The poorest developing countries are confronting a huge rise in extreme poverty and hunger, alongside a looming debt crisis that limits their ability to do much fiscal stimulus.
But Mnuchin has no interest in any additional aid.
The blithe double standard is just so plain here.
Mnuchin actually spends paragraphs boasting about the size of America's own fiscal and monetary response to COVID... while in the very next breath, ruling out the idea of a much smaller economic package for much poorer countries.
There is just zero recognition here of the acute economic crisis at hand.
To add insult (and absurd geopolitics) to injury: this line really seems to align with rumors that the World Bank is blocking loans to crisis-affected poor countries who borrow from China.
And AYFKM? This sure reads like a suggestion to blacklist Huawei in World Bank procurement. That's Mnuchin's priority while 100m people fall into extreme poverty?
Just disgraceful.
In his seemingly friendly remarks about debt relief, Mnuchin conspicuously avoids the big question of participation by private creditors -- which is key, and which the IMF has already endorsed. IMF gets no back up here.
Well, the Bank's own projections show global poverty is rising for the first time in 2 decades -- and many poor countries have little or no fiscal space to respond.
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@duggan_julian@Morris_ScottA Meanwhile, World Bank President David Malpass (Trump's nominee) has dropped hints he's going to drag his feet -- and wants to make COVID relief conditional on "structural reforms".
@JoshZumbrun Note the Saudis *pay* the World Bank for consulting services to improve their "investment climate" -- creating a potential conflict of interest with their ranking in Doing Business. worldbank.org/en/country/gcc…
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@JoshZumbrun Coincidentally perhaps (and shortly after Trump's nominee David Malpass became World Bank president, and agreed to attend MBS's "Davos in the Desert"), Saudi Arabia was crowned as the world's "top reformer" on Doing Business.
Apropos of nothing.... there's a fascinating economics literature on the long-term consequences of the 1918 Spanish Flu.
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Roughly a third of the world population contracted the Spanish flu, and it killed somewhere between 50 and 100 million people. Almost 20m in India alone. That's cataclysmic. birdflubook.org/resources/NIAL…
But the long-term effects from in utero exposure are also pretty daunting.
Nope. Circa 1980, the 1918 birth cohort still showed
- Increased male disability
- Reduced high school graduation
- Increased welfare reliance for minorities and women
"aid disbursements to highly aid dependent countries coincide with sharp increases in bank deposits in offshore financial centers known for bank secrecy and private wealth management" nielsjohannesen.net/wp-content/upl… by @jorgenja et al