Search results for ""Author Éric Toussaint""

The World Bank is a controversial organisation. It is widely viewed with suspicion, as the international economic arm of the US, in thrall to the President who is responsible for appointing the head of the Bank. Eric Toussaint gives a highly readable account of just why the World Bank has become so powerful. In short, clear chapters he shows how the bank operates, who funds it, and what it sets out to promote. The Bank's main purpose is to grant loans to all the newly independent states of the developing world, to help them on their journey to recovery after colonial occupation. In reality, the conditions imposed on these states - including enforced privatisation of all public services, and enforced neo-liberal rules on trade - mean that the Bank has become the new colonial authority in everything but name.

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In the last decade neoliberal policies have created debt and global impoverishment on a massive scale. In this updated edition of his internationally recognised book, Toussaint traces the origins and development of the crisis in global finance.

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In 1944, the Bretton Woods Conference ushered in a new international economic order. The World Bank emerged as one of the most powerful financial institutions in the world, and a new colonial authority in all but name. But how does it operate, who funds it, and what agenda does it work to promote? In The World Bank: A Critical History, Eric Toussaint answers all of these questions and more. Offering up a highly readable yet uniquely authoritative account, the book analyses the World Bank from its beginnings to the present day. Chapters on gender, climate and the pandemic era complement the peerless research that informed Toussaint's 2007 classic, The World Bank: A Critical Primer, and provide the reader with a truly contemporary, definitive text. Seven international case studies illustrate the impact of World Bank policy, and Toussaint also explores the political, economic and strategic motives of the US government with regard to the World Bank. The book concludes with a proposal for replacing the World Bank, IMF and WTO with new, multilateral and democratic institutions.

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