Word: banke
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Worth a Risk. Since he took office, McNamara said, "I have been determined on one thing: that the bank can and will act. It will not share in the general paralysis afflicting aid efforts in so many parts of the world." Using an industrial term that harks back to his days as a Ford Whiz Kid, McNamara proposed that the bank increase its "throughput"-the total amount of money that the bank borrows from private lenders or gets from governments and then doles out in loans-to $10 billion in the next five years. Of that sum, large chunks would...
This week, most of his groundwork completed, McNamara broke his silence. The occasion was the 23rd annual meeting, in Washington, of the board of governors who represent the bank's 110 member nations. Delivering the keynote speech, McNamara outlined one of the most ambitious plans for overseas development since George Marshall delivered his Marshall Plan speech at Harvard in 1947. Not only does McNamara want to double the bank's lending capacity, but he also intends to spread the loans in new directions. More should go, he said, to projects that directly benefit ordinary people in poorer nations...
Helping poorer nations who need help most, admitted McNamara, involves risks. But he emphatically turned down the notion "that the utter avoidance of risks is the path of prudence or wisdom." The bank's governors will undoubtedly agree; they have little choice, if McNamara's first six months as president are any indication. The former Defense Secretary is more available to aides than his predecessors but becomes impatient if they are fuddy-duddy. He stresses the organization's role as a development agency. "If I had wanted to join a bank, I'd have done...
...Sources. He has also limited formal votes at meetings. Votes are weighted according to subscriptions in the bank's capital stock; big members have sometimes irritated national pride by outvoting the numerical majority. McNamara met this problem by sounding out key directors before meetings, solving the objections that might prevent unanimous agreement. He has uncovered new sources of loan funds in such oil-rich countries as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. He is already emphasizing the African and Latin American aid referred to in his speech. Last week the bank and its subsidiary, International Development Association, approved loans or credits...
McNamara persuaded former Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson to head an independent panel of "wise men" who will consider bank activities for the next 30 years. McNamara hopes the Pearson group will be as ambitious for the World Bank as he himself is. "All power is given us to be used," he told his governors this week, "not to be wrapped in a napkin against risk...