Bankspeak of the year 2013
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Article summary
The Bretton Woods Project awards the most comical use of words by members of staff at the World Bank and IMF in 2013.
Every year the Bretton Woods Project celebrates the most absurd and ridiculous use of words by members of staff at the World Bank and IMF. This year we recognise leadership at both institutions: the wind beneath Kim’s chicken wings; the mystery of the magical coal power plant; the mathematical incompetence of the Bank and Fund; and Lagarde’s request to be used.
In a May 2013 article, Bank president Jim Yong Kim took time out to comment on the important development that during the American football championship, the Super Bowl, “chicken wings were suddenly more expensive.” Apparently nothing is more effective than fried chicken at getting Kim to ask “what can we do in agriculture to help stop climate change while still feeding the world?”
Taken from: World Bank. Global Monitoring Report 2013: Rural-Urban
Dynamics and the Millennium Development Goals. Washington, DC: World Bank. DOI: 10.1596/978-
0-8213-9806-7. License: Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0
The Global Monitoring Report produced jointly by both the World Bank and IMF revealed the inability of the staff to understand basic numeracy. A pie chart illustrated that 76 per cent of the extreme poor live in rural areas. However, only about two thirds of the chart was coloured in. Not bad for a supposedly highly educated workforce?
Another noteworthy winner is the mystery of the disappearing coal plant. The International Finance Corporation, the Bank’s private sector arm, created concern when it was revealed that a mining project in Mongolia’s Gobi desert included a 750-megawatt coal fired power station. Assurance was provided by IFC staff member Josef Skoldeberg, who explained that the Bank was ignoring its energy investment guidelines because the project is “not a power investment” but is in fact “a mining project”. Never mind about the carbon emissions then.
