World Poverty: International Monetary Fund & World Bank : Debt cancellation for 18 states with hi-poverty (14 African,4 Latino)

Yep, the efforts at the top of the world economic organizational system to enact G8 proposals for debt cancellation have rumbled on a step further toward fulfillment. These are bureaucratic moves, but moves that are absolutely essential in the real world, despite the sneers of the anti-globalizationists and negative-anarchists that decry both the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

We have them, we need them, they aren't perfect, and just how much they function in your interest and mine is questionable, tho clear answers are slow to arrive.

Still, we can applaud this rumble-shuffle forward as it will take a certain unsolvable pressure off the following countries where, no matter how irresponsible the state apparatus of each may have been, the people in large part are desperately poor on a daily basis:



Debt cancellation must be accompanied by other steps, among which are (yet not limited to) what's outlined in this statement from the Treasurer of the US:

'Successful conclusion'

The World Bank gave its blessing to the debt relief deal late on Sunday, at the end of the lender's annual series of meetings with the IMF in Washington.

The IMF had already given its backing, and the two international lenders will now ask their executive boards to rubber stamp the agreement.

US Treasury Secretary John Snow said the World Bank's development committee had "strongly endorsed the proposal for 100% cancellation" of debts.

"We expect the executive boards of the IMF and World Bank to swiftly give final approval and move on to implementing it," he said.

Eighteen nations stand to have $40bn in debt written off initially, while $55bn could be released eventually, UK Chancellor Gordon Mr Brown said.

Oops!, only $40bn out of a total of $95bn? From the 18 most-disastrous national economies in the world? - at least in Africa and the Western Hemisphere? More info is needed to understand the parameters of what actually has been written off, and what hasn't. Because we know if it's the same 18 countries, then they're still stuck in the revolving door - and thus we'd be confronted with another half-way measure with no guarantee of actually helping anyone. - Owlb