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Created at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, the World Bank Group is comprised of five agencies that make loans or guarantee credit to its 181 member countries. Along with the IMF, the World Bank is the world's largest public lender, managing a total portfolio of $200 billion and in 1999, loaning a record $28.9 billion to over 80 countries.

The World Bank was created as part of an international economic structure that would insure that 'debtor nations fell further into debt and that creditors - the US in particular - could exercise ever-greater economic and political power over them' The loans have been primarily for large industrial projects that create huge profits for northern-based multinational companies. [more]

World Bank Topics:

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World Bank Links:

50 Years Is Enough - U.S. Network for Global Economic Justice is a coalition of 205 grassroots, faith-based, policy, women's, social and economic justice, youth, solidarity, labor, and development organizations dedicated to the profound transformation of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Bank Information Center - Provides information on the projects, policies and practices of the World Bank and other Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs).
Bretton Woods Project - Works to monitor and reform the World Bank and IMF. Tracks key policy statements and reports, and provides critiques and early warnings used by non-governmental organisations across the world.
One World: IMF and World Bank - Articles and news on the World Bank's impacts around the world.
Reforming the World Bank's Forest Policy: A Check-List for Activists - Environmental Defense, Forest Peoples Programme, and the World Rainforest Movement collaborated to analyze the World Bank proposed revisions to the 1991 Forest Policy.
The Whirled Bank Group Editor's Pick - Information, commentary and humor about the international finance system specifically as it impacts the developing world. Fun, yet detailed.
The World Bank, Structural Adjustment, and Forest Policy Reform - Report on World Bank's involvement in the forest sector and its structural adjustment lending.
World Bank - The official World Bank website.
World Bank and IMF Fact Sheet - Careful examination of the effects and requirements set by the International Monetary Fund and World bank, which give money to poor governments in return for specific, often damaging controls set on their economies.
World Bank Forest Policy - Official site of the World Bank's Forest Policy division.