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WASHINGTON — Members of the World Bank agreed on Sunday to support a $5.1 billion increase in its operating capital, the largest increase in general financing since 1988, and to give developing economies a greater say in running the antipoverty institution.
Robert B. Zoellick, president of the World Bank, said members began to see last year that the bank would need more capital.
Under the changes, China will become the bank’s third-largest shareholder, ahead of Germany, after the United States and Japan. Countries like Brazil, India, Indonesia and Vietnam will also have greater representation.
“We are grateful to our shareholding countries for this strong vote of confidence,” the bank’s president, Robert B. Zoellick, said at the conclusion of the spring meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
The bank’s 186 members also agreed to support a reform package that calls for greater openness and disclosure of information and improvements in managing risks and measuring results.
The World Bank has made $105 billion in financial commitments since July 2008 in response to the global economic turmoil. The new capital in essence allows the World Bank to maintain its programs at their level before the crisis.
“We could start to see this last year, at the time of our annual meeting, that unless we could get additional capital infusion, we wouldn’t be able to continue this high lending volume,” Mr. Zoellick said in an interview on Friday. “And indeed, even coming out of the crisis, we would be in a position where we’d have to come back below precrisis levels.”
In a Global Monitoring Report, released Friday, the bank reported that the economic crisis had slowed the pace of poverty reduction in developing countries. As a result of the crisis, 53 million more people will remain in extreme poverty by 2015 than otherwise would have, the report found. Even so, the report projected that the number of people in extreme poverty — defined as living on less than $1.25 a day — would be 920 million in 2015, a significant decline from the 1.8 billion in 1990.
Some developing countries sought a bigger capital increase, as other development banks have received. But the wealthier nations, which are squeezed, resisted such a move.
Timothy F. Geithner, the United States Treasury secretary, said Mr. Zoellick had “made a strong and compelling case” for the money that was approved. He pledged to seek Congressional support for the United States’ share of the capital increase, $586 million or about $117 million a year for five years.
“For every dollar the United States contributes to paid-in capital for the World Bank, $26 worth of assistance is delivered,” Mr. Geithner said Sunday.
Mr. Zoellick carefully devised the capital increase and voting changes to be adopted together.
The $5.1 billion in so-called paid-in capital, which the bank can use for day-to-day operations, will bring the bank’s cash on hand to about $40 billion. Of the $5.1 billion, developing countries will contribute $1.6 billion in connection with a shift in representation that will give them 47.19 percent of voting power, up from 44.06 percent. The actions fulfill a pledge the bank’s members made in Istanbul in October.
In 2008, the bank’s members approved a smaller shift of 1.46 percent of voting power to the developing countries from the wealthy ones and added a 25th seat on the bank’s governing board, raising to three the number of seats for sub-Saharan Africa.
All told, the cumulative shift of 4.59 percent of voting power amounts to the greatest realignment in representation at the World Bank since 1988.
“As the developing countries gain more shares, they have to pay for them,” Mr. Zoellick said in the interview. “Part of the good story here is a burden-sharing story.”
The bank’s members approved on Sunday an $86.2 billion general capital increase, bringing the bank’s total subscribed capital, not counting about $26 billion in reserves, to $276.1 billion. But except for the $5.1 billion, that new money is “callable capital,” which resides with the member countries but can be drawn upon in an emergency. (The bank has never had to do so.) The callable capital lets the bank enjoy a top-notch credit rating and borrow at favorable rates. All but roughly $40 billion of the $276.1 billion is callable.
The bank’s members said it should redouble its focus on helping the poor, especially in sub-Saharan Africa; invest in agriculture and infrastructure; promote global “collective action” on climate change, trade and other priorities; combat corruption; and prepare for crises.
Mr. Zoellick, who served as the United States trade representative and then as deputy secretary of state under President George W. Bush, said in the interview that the less wealthy countries were leading the global economic recovery, while the United States, Europe and Japan had rebounded more slowly.
“A lot of growth is coming from the developing world, and so the financing we do in the developing world is now beyond charity and social solidarity — it’s a question of self-interest,” he said. “They have become sources of demand.”
