Torture to Listen To

It was, of course, too good to last. But for two shining, hopeful minutes on Thursday, Michael Hlinka almost made sense.

Karen Mare must have been embarrassed to have to let this guy on her program. Her being the one who has actually travelled to Africa and talked to farmers who all had an intimate knowledge of how the World Bank operates, and him being just some twerp who as far as I can tell isn't even a working economist.

Hlinka is taking the classic American right wing line that because there are problems in some institution that was meant to serve some public good that clearly the whole idea was a mistake in the first place and it should be scrapped. Funny, though, that the Enron scandal didn't cause him and others like him to call for the end of corporate-friendly capitalism.

And yeah, I'm as familiar as any sheltered first-worlder can be expected to be with how rotten the World Bank and IMF are and how their policies are to the detriment of the countries they are meant to be helping. However, if Mr. Hlinka were to -- God forbid -- get on a plane and go talk to an African farmer about it, and suggest that the ideal solution would be to completely pull out and wait for private banks to roll in and start doing business there, the farmer would simply laugh in his pasty little face. Private Western economic interests already tell the World Bank what to do, letting them have at their victims directly is not any kind of solution.

Labels: CBC, Economics, Stupidity