Pinstripes and poverty
Wayne Ellwood evaluates the World Bank's efforts to relieve Third World poverty.

Me-first madness
A behind-the-scenes glimpse into the world's largest development agency. By Davison Budhoo.

The bottom line
A new World Bank recruit learns on the job. Cartoon drawn by Jim Needle.

Greenspeak
The Bank says it has seen the Green light. Bruce Rich examines the evidence.

Damage control
India's Sardar Sarovar Dam project is ruining thousands of lives. Satinath Surangi interviews some of those affected.

THE WORLD BANK-THE FACTS

You can't eat flowers
Bob Carty on the demise of Costa Rica's small farmers.

Higglers, hagglers and empty stomachs
World Bank adjustment policies put women and children last. A report from Jamaica by Joan Ross Frankson.

Simply... Voodoo economics

Reaching for riches
Poland's flirtation with unfettered capitalism may end in tears, writes Daniel Singer.

OK, I admit it, I don't like banks. I don't like the way they make you queue up for the privilege of putting your money in their hands. I don't like the way the tellers gossip over coffee while my lunch-hour ticks away (can someone tell me why banks open from 10 am to 3 pm when the rest of us work from 9 to 5?). And I don't like the fact that they extract ridiculous sums for the smallest transaction (it wouldn't surprise me if they soon started to charge admission).

Oh, and there's one more thing. Walking into a bank always makes me feel nervous, even vaguely guilty. I feel the same about customs officers at the airport. I think it has something to do with the trumped-up formality of petty officials in positions of power.

It must run in the family, because my grandfather felt the same way. Mind you he had good reason. Having struggled through the 'Great Depression' of the 1930s he was deeply suspicious of what he used to call 'the Bay Street boys' (Toronto's Bay Street is the Canadian equivalent of Wall Street in New York or London's financial district, the City).

He didn't trust banks and consequently he never used them. For years after he died my grandmother would report finding wads of $10 notes stuck behind the mantelpiece or crammed into an old pickle jar. He also disliked banks because they made money, not from productive work, but from other people's money.

Economists call this group of people the 'finance capital' sector. As I discovered producing this issue of NI the phantom realm of money manipulation has become more bizarre - and more unreal - since my grandfather's day. Millions of dollars in vagabond capital now flits instantaneously around the world with a few strokes on a computer keyboard. Competing countries feverishly jostle to raise interest rates, anxiously hoping to lure a few more dollars, Deutsch marks or yen in their direction.

For most of us the world of high finance is as unfamiliar as it is daunting - a secretive palace of privilege far removed from the mundane worries of everyday life. Dealing with the monthly mortgage, handling the car loan and worrying about pension payments is headache enough. Wading through the arcane language of the newspaper business pages is not most people's idea of a good time.

It's not mine either. But I must confess I don't breeze past the financial news with the disdain I used to before starting to research this issue on the World Bank. Economics is still a territory for the initiated. A lot of it is smoke-and-mirrors; the language is often needlessly obscure and painfully detailed. But there is no denying that spiralling interest rates and the silent search for profit now influences living standards from Melbourne to Montevideo. I'm more convinced than ever that the bankers and their government functionaries are responsible for much of the mess in which we find ourselves.

The World Bank, with its comrade-in-arms the International Monetary Fund, lives in a rarefied atmosphere, far removed from the eyes of a prying public. I hope this issue helps to take the lid off. Maybe (and here I'm sure my grandfather, even at his most contrary, would agree) it's time for us to bring the bankers down to earth.

Letters
Letter from La Paz
Update
Endpiece by Amorey Gethin
Reviews: including James Joyce classic
Country profile: Sri Lanka

FRONT COVER ILLUSTRATION: Hector Cattolica
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