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Gen. Odierno speaks to Heritage about the progress made in Iraq and the challenges that lay ahead: Progress in Iraq: Facts and Analysis www.heritage.org
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When It Came to Rioting Anarchists, Clinton Said Violent People Aren’t Representative
Posted on 26. Apr, 2010 by Tim Graham.
Brent Bozell’s column last week pointed out that Bill Clinton loved to suggest conservative talkers spurred violent extremists, but he didn’t exactly call out left-wing protesters for extreme tactics, as in the "Battle for Seattle" in 2000. To those who caused millions of dollars in economic damage to the city through rioting, Clinton said: "I don’t think anybody in America should take what a few violent people did as in any way representative of this community or of the people who are here for peaceful protests."
Maybe Bill could say the same for the Tea Parties instead of demeaning them as setting the stage for future violence, when their events haven’t included rioting on their program? Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist Paul Greenberg offered these thoughts in the wake of the Seattle riots in 2000:
Meanwhile, Bill Clinton visited Seattle inside his presidential bubble and went through his ceremonial speech as if everything was just hunky-dory outside the hall. But on the littered streets of downtown Seattle, under acrid clouds of tear gas, the only thing clear was chaos.
The president remained cool, calm, and out of it. He could have been Richard Nixon trying to get through downtown Caracas in ‘58. By now Bill Clinton must be developing some fellow feeling for Poor Richard, another president who wound up insulated from reality, roaming around in his own fantasy world, and dodging mobs.
Clio, muse of history, can choose from an elaborate menu when she serves up her daily offering, but her specialty at Seattle has been irony. Make that a whole smorgasbord of ironies. It cannot escape even Bill Clinton, who once organized protests against his country’s policies, that he now finds himself the target of such protests.
Let this much be said for the rioters: For all their economic illiteracy and malevolent intensity, they’re not just staying behind the scenes. They’re not distancing themselves from their actions in order to preserve their, yes, political viability. That’s what Bill Clinton did in his youth. And it worked. He got to be president of the United States, so now he gets to ignore the realities he has set in motion, and travel like a fugitive through a riotous city. Congratulations.
Richard Nixon would know all about that. As for Clio, she’s smiling that tight little smile again, as if she never grew tired of these games, as if there were always another generation of political climbers to teach the same lesson to.
Talk about being eyeless in Seattle: Note the comments of Marion Berry, the ever-observant congressman from the First District of Arkansas. He’s part of the American delegation at this party that’s turned into a nightmare, and he might as well be in Peoria. Rioting, what rioting? Mob, what mob? "It’s just a very large crowd with a few rapscallions," he assured the Democrat-Gazette’s Susan Roth, "but it has been generally quite orderly."
Uh huh. Congressman Berry might tell that to the police and protesters–or to Seattle’s mayor, who has declared an emergency, decreed a curfew, and requested the National Guard. Just a few rapscallions? At last report, 246 protesters were under arrest, and the outnumbered cops were using tear gas, pepper gas and rubber bullets to clear the streets.
The congressman might try telling his story to Andrew Whisenhunt, the president of the Arkansas Farm Bureau. He was in Seattle as chairman of the American Farm Bureau’s committee on international trade, and was trapped by the mob. He and a couple of colleagues were trying to get back to their hotel when they were surrounded, cussed, pushed and spat on before they got away. It figures. They were wearing the uniform of the enemy: a business suit and tie.
Do you think Congressman Berry was reporting from the same Seattle? Could he have mistakenly taken the wrong plane and wound up in Vancouver, British Columbia? Or somewhere else at a safe remove from international conferences and the Clinton administration’s magic touch? Or is the congressman the sort who could have attended the riotous Democratic National Convention in Chicago back in ‘68 and heard nothing but the committee reports?
Meanwhile, the work of this gabfest-under-fire winds down at Seattle. The dignitaries come and go when and if they can, while the Clinton administration pursues its most evident policy: See no evil, hear no evil, trade with evil.
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A longshoreman in Portland, Ore., Kevin Weldon, preparing to unload soda ash for export. Exports swelled in the first two months of the year by nearly 15 percent compared with a year earlier, according to the Commerce Department.
PORTLAND, Ore. — The docks are humming again at this sprawling Pacific port, with clouds of golden dust billowing off the piles of grain spilling into the bellies of giant tankers.
