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| Jim Yong Kim sahnede sergilediği dans gösterisi ile de gündeme gelmişti |
Dünya
Bankası’nın muhtemel Başkanı Jim Yong Kim’in başı bugünlerde yazdığı neoliberalizm’i
eleştiren bir kitap yüzünden ağrıyor. Financial Times’ın haberine göre kitapta yer
alan çalışmada ‘ Milli gelir ve şirketlerin karlarındaki artışın aslında
milyonlarca kadın ve erkeğin hayatını daha kötü etkilediği’ ortaya konuyor.
Konuyla ilgili New York Üniversitesi’nden William Easterly’nin yorumu ise
ilginç ‘Dr.Kim büyüme karşıtı ilk Dünya Bankası Başkanı olacak gibi görünüyor!’
Financial Times’in haberinin orjinalini okumak için haberin devamını
tıklayın...
Jim Yong Kim, the US nominee to head the World Bank,
is coming under fire over a book he co-authored that criticises “neoliberalism”
and “corporate-led economic growth”, arguing that in many cases they had made
the middle classes and the poor in developing countries worse off.
Some economists are arguing that Dying for Growth, jointly edited by Dr Kim and published
in 2000, puts too great a focus on health policy over broader economic growth. “Dr
Kim would be the first World Bank president ever who seems to be anti-growth,”
said William Easterly, professor of economics at New York University. “Even the
severest of World Bank critics like me think that economic growth is what we
want.”
Dr
Kim, who is president of Dartmouth College and a former head of the HIV/Aids
programme at the World Health Organisation, was a surprise pick for the top job
at the World Bank, which traditionally
goes to a US citizen.
Little is known about his views on economic policy because
his background is in health. But if he cannot set out a strong vision for how
the World Bank will fuel growth, it may boost the campaigns of heavyweight
rivals such asNgozi Okonjo-Iweala, the Nigerian finance
minister and former World Bank managing director.
Dr Kim’s book contains several inflammatory lines. For
example, the introduction, which he and two other academics co-authored, says:
“The studies in this book present evidence that the quest for growth in GDP and
corporate profits has in fact worsened the lives of millions of women and men.”
But colleagues of Dr Kim and officials at the US Treasury
said that when taken in context he was simply arguing that the distribution of
gains from economic growth decides whether it makes life better for the
poorest. They pointed out that such criticisms were widespread in the late
1990s and the World Bank had since changed its practices to take account of
them.
“Jim Kim is a brilliant man and fully understands the need
for economic growth. What we have said in the book is that economic growth, in
and of itself, is insufficient and will not automatically lead to a better life
for everyone,” said Joyce Millen, one of the co-editors of Dying for Growth, and associate
professor of anthropology at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon.
Tim Geithner, Treasury secretary, told Reuters that Dr Kim
“has an incredible feel for what matters most in development and recognizes
that for economies to grow they have to invest in expanding opportunities for
their people, in healthcare and in education. Those are lessons that the most
successful emerging and developing countries have learned and been forced to
learn, and in that sense he has the ideal feel. His experience comes from what
he has done in the field, not just from his academic research.”
The legal charter of the International Development Agency,
the part of the World Bank group dedicated to helping the poorest countries,
says its purpose is “to promote economic development, increase productivity and
thus raise standards of living in the less-developed areas of the world”.
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