Ok… Wolfie’s girlfriend is an embarrassment, but I’m still a’wondering — why is Wolfie at the World Bank? What’s this cadre have cooking over there??
The World Bank is there for one little discussed purpose: to provide high risk / high return loans to countries that cannot afford to pay them off / will not pay off because their governments are (about 89% of the time) kleptocracies.
Invariably the loans always go bad. Invariably the taxpayers of Western nations are stuck with the tab, paying-off the loans either directly, or — more often — indirectly via guarantees and freshly printed currency from their own central banks (e.g. inflation) which is contributed to the World Bank.
That said, the mega banking institutions behind these loans win no matter what. They get big profits on risk loans. When said loans go bad, we are all told “if we don’t bail them out, 1) we’re greedy Westerners, and 2) the economy will collapse if the banks actually have to cover the losses on the risky loans that they and their buddies at the World Bank financed because there will be an ensuing credit contraction. Time and again it has happened, and under many different administrations (lest we forget the great Mexico… er… Wall Street Bailout of 1993 under Clinton / Rubin.)
NOTE: as you read we are seeing a distant cousin to this racket in the U.S. through mortgage market. As anyone reading the financial press over the last few months knows, tons of ill-advised sub-prime loans financed via (and because of) a rapid expansion of money supply are going bad. Originating banks and those dealing in the derivatives markets have made a ton of $$ on the transactions, but now the current holders of the debt are crapping their pants. But don’t sweat it!!! There is talk in Congress of bailing out the sub-prime borrower who didn’t know any better. Who will cover the costs? Not the Wall Street crowd who received record bonuses in 2006, I’ll guarantee you. It’ll be Joe six pack and Lucy lunch pail paying for it as prices continue to grow higher at the pump and at the grocery market.
All that said, surely my comments are tangential to the Wolfie’s girlfriend thing… but it should raise a trail as to why Wolfie was positioned at the World Bank. Detractors of this administration pay lots of attention to the oil interest in the mid East, but very little to the banking / finance side of things. It is not terribly elegant / original, but always follow the $$$ — and especially money of those who are capable of printing the stuff quite literally out of thin air…
There used to be a few people in government who understood what that meant – and fought the whole idea, but now too many are hooked on its byproduct like crack.
To quote Henry Ford, “It is well that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”
Maybe. But with all this lethargy and indifference to BushCo, et. al., probably not.
But you guys who are digging through the buried bones, don’t forget who finances this War, among so many other things. Don’t forget where the current Treasury Secretary — and a few past ones — have been hired from… follow THAT money, too.
