The face of very tight and unusually tight fiscal policy for this period. It has been effect it, but the it has been effective but the precisesize of the impact is something that we can very reasonably disagree about and we can and work will continue. The uncertainty of the impact and the effects of ending programs and so on, one of the reasons we have treated this as a supplementary rather than as a primary tool. Don lee l. A. Times. Unemployment benefits are expiring shortly for millions of people. How much of an Economic Impact do you see that having . What effect would you expect that would have on the Unemployment Rate . If those people drop out of the labor force, will that not the Unemployment Rate down quite a bit . Yes, obviously it has a big economic effect on those directly affected who are receiving benefits. We do have an unusually large number of longterm, Unemployed People in the u. S. It is a major concern and one that i cited in my opening remarks. The effects of exten
You Transparency International has and been pleased to work with the bank. Andbank. In an i would love the panel to tell us something new that is going to be so startling that will make the headlines tomorrow. Maybe something you dont say in public. This is a relaxed conversation. To hear the conversations that go on a little bit like that James Wolfensohn shared at the beginning. Those moments, those thoughts are instructional and helpful. Mr. Volker . You want me to give a relaxed news headline . We talked about all the difficulties of dealing with corruption in countries. That is true in many countries. All of which are represented in the world bank board. It is a hard problem, dealing with corruption by all these other countries. It is a hard time changing the minds of the people in the world bank on the subject. Is tough and unpleasant it is a tough and unpleasant subject and makes it hard to get the money out there and get a project started. There was a lot of resistance to mr. W
Planning. It is months and months to close down a base. If you just look at the physics of this, in an antiseptic world, and afghanistan is not antiseptic, it takes months to get all this done, just to get out. And to get to the end place of our 2014 ending our combat mission there. Then we are asking our commanders and budget hers and our allies our budgeters and our allies to start with commitments for the coming year when they have no idea what that means. No leader can commit their country, or the military, or any of their resources to their nation or any other nation without some certainty of what that is. We have pulled back on some of our historical roles in brazil, and our program today is focused on i o diversey issues and climate biodiversity issues and Climate Change issues. We have a few alternative energy programs, but this does not represent the future of our developed assistance program. However, it does represent the future of our commercial engagement, our investment e
Second, we need to empower citizens with information and tools to make the governments more effective and accountable. Third, we need to build a Global Movement to prevail over corruption. The World Bank Group will be creating a single pool of technical experts in rule of law, public sector, financial him and state management and public sector, financial, state management, public improvement. We know that we and our partners have had an impact. For instance, when corruption threatened to derail the Critical Power project for Southern African countries, the world bank intervene, preventing more than 6 million from being misused. In afghanistan, we supported a network for integrity and reconstruction, which trained 980 people who have monitored 281 Infrastructure Projects with 247 million. 83 of the concerns they raised have been addressed. Through Innovative Solutions in key sectors like engineering and consulting, we have convinced major firms to commit to clean business practices. We
Some of the most exciting things we are seeing are related to the other major shift. Here is one experiment. In afghanistan, we have given afghani women cell phones. They can take pictures of projects in action. They can transmit them to our office. It has a feature that if they are stopped on the road side, there is one button they push and gets rid of the pictures. It does not put them in danger. We give them access to Cell Phone Services and give them a concrete way of monitoring corruption. We also protect them in case they get stopped. Citizen voice will not go away. If there is anything we have learned from the arab spring, everybody can twet and go on facebook. If you bring together best practices with citizen engagement, that is a great path. You have to have delivery. I started off with a Nonprofit Agency to try to improve government. The slogan i got from Thomas Edison is appropriate. Vision without execution is hallucination. [laughter] we have a lot of vision here about dea