Shoppers at a Gap store in Manhattan. Retail sales increased by 9.1 percent in March at established stores compared with a year earlier, according to Thomson Reuters.
“Things are looking up,” said Dan Broadie, a longshoreman. No longer killing time at the union hall while waiting for work, instead he is guiding a mechanized spout pouring 44,000 tons of wheat into the Arion SB, bound for the Philippines.
At malls from New Jersey to California, shoppers are snapping up electronics and furniture, as fears of joblessness yield to exuberance over rising stock prices. Tractor trailers and railroad cars haul swelling quantities of goods through transportation corridors, generating paychecks for truckers and repair crews.
On the factory floor, production is expanding, a point underscored by government data released Friday showing a hefty increase in March for orders of long-lasting manufactured items. In apartment towers and on cul-de-sacs, sales of new homes surged in March, climbing by 27 percent, amplifying hopes that a wrenching real estate disaster may finally be releasing its grip on the national economy.
After the worst downturn since the Great Depression, signs of recovery are mounting — albeit tinged with ambiguity. Despite worries that American consumers might hunker down for years — spooked by debt, lost savings and unemployment — thriftiness has given way to the outlines of a new shopping spree: households are replacing cars, upgrading home furnishings and amassing gadgets.
Many economists estimate that consumer spending — which makes up some 70 percent of American economic activity — swelled by 4 percent during the first three months of the year, more than the double the pace once anticipated. Some have nudged upward their estimates for economic growth to more than 3 percent this year.
“Consumers are showing extraordinary resilience,” said Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist at the Economic Outlook Group. “There’s a lot of pent-up demand out there that is now being unleashed. The whole supply chain system is now being revitalized.”
While few dispute signs of recovery across much of the economy, significant debate remains on how robust and sustained it will be. The lingering effects of the financial crisis have some economists envisioning a long stretch of sluggish growth.
But recent months have delivered a stream of news bolstering the notion of a more vigorous recovery. Technology companies have racked up substantial sales. After a decade of painful decline, manufacturing is tentatively adding jobs. Retail sales increased by 9.1 percent in March at established stores compared with a year earlier, according to Thomson Reuters, marking the seventh consecutive month of growth. Exports swelled in the first two months of the year by nearly 15 percent compared with a year earlier, according to the Commerce Department.
Still, much of the improvement appears the result of the nearly $800 billion government stimulus program. As that package is largely exhausted late this year, further expansion may hinge on whether consumers keep spending. That probably depends on the job market, which remains weak.
“The recovery is under way, and it’s better than expected, but it hasn’t become self-sustaining because the job market hasn’t developed yet,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com. “I don’t think we’re there yet.”
In a sign of the anxieties still gnawing at households, the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index this month plunged to a preliminary level of 69.5 compared with 73.6 in March.
Still, even that number represented a substantial gain over the record low of 55.3 reached in November 2008. And many economists dismiss such surveys as indicative of what people think, as opposed to what they do.
What they are doing increasingly is shopping.
“I’m certainly interested in spending now that the stock market seems so relaxed,” said Dan Schrenk, an information technology consultant, as he stood outside a Best Buy store in the Portland suburb of Beaverton.
Last year, Mr. Schrenk’s income declined as local companies put off servicing computer systems. He and his wife cut back on dinners out and purchases.
But in recent weeks, Mr. Schrenk’s stock portfolio has expanded. He has picked up five new clients.
“I’m feeling very optimistic,” he said. “People are just far more interested in spending money.”
So, there he was, shopping for an iPad.
On the other side of the country, at the Garden State Plaza mall in Paramus, N.J., Marie Bauer, who sells clothing for a living, was feeling similarly emboldened.
“I’m working more now,” she said. “I bought myself a watch.”
Mr. Goodman reported from Portland, Ore. Stephanie Rosenbloom contributed reporting from Paramus, N.J., Ashlee Vance from San Francisco, and Michael Parrish from Los Angeles.
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W. Willard Wirtz, an outspoken champion of the unemployed who was secretary of labor under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson and was the last surviving member of the Kennedy cabinet, died on Saturday. He was 98.
W. Willard Wirtz
He died of natural causes at his home in Washington, his son Philip said.
