Robert Zoellick, President of the World Bank, and a man who believes that 2009 will be a “dangerous year”, will be speaking on March 31st and has agreed to take questions from Reuters readers.
Zoellick has been outspoken during the current economic crisis predicting the first shrinking of the economy since the ’30s, warning that increased government spending will simply create a ‘sugar high‘ until banks’ toxic assets are dealt with properly, and urging a tougher stand against protectionism.
But the World Bank’s primary focus is on helping developing nations and alleviating poverty. Earlier this month it published research showing that the spreading crisis will push 46 million more people into poverty in 2009 on top of 130-155 million pushed into poverty in 2008.
With the London summit of the Group of 20 nations on April 2nd fast approaching what do you want to know about the World Bank’s role in shoring up the world economy and helping poorer nations? Use the comments section below, or use the #askwb tag on Twitter, and I’ll get as many of your questions to Robert Zoeliick as possible.
UPDATE: This event has now taken place and you can view the questions we put to Robert Zoellick in the player below. We have no means to pass on any further questions to the World Bank but you are welcome to add your comments on the discussion thread below.
How closer have we come to eliminating world poverty and creating financial equality among humans on our planet according to the goals of your institution?
What steps are you taking to correct the errors and to improve this necessary vision?
Quantitative and qualitative speaking according to factual statistics what have you really done to increase the per person income and not the average or GDP of countries since the insertion of your organization?
How come there is more and more poverty and more and more people making less and less and a few ones getting richer?
What is not working with your old proposed model and what are you going to do about it now?
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What does the WB plan to do to improve monitoring and action on systemic risk in international markets?
One of the critical systemic risks is OTC derivatives which now stands at approximately 688 Trillion (accoding to the BIS) to one quadrillion dollars ($1,000,000,000,000,000). And yes, that a quadrillion is a real number. What, if anything, will the WB do to understand and address the enormous perils of the OTC derviatives market?
Thank you.
My biggest question: outside of legislation and federal restrictions, what measures are the World Banks willing to make to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
Many of us believe self-governing is ideal, but there needs to be some real structure and checks and balances as to to how things are done. Also, transparency is a must, and a trend in today’s society. Is this a goal for your organization?
If Rich to Poor , Poor to Rich is a cycle. Why should rich nations get bailed out, while poorer nations starve. It looks like there is one set of rules for the Rich G7 and another set for all other countries. All this injustice will ultimately have to come out in a massive world war.
To Robert Zoellick: The global currency sounds like an excellent idea to improve the global economy and international trade. Can you still implement the new currency if the United States decides not to be part of the solution by being one of the first nations to replace their old dollar currency?
What is being done to:
Eliminate faud of every kind
Ensure each local can provide the majority of their needs
That money is passed within each community for their biggest needs (jobs, resources, skills)
Ensure all people are drinking clean water breathing clean air eating pristine food
To put the healthcare back in medical practice
Eliminate middlemen siphoing funds that should be going directly to services performed.
Stop people from having children just to get a paycheck
To truely bring up each being to their full potential not just what money or class can or can’t provide.
Give every working person 6 weeks a year of vacation to enjoy their life, family, travel and be happy and healthy.
Stop the war on drugs that is causing more damage then if the drugs were legal and sold like cigs and alchol.
Realize the persuit of happiness is not for the rich, powerful, corrupt to suck from everyone else.
Excellent Water, food, Air, shelter, health, education, a meaningful exsistance is what we all want, everthing else is icing on the cake.
Why should anyone be so silly as to believe that the bankster people who have stripped the US bare should be given a second chance. The same Wall St bunch who have demonstrated nothing but greed arrogance and sheer incompetence are getting to do the bailout.
If they caused the problem how for goodness sake can they be expected to solve it?
Mr Zoellick,
Why have the separate and vitally different world of banking and venture capitalism been combined? Banking, by definition, makes loans based on ACTUAL collateral, and makes money on fees and interest. These banks have been making loans and buying/selling derivatives with no collateral because of the potential gains. Gambling with other people’s money, without informing the real investors of the risk profile.
Why are banks or any company allowed to become ‘too big to fail’? If the system cannot deal with a inherent part of its structure, the failure of companies, then regulation should restrict the size of these to a point where it can.
Look forward to not recieving your reply,
Regards,
how do you sleep at night ,
Mr. Zoellick, the interdependency of national economies has proven the chain is only as strong as the weakest link. I believe there will be popular support in many countries to become less reliant upon foreign investment and trade. History is fairly clear that economic protectionism served to extend if not deepen the Great Depression. Hugo advises us to learn from the past. Are we in a similar enough situation to indicate the lessons of history should apply?
As the recession is overthere what are the implements may be taken out by the world bank to improve on it as there are a number of credit default swaps. Who is to blame & why? Are the rules & regulations by the banking system are so mild? How the world bank plays a major role to cope up with these sort of problems?
In your opinion what should Central -European countries
do ( like Hungary )? Should they just go bankrupt?
When is WB planning to sell their gold?
