It is estimated that one third of deaths – some 18 million people a year or 50,000 a day – are due to poverty-related causes. Every year nearly 11 million children die before their fifth birthday. In 2001, 1.1 billion people had consumption levels below $1 a day and 2.7 billion lived on less than $2 a day. 800 million people go to bed hungry every day. Contrast this with the fact that for the year 2005 8.7 million people globally held more than US$1 million in financial-asset weal...

The real scandal at the World Bank is not whether the former World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz helped secure for his girlfriend a big pay-and-promotion package. It's about how the Bank is killing thousands of the poorest people in the world.
Its victims are many. Let's consider Africa, for example. Ghana can't afford water or electricity because the World Bank refused to lend any more money to the government unless it stopped subsidising the cost of these necessities. The subsidies s...