Bush's Hitman
At The World Bank
By Jude Wanniski
17 March, 2005
Wanniski.com
If
you really dont know what the World Bank is all about,
you would think that President Bush was joking in nominating Paul Wolfowitz
to be the new president of the Bank, replacing Jim Wolfensohn. One of
the chief architects of the Iraq war, Wolfowitz is a political theorist,
a 61-year-old man who spent most of his adult life at blackboards and
lecterns teaching students about international politics. He may know
how to operate an Automatic Teller Machine when in need of ready cash,
but he knows absolutely nothing about banking. Wolfensohn, who was a
New York investment banker before President Clinton named him to the
post a decade ago, at least knows something about banking. His partner
in New York, to which I suppose he will return, is Paul Volcker, the
former chairman of the Federal Reserve, our nations central bank.
Wolfie the Warrior, by contrast, is the lifetime sidekick, even protégé,
of Richard Perle, probably the most important intellectual in the service
of the military-industrial complex. If you want to know how Professor
Wolfowitz got the job, follow the money.
Thats what
the World Bank is all about. It was created as an adjunct of the United
Nations at the end of World War II, along with its brother institution,
the International Monetary Fund. On paper, its function was to lend
money to developing countries to help them grow. Its real job has been
to serve the interests of the major money-center banks and the multinational
corporations who make the big bucks in World Bank development projects.
The Bank, which is really a fund, persuades a poor country
like Ghana, for example, to build a new industrial complex in order
make stuff for export. It will lend the money to Ghana -- which it gets
from global taxpayers including you and me -- and arrange for the complex
to be built by one of the favored corporations in the military-industrial
complex. The list always includes Bechtel Corporation, Halliburton,
and Kellogg Brown & Root, a division of Halliburton. These outfits
go in and build the projects because the locals have no expertise.
In my January 23
memo in this space, Confessions
of an Economic Hit Man, , I remarked on the recent book
by John Perkins, who explains in some detail the mechanics of this gigantic
money machine. It not only promotes unnecessary industrial complexes
in Ghana, which rust away in bankruptcy when they prove to be uneconomic.
The aim of the military-industrial complex is not only industrial,
but also military. The name most closely associated with Halliburton,
of course, is Vice President Cheney, who was Defense Secretary in the
first Gulf War, with Paul Wolfowitz even then at his side (urging all-out
war with Iraq even after Saddam put up the white flag and retreated
to Baghdad before the war began!!) Rats.
The name most associated
with Bechtel is George P. Shultz, once its top dog, now a mere director.
Shultz was Treasury Secretary under Richard Nixon (helping talk him
into floating the U.S. dollar), Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan,
and currently a member of the Defense Policy Board, which until last
year Richard Perle chaired.
Shultz also introduced
Governor George W. Bush to Condoleezza Rice, who in turn introduced
Paul Wolfowitz to Governor Bush back in 1999. Shultz of course knew
at the time that Wolfie and Perle and their neo-con Cabal were planning
a war in Iraq, and we know nice, little doable wars (Wolfies
word), are meat and potatoes for the military-industrial complex. Instead
of squeezing nickels and dimes out of the taxpayers to persuade Ghana
to build a steel mill it doesnt need and cant run, even
little wars run into the billions. And everyone gets into the act. The
arms makers who produce airplanes, tanks, guns, jeeps and humvees get
to blow up a country (like Iraq) and Bechtel and Halliburton come in
right behind to rebuild it. In announcing the Wolfowitz appointment
today, President Bush said the World Bank is a big organization and
Wolfowitz has experience running a big organization, the Pentagon!!
As far as the military-industrial complex is concerned, Wolfowitz did
a FANTASTIC job. He was only expected to plan for a $30 billion war
and he screwed up so badly that it is now a $200 billion war, and counting.
Anyone who can screw up that badly deserves a promotion, to the World
Bank.
So you see it doesnt
really matter that Wolfowitz doesnt know the first thing about
banking or the economics of development projects. He will sit behind
the biggest desk at the Bank and take the telephone calls from the Big
Banks and the Multinationals, telling him what to do, and providing
him with experts like John Perkins, who did the actual dirty work as
an economic hit man, and now writes his confessions. When the White
House needs a big favor for one of its big hitters, it need only put
in a call to Wolfie, who will throw the right switch. Thats exactly
the way it worked with Jim Wolfensohn these past ten years, and if you
dont believe me, look around and you will note how many poor countries
got poorer during his reign, and how many big bucks were made at Bechtel
and Halliburton.
There will of course
be complaints from various global diplomats about the obvious incompetence
of Wolfowitz, just as there were puzzled head-scratchings around the
world about the incompetence of Condi Rice as Secretary of State or
John Bolton as UN Ambassador. But money talks in all the places where
the directors of the World Bank live, and they will be advised to clam
up by the local military-industrial money machines. Perle will also
have his pals at The Weekly Standard and Fox News speculate that when
Condi is President, Wolfie will be her veep (which is how it happened
we've seen talk of Condi for President in 2008). Nor can we expect any
complaints from Congress, because in one way or another there is too
much money at stake, too many reputations looking toward bigtime lobbying
jobs when its time to give up a seat in Congress.
If this seems harsh,
as if Im writing about something new under the rocks on which
our Uncle Sam perches, I suggest you read my 1978 book, The Way
the World Works, which describes how the British Empire worked
in exactly this fashion. My best example was the first multinational
corporations, the British railroad builders. Once they ran out of places
to build rail lines in the U.K., they persuaded Parliament to promote
railroads in the colonies, and were enormously successful in talking
the Raj into criss-crossing India with railroads in the mid-19th century.
It was one thing in England, where the companies could only build where
there was a clear sign the line would be profitable, because it was
their own money at risk. In India, the locals borrowed the money from
the Bank of England and hired the builders to put in rail lines that
couldnt possibly be profitable. India was burdened with debts
from these schemes well into the 20th century.
Even after it gained
independence in 1948, India was persuaded by British and American economists
to keep tax rates high and to devalue the rupee, to keep them poor and
unable to compete with the big guys. Who did the British and American
economists work for? Why the World Bank, of course, and also the IMF,
whose job is to go into the poor countries when they cant pay
back their loans, and lend them the money to do so -- as long as they
agree to raise taxes again, devalue their currency, and build new industrial
complexes that are constructed by Bechtel and Halliburton.
So you see why it
makes perfect sense to have Wolfowitz at the World Bank. Hes terrific
at doing wars, and wars are much more profitable than nickel-and-dime
industrial projects. Thats the way the world works. Always has
been.
Also Read
Confessions
Of An Economic Hit Man
By John Perkins & Amy Goodman