Why the World Bank has no real intentions of reducing poverty

[pampango]

3. When FDR started the World Bank (and GATT and the IMF) at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944.

From the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference wiki:

The United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, commonly known as the Bretton Woods conference, was a gathering of 730 delegates from all 44 Allied nations at the Mount Washington Hotel, situated in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to regulate the international monetary and financial order after the conclusion of World War II.

The conference was held from 1-22 July 1944, when the agreements were signed to set up the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The seminal idea behind the Bretton Woods Conference was the notion of open markets. ... This meant countries would maintain their national interest, but trade blocks and economic spheres of influence would no longer be their means. The second idea behind the Bretton Woods Conference was joint management of the Western political-economic order, meaning that the foremost industrial democratic nations must lower barriers to trade and the movement of capital, in addition to their responsibility to govern the system.

Failed proposals

International Trade Organization

The Conference also proposed the creation of an International Trade Organization (ITO) to establish rules and regulations for international trade. The ITO would have complemented the other two Bretton Woods proposed international bodies: the IMF and the World Bank. The ITO charter was agreed on at the U.N. Conference on Trade and Employment (held in Havana, Cuba, in March 1948), but the charter was not ratified by the U.S. Senate (controlled by republicans who were suspicious of the UN and protective of national sovereignty). As a result, the ITO never came into existence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_Conference

From the World Bank wiki:

The World Bank is one of five institutions created at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944.

The World Bank's official goal is the reduction of poverty, according to the World Bank's Articles of Agreement...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Bank

My opinion is that the bottom line was not FDR's main concern in establishing the World Bank or the other multilateral institutions. I believe he viewed them as a means to share prosperity, reduce poverty and decrease economic nationalism.