When the World Bank was founded at Bretton Woods in 1944, WWII was still on, though its ultimate outcome was no longer in doubt. From the beginning the bank’s charter was to alleviate poverty through loans and expert advice. More recently, it pledged to help end extreme poverty by 2030. Toward this purpose it distributed some $60 billion in loans (2015) to countries that, for the most part, had difficulties accessing market loans. It was not always successful in what was or should have been a noble pursuit. It gave money to countries like China that no longer needed it and to dictators that pilfered it.  Throughout it all, it was perennially unable to prove how much good it was doing or develop reliable metrics of accomplishment other than the huge amounts it was disbursing.   Around 2010 and coinciding with the tenure of Barack Obama, the bank capitulated to the powerful green lobby in the United Nations and Washington and became an “anti-development...(Read Full Article)