Thank you,
Anna
I know what their “role” is and I don’t trust them for one moment.
Now wordwide banks have a temporary stabilization period should this not be the time to remove the majority of senior banking officials?, the very people that have been awarding themselves bonuses for a job badly done; these are the very people that pose possibly the greatest threat to any permanent recovery, with the continued threat of greed over sound banking.
Why is short selling not made illegal ?, the practice is by its very activities to make money by manipulating the markets and has nothing to do with finding a true company value.
Surely the time has come for governments to stop throwing money over a cliff whilst everything is in free-fall, is it not better to now wait for all to hit bottom, then set the recovery in motion ?
Recessions come as a matter of financial correction, you can no more stop them in their tracks than stop the tide coming in.
World Bank, please sleep in deep deep caves and watch fun of this recession or else buy those toxic assets to protect your skin.Why should WB be so much preoccupied with such jobless catastrophe? Are they going to loose jobs or salary cut? Just keep narrating GDP,Inflation and deflation percentages by watching the bleeding worldwide stock exchanges indexes.Why is the WB not building confidence in alleviating poverty,micro financing schemes at 0% in developing/poor countries? Why is the WB pumping money in huge banks or in government coffers? Is the end user benefiting from the WB? I never saw those millionth of a dollar reaching the budding entrepreneur or farmers.Why the WB cannot visit the small enterprises around the world and see how the entrepreneurs are squeezed by the same banks which WB deposits the money for micro enterprises.Why is the WB barking and preaching Global Warming sermons on TV Channels while thousands of farming families in India COMMIT SUICIDE for non payment of loans to the banks.
what’s your favourite police academy movie?
Britney or Christina?
The IMF is often accused of pandering to G20 nations at the expense of developing states, do you this that the current crisis is only going to exasperate this bias? What is the WB going to do to ensure that the developing world do not foot the bill, in terms of their own development - as appears to be the case with Eastern Europe?
I understand that cartels and monopolies are primarily the concern of watch dogs within countries, and that banks have their equivalents. What main duties is the World bank responsible for? I presume it is not a watchdog because there has been much talk of late of a lack of universal banking rules. Is it at all connected with the IMF, or is that a completely separate entity?
Biblical Nimrod’s quest to reach the skies proved alteration of “language” and current accounting century miscalculated “numerology” code.World Bank-What is your instant solutions to this crisis? Feels Nostradamus was advanced to this subject!May be reverse migration…
every nation that aspires to the status of first world,
deems that it’s right of passage involves the skyward projection of its’ building construction.
the early twentieth century engulfed the worlds’ nations in a race to the North Pole and then the South Pole in a
quest to harness the most valuable commodities of the time; the wind(fast winds were needed to drive the trade routes’) and whale oil (commercial need to power oil lamps & candles[thank God for the invention of the light bulb] source Ramsay, The Age, Aug 13 2007.
the early twenty-first century has seen the world swept up in a quest to reach ever skyward with a race to the stratosphere. the folly being that there is no sense of purpose or coordination of positioning of these omnipresent manmade structures.
my question to the World Bank is: should we not try to atleast balance these absurd structures as they are projected towards the stars so as not to throw the rotation of the planet off in a tangent.
surely common sense dictates that if one were to (over a relatively short timeframe) add a trillion tonnes of concrete, steel and glass to one region, the spinning of the planet must find a new equilibrium and possibly a new path around the sun.
man has made too many monumental blunders over millenium to allow the whims of a few well-heeled bankers and over-zealous gentlemen in fashionable ensembles(architects are definitely the best-dressed professionals) to dictate where we as inhabitants of planet earth should end up in the cosmic soup.
WB needs gold plating with USD,Pounds or with Euros and they are the best to predicting agency for Global Early Financial Alerts.WB is also in disguise to be blamed of, for this financial crisis and instead of alleviating poverty, they are the hefty pay earners behind the curtains.World’s 70% employment lies in micro industry and how much WB has done to cater the problems of this industry before the crisis? If you writes email to the WB, you the end user will never be replied because the WB officials seeks media attentions or else your mail is diverted to UNDP.Developing countries like India is sitting under the Poverty atom bomb and how much WB has done to persuade the corrupt Indian officials to improve the basic needs of the poor man? Let us arm the WB officials now with lots of amount for gaining self fame and name.
We don’t understand the economic rationale of global recession, lower inflation while we are paying higher prices on food prices, consumer goods, products and services, electricity prices etc. Now the gold prices are going higher and higher. We see only stock market and oil prices coming down. While the manipulators and cartels ensure that they make big profit in other areas. In all democracies, they are playing with number and statistics by fooling us. How you can calculating whole price index and other things in calculating inflation? Whether the existing system need a revamp, replaced with most modern techniques? Why separate statistics not used on each and every area? How data accuracy ensured? When crude prices at International market is much lower, while in India, we the consumers are paying higher prices on all energy products? Why so? We are paying higher prices on our electricity due to state and corporate monopoly? Can World Bank play a major role to put an end on state and corporate monopoly?