Wroe 5-01-2000

It might seem odd to describe Hamsatou, a 13-year-old girl in the West African country of Niger, as lucky. A mysterious flesh-eating disease known as "the Grazer" has consumed the left side of her face, leaving a gaping hole at the side of her nose, through which you can see her pink, unprotected tongue. She shields her head in embarrassment in her village, has no prospect of marriage, and rarely walks further than the nearby well. "When I go to the market," she says, "I'm ashamed of myself. I cover my face so people won't stare at me and laugh."

But Hamsatou is lucky because she is alive. One in three children in Niger, the world's poorest country, do not reach 5 years of age. And while the Grazer will kill 120,000 children in the world this year, a $3 mouthwash would have ensured she need never have succumbed to its ravages. Unfortunately the government of Niger does not have $3 to spare. Three quarters of its annual tax revenue is spent on servicing its $1.4 billion international debt.

CUT TO NAIROBI, KENYA, where Anthony Minghella, Oscar-winning director of The English Patient, is working with a team of six local actors on a short film. Minghella is acutely aware that many pictures beamed from developing countries into the homes of richer countries have lost their emotional power. "We have been saturated by images of starving children surrounded by flies, calculated to elicit sympathy. They don't speak to us anymore." But when Minghella—and his friend Richard Curtis, the writer of Four Weddings and A Funeral and Notting Hill—met the British Chancellor Gordon Brown, as part of the Jubilee 2000 campaign to cancel Third World debt, they realized that maybe a film could tackle the underlying structures of poverty—without anaesthetizing the viewer. The result, an hors d'oeuvres to last summer's Hollywood blockbusters in British cinema, opens with an African family scratching a living from selling peanuts and making model planes from coat hangers. At days end, the family members pool their meager earnings. Leaving their house they are transported—by the magic of film—to Waterloo Bridge in London and thence to a suburban street. Here they knock on the doors of strangers, introducing themselves—and giving back to these people the money they owe them.

Judy Coode 5-01-2000

In spring 1995, before the debt crisis was a front-page story, a small group of people representing mainline Protestant churches, peace churches, and Catholic orders and organizations met in Washington, D.C., to brainstorm about creative and effective ways that the U.S. church community could challenge the policies of the international financial institutions. The upstart, ad-hoc group named itself the Religious Working Group on the World Bank & IMF (RWG).

The mandate of the RWG—most of whose members had close contact with people living and working in the "Two Thirds" World—extended across a spectrum of economic justice issues, particularly structural adjustment programs and the debt. However, members soon realized that the crushing debt of the world’s most impoverished countries was a priority and deserved extra attention. They also realized that to continue their work on debt, a strategy needed to be created that would include a broader base than Christian churches. Many members of the RWG were in contact with the coordinators of the Jubilee 2000/UK campaign, and when the British appealed to the folks in the United States to pick up the Jubilee banner, the RWG complied.

At the June 1997 G7 meeting in Denver, when the world’s seven richest countries gathered to discuss the world economic system, RWG members and others concerned about debt cancellation announced the formation of the Jubilee 2000/USA campaign. By December 1997, a campaign platform had been written, additional organizations recruited to join, and the first staff person hired.

Carol Welch 5-01-1998
Who profits from the Asia bailouts?