24 march 2012, bank on it

I often correct people who think that I worked in a bank, that actually I worked in a central bank. Even more different is the world bank, whose new president looks like being jim yong kim, a south korean born american academic, and an astute pick by obama. Of the bretton woods twins, I have a very much closer association with the imf. However, it's actually the world bank I have probably been more interested in, from my period at the united nations and my ongoing interest in development and human rights, which has in these last years taken a back seat to my family and my work. Whilst it is the imf that has the main role to play in squaring the macroeconomic circle, it is the world bank that needs to pick up the human pieces of poverty, inequality and recession, which is what makes the asian health specialist a sensible shift. There is no shortage of work for the "bank" to do: two in five females are aborted due to preference for a son, a sixth of girls die in early childhood, more than a third of women die in their reproductive period and 4 million a year go missing. 10, 000 staff cover more than 124 countries, so this is no small outfit, and a hugely important one in the world of development, providing the link as it does to money and global governance. The bretton woods institutions were founded to rebuild the shattered world of 1945, to ensure international economic cooperation so that the eventual results of the depression, fascism and war, did not come about again. The design, mainly of british economist john maynard keynes (to plan b or not to b), has proved a durable one. In today's circumstances, it still has a big job to do.