Word: clausen
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...been used for everything from industrial development to helping finance budget deficits. As a result, Western financial institutions now have more than $540 billion in loans outstanding to foreign borrowers. Even the IMF's associated institution, the World Bank, currently headed by former Bank-America President A.W. Clausen, has seen its portfolio of Third World loans rocket upward in recent years, though most of the loans have been for financially sound projects with a high probability of success...
...Clausen's mandate is anything but clear. Though Ronald Reagan approved his selection by Jimmy Carter last October, the White House has let Clausen understand in no uncertain terms that the Administration will be watching to see if the World Bank can become a more effective conduit for U.S. foreign aid. Dismayed with the liberal image that the bank acquired during the 13-year presidency of Robert S. McNamara, the White House has reluctantly agreed to provide money promised by the last Administration but at a slower pace...
...Clausen, a Republican, is taking charge at a time when many of the 139 nations that belong to the bank are uneasy about the U.S.'s longstanding control over the institution. Ever since 1944, when the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were jointly founded, the bank has been headed by an American and the IMF by a European. The U.S. still provides 21% of the World Bank's lending funds, but the country's foreign aid programs have not kept up with inflation in recent years. In 1970 U.S. foreign aid was, by almost...
...Clausen insists that the U.S. should continue to support the World Bank, if only out of self-interest. Says he: "The stronger those Third World countries become, the more they can absorb our products, and that means jobs at home." About 12% of the U.S. gross national product already depends upon foreign trade, and the figure seems certain to grow still higher by the end of the 1980s...
...Even so, Clausen may still have to back off from at least some of the super-generous loan proposals made by his predecessor. Before he stepped down last month, McNamara, 65, set in motion an ambitious program to expand World Bank lending, already at $12 billion annually, to a full $30 billion by 1985, Raising that much money may simply be beyond the World Bank's powers without huge infusions of new capital from...