An unabashed liberal who was labor secretary from 1962 to 1969, Mr. Wirtz expanded job-training programs, increased unemployment assistance for those who lost jobs to foreign trade, created literacy programs for workers and criticized construction unions’ bias against blacks.
His concern about the troubles older workers faced led to the passage of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act in 1967. To fight unemployment, he proposed, unsuccessfully, changing overtime pay to double pay instead of time-and-a-half to encourage companies to hire more workers instead of heaping overtime on those already employed.
Inspired by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s concern for the downtrodden, he said in an end-of-year quote in 1963 — it became the Quotation of the Day in The New York Times — “May 1964 be a year when the great majority of Americans who are secure and busy think clearly of the minority who are not.”
Mr. Wirtz led the Labor Department in an era when the federal government took a more muscular approach to managing the economy and organized labor was far stronger. He vowed not to spend most of his time as secretary intervening to resolve the era’s many strikes and threatened strikes. He wanted instead to focus on helping the unemployed, the poor, the victims of discrimination.
Nonetheless, he was pulled into myriad labor disputes, trying to resolve a New York City newspaper strike, helping head off a strike by machinists at Boeing and helping to resolve a nationwide rail strike.
The current labor secretary, Hilda L. Solis, said Mr. Wirtz’s work in implementing the anti-discrimination laws passed under Johnson helped pave the way for her to become the first Hispanic labor secretary.
“As President Johnson’s general in the war on poverty, he initiated an array of programs to help at-risk youth, older workers and the hardcore unemployed,” Ms. Solis said Sunday.
Mr. Wirtz was nearly forced out when he clashed publicly with Johnson by speaking out against the bombing of North Vietnam. Johnson demanded that he resign in October 1968, but days later the president sent two aides to persuade him to stay, worried that Mr. Wirtz’s resignation would embarrass the president and hurt Hubert H. Humphrey, the Democratic presidential nominee, in that year’s election.
“For two or three years, I was very close to Lyndon Johnson,” Mr. Wirtz told National Public Radio in 2008. “And then in about 1966 or 1967, I began to have a feeling that his Vietnam War program did not make sense and should be stopped and wrote him to that effect. That was the end of the close relationship.”
William Willard Wirtz was born March 14, 1912, in DeKalb, Ill., the first child of William Wilbur Wirtz and Alfa Bell White Wirtz. He used his middle name to avoid confusion with his father.
He graduated from Beloit College in 1933 and from Harvard Law School in 1937.
On Sept. 6, 1936, he married Mary Jane Quisenberry, who became chairwoman of Goodwill Industries in the 1970s. She died in 2002.
Besides his son Philip, of Washington, he is survived by another son, Richard, of Knoxville, Tenn.; two sisters, Frances Weeks of Ann Arbor, Mich., and Kathryn Gude of McLean, Va.; and three grandchildren.
After Harvard, Mr. Wirtz spent two years as a law professor at the University of Iowa, hired by Wiley Rutledge, then the dean and later a Supreme Court justice. He then taught law at Northwestern University, where one of his students was John Paul Stevens, later a Supreme Court justice.
In World War II, he was assistant general counsel for the Board of Economic Welfare and later worked for the War Labor Board.
He became an adviser and speechwriter to Adlai E. Stevenson, who was the Democratic presidential nominee in 1952 and 1956. In 1957, he became a partner in the Chicago law firm Stevenson, Rifkind & Wirtz.
From 1946 to 1961, he often worked as a mediator and arbitrator. He became under secretary of labor in January 1961 and was appointed secretary in September 1962, the day after Johnson nominated his predecessor, Arthur Goldberg, to the Supreme Court.
After leaving government, Mr. Wirtz opened an office in Washington, doing some arbitration, becoming a trustee of the troubled Penn Central railroad and becoming president of the Manpower Institute, which pushed labor, industry and government to resolve workplace problems.
In trying to help the nation’s workers more than four decades ago, Mr. Wirtz faced many of the same challenges officials face today, among them automation and intensified global competition.
In an article in The New York Times Magazine in November 1962, he recommended an upbeat response to such challenges: “Tomorrow belongs to those who face the fact of change honestly, squarely, eagerly — who go forward to meet it — who see change as an essential quality of growth.”
