Startribune.com: Wrong World Bank doctrine can be deadly - by Barbara Garson:

Startribune.comWrong World Bank doctrine can be deadly - by Barbara Garson

A quarter of a century of day-in, day-out asset stripping sponsored by the IMF and the World Bank left millions of poor people poorer. Meanwhile, the unregulated capital flows -- another tenet of the Washington Consensus -- led to speculative booms and currency crashes that pushed hundreds of millions of people down into dollar-a-day poverty. But the true believers are unswayed. They know that private investment must eventually lead to poverty reduction, so they soldier on. Example: South African communities followed the World Bank/IMF suggestion that water rates be raised so consumers would get used to paying the full cost. The water of many people was cut off when they couldn't pay their bills. In some places they started taking water from rivers. The result was a cholera epidemic. Cholera is an extreme result for a development scheme. But then, privatizing water in Africa is an extreme application of the World Bank's private investment theory. After all, they say, a private company has to have some way of making money.