With the world getting smaller and smaller, and economic competition between nations rising every day, economic development has made it to the top of the bucket list of 80% of the countries in the world. This approach of these nations can be very well justified by taking in consideration the changing mindset of the general public which weighs money over everything. From times when people will comfortably reject the idea of ‘money can buy you heaven’, we’re now at a diversion where people face dilemma in deciding whether money can buy the actual heaven or can buy you something close to heaven. And all this rapid change in the thought process has taken place specifically in the past few decades, as internationalism rose, concepts such as that of ‘hire purchase’, digital money and cryptocurrencies hit the market. Along with all this another economic trend that has emerged is ‘The System of Loan/Credit’. And this didn’t only increased at the micro levels of the economies, instead also at the macro levels.
Due to this two ancient post-war years institution, one which was established with the aim to help nations in their rebuilding process and the other to promote international economic cooperation, turned into the modern world macro-level flagship lending institutions. With time the Bretton Woods Twins, somewhat made it big in the world of finance, with their combined annual lending amount touching trillions. But somewhere in this journey, these twins although remained loyal to their forefathers and godfathers (In this case, the 9 nations which make up 70% of the total budget of these institutions), but deviated from the very principle of any banking institute, which is to balance out the unequal division of wealth by the system of deposits and loans. These twins devised their own lending system which in the most basic terms is that the credit to a nation is directly proportional to its contribution to the institutions. Moreover, the say of a country in all the decision of the institution is also proportional to its contribution. For instance, United States has 20% say in the decision making process.
So suppose, Sudan is in urgent need of funds for tackling an economic setback, but since it hasn’t contributed much, it has the right to get a loan only worth its nominal membership contribution. Furthermore, even these funds rest in the hands of the major contributors, practically leaving Sudan at the mercy of the big western players. In my opinion this simply sums up as, Discriminatory International Lending.
Certainly, these two institutions don’t work in line with the very basic idea of banking which is that of balancing the wealth between those who have extra and those who are in need. Rather, these work on completely the opposite of it, according to which all the credit grants and the say in decision making process is directly proportional to the contributions made. In a nutshell, it indirectly gives the rich an option to make them even richer and the leaves the poor unattended.
