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1 of 4 found the following review helpful:
 Author seeking meteorite Sep 28, 2007
Criticizing the World Bank is easy. You can get all the information you want from its own website, you speak with a few staffers (with some 12000 you always find the discontent ones) you add a few common clichés about the World Bank (lords of poverty etc) and you may find an entry ticket into the American Enterprise Institute (if you come from the right, or join a single issue NGO if you have a left perspective). There you can join celebrities of the sort of Wolfowitz who not only deny reality, but dream they can create it themselves. (Somebody has to tell them that doing this in the real world and not in Hollywood may lead to less than happy endings).
The author has left the World Bank six years ago and claims therefore to be the best to write about the topic. He clearly is not. He has no idea of what is currently going on in there.
Let's take a look at his critique on how the World Bank measures the impact of its projects. The author states that the Independent Evaluation Group (which reports to the World Bank's Board and not the President of the Bank) is not really independent. At the same time he complains that it does not have enough funding to do its job. What does he want? More funding for a dependent evaluator? What the author conveniently omits to say, is that the Independent Evaluation Group is only an evaluation at the end of a chain of assessments of results and impacts of World Bank supported projects. All projects that the World Bank supports have substantial budgets (between 2% and 10% of a loan) to measure impact; academia, experts and civil society are involved in the evaluation of projects.
Instead, he suggests the World Bank should be having external evaluations. This is a fine call, as it sounds so politically correct. But all you would get is more partisan evaluation. Unfortunately, the truth does not lie in the middle between partisan evaluations from opposite camps. One could argue that project and World Bank paid evaluation is not independent enough. But who would pay for external evaluations? The owners of the World Bank - Public Money. How independent would that be, if commissioned by governments? Clearly, he did not really understand the issue, and could not come up with any sensible proposal either.
The author also calls for reform. That is not really ingenious, all institutions can get better, and certainly the World Bank. What does he suggest? A hedge fund manager should come in and show the institution how to do real business! Well, I guess, the author could not have seen the crisis coming. But as an investment consultant he might have known.And as an investment consultant he certainly knows that hedge funds are about the riskiest financial operation around.
What kind of books would have to be written about the World Bank if it were operating like a hedge fund managed by the cowboys of the financial markets? These cowboys are now causing financial damages to the world to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, dwarfing the amounts the World Bank is lending (around 20 billion a year).
In a nutshell: Poorly researched, polemically concocted, illogical and foolish conclusions. Spend your money on The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good instead (if I may suggest).
(Just to make it clear, nothing is wrong with reforming an institution like the World Bank, but, to stay with the analogy the author has chosen, the institution deserves a Darwinian mind to analyze it, not that of a creationist one!)
3 of 4 found the following review helpful:
 A+ for Observation, D for solutions Jun 08, 2007
Mr. Hooke does indeed not miss much, his review is entertaining, a bit over the top here and there but generally covers the reality fairly well. However, at the end of the book his suggestions for reform succumb to the same fate as the projects of his former colleagues: Lack of analytical rigour.
His regurgitation of old hobby horses proposed by Wall Street bankers a decade ago raise suspicion that the intent of the book is not really about constructive criticism with some realistic proposals for reform. Mr. Hooke proposes reforms that ignore the political realities of hundreds of governments co-owning this behemoth and can not be serious.
I had expected something a little more thoughtful and underpinned at the end. Nevertheless, this book is a must read for anyone trying to understand the inner workings of this institution.
3 of 5 found the following review helpful:
 Excellent ! MDBs must reinvent themselves fast or go extinct May 31, 2007
A very interesting reading highly recommended for scholars, practioners, politicians and those who really care about promoting development in the Third World. Too much information and a throughout diagnostic of this Dinosaur's disease in just 106 pages! A+. The book's analyses and recommendations not only apply to the World Bank Group, but also to the IADB (just five blocks away) and other sister MDBs used to copy everything the IBRD does. Therefore, Mr. Hooke work is a must read for that 1/3 of the MDBs' staff that does 2/3 of the work, and those who belief there is still a chance for these organizations to really promote development effectively.
Mr. Hooke, as a former world banker, describes in detail a brief history and evolution of the World Bank, the internal contradictions, how the fiefdoms survival come first and development goals are in second place, how the Board of Directors has become a burden, the culture of writing perfect reports to please the high priesthood and to offend no one, and other nonsense in which some of the most educated and many brilliant professionals of the world are waisting their time to keep their jobs and privileges. Certainly the organizational culture needs an overhaul or the dinosaur will die very soon.
Hopefully, Mr. Hooke presents us with the problem and proposes some ideas for reform, as shutdown is not seem as a feasible option. Although some of them are outrageous and seriously politically incorrect (specially the two policy directives regarding substitution of local currencies in the small recipient countries for the dollar or some other hard currency; and agricultural reform across the board), some of them seem promising, such as: reducing the list of borrowers countries for those that really need help; narrowing the project focus to a few sectors; overhauling the governance system, changing the staff profiles; shrinking the bureacracy; etc.
Let's hope the new World Bank President is well chosen, reads this book and leads the change, as other MDBs will close ranks and certainty follow, even if it takes some time. And also let's hope that half of the Washington Area private schools will not go out of business, nor the airlines flying out of DC.
PS: For further insights in the internal workings of The World Bank and other aid and multilateral agencies, and particularly, on how the fiefdoms and wrong incentives reduce the effectiveness of development money, read at least Chapter 7 of The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It, by Paul Collier. I highly recommend Collier's book.
7 of 10 found the following review helpful:
A perceptive and timely insider look at the World Bank Apr 14, 2007
Any readers who want the real lowdown on the World Bank and its decline over the last decades will find this book informative, succinct, and very well-written. Mr. Hooke doesn't miss much.
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