Investments

Contact:
Neil Watkins (202) 299-0020
Soren Ambrose (202) 544-935

Bank Of America Investment WASHINGTON -- As activists target the spring meetings of the IMF/World Bank with demands for 100% debt cancellation, the World Bank Bonds Boycott marks its one-year anniversary with an announcement that 25 institutions throughout the U.S. including city governments, trade unions, churches and investment firms have committed not to buy World Bank bonds. Resolutions are pending at more than twenty additional institutions.

The boycott was launched because, while the World Bank has adopted new rhetoric, - - have remained largely unchanged, plundering environments and economies of poor countries. The campaign demands that the World Bank halt its devastating structural adjustment lending and cancel debt claims it has on countries in the Global South. The World Bank gets 80% of its financing through bond sales on private financial markets to institutional investors and others. The World Bank Bonds Boycott was launched in April at the time of the spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank in Washington. Human rights, environmental, labor and development groups in over 35 countries support the campaign.

Investment Opportunity Six new entities including the City of Takoma Park, MD, Harrington Investments, L.L. Blake and Associates, United University Professions (an AFT affiliate with 24,000 members), the San Francisco Central Labor Council, and the New York Province of the Marianist Brothers and Priests -- have committed not to buy World Bank bonds in just the past seven weeks.

The scary thing is that even if a country doesn' World Bank can potentially scare away foreign investments.

Banc Of America Investment Bertha Caceres Flores, a member of the Executive Committee of the Council of Indigenous Peoples in Honduras, said, "Everyone knows of Honduras' problems from Hurricane Mitch. But we are experiencing a permanent hurricane, much more destructive than Mitch, which is the policies of the World Bank and IMF. The destruction comes from the globalization of poverty, due to the World Bank and IMF putting all the riches of our land --human and natural-- at the disposition of multinational corporations."

These institutions', American Development Bank, World Bank, U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation, U.S. Import Bank, $352 million in approved financing for 18 projects; thus, fossil fuel financing in the Americas outpaces clean energy by a ratio of 63 to 1. Most of this investment in fossil fuels has come from US taxpayers, who are unwitting underwriters of loans, guarantees and subsidies to Big Oil. Although the Americas have obtained over $22 billion in public support for fossil fuels since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, most of this oil and gas has been exported to the U.S.

Banking Investment The campaign, modeled on the anti-Apartheid movement, is hitting the Bank at its Achilles' heel: its public image and its financing. The Bank is becoming increasingly concerned about the growing campaign. For example, high-level World Bank staff were recently dispatched to one city which is moving toward passage of the boycott, to lobby against passage of the resolution.

These forecasts are mainly based upon growth expectations in European domestic demand of consumption and investment, and at the same time growth of foreign demand in the same fields.

Investment Solution Strategic The new institutions announced today join a growing list of institutions that have committed not to invest in World Bank bonds, including the city governments of San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley; the Communications Workers of America; the United Electrical Radio, and Machine Workers of America; and ten socially responsible investment firms, including Calvert Group.

It's been three years since civilization came to an end, and the loneliness has taken a devastating toll on Neville.

Investment Banking Services "The World Bank is trying to paint itself as an institution that promotes social welfare. But the reality is that the Bank continues to push policies like user fees on health care, privatization of essential services like water provision, and policies that suppress workers' abilities to organize and raise their standard of living," said Neil Watkins, the campaign's coordinator. "We are using the boycott to demand an end to the Bank's policies which place corporate rights over human rights. At the same time, the boycott is supporting the poor peoples movements around the world who have said 'enough is enough'."

Bank Investment The demands of the boycott campaign are an end to World Bank structural adjustment programs and similar harmful lending practices, as well as 100% cancellation of debts owed to the World Bank without use of citizens' tax dollars.

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