We had a very interesting speaker in our Transnational class (oh God, I'd better figure out what my project will be for this class before I get too close to submission date and find myself forced to document the smuggling of Hawaian shirts into Easter Island)

Managing economic development: The World Bank
Guest speaker: Mr Peter Stephens, Regional Communications Manager, World Bank Liaison Office, Singapore

This was video-linked with Fontainebleau which made for a few time-lagged fits of laughter.

The speaker was extremely articulate - and offer interesting views of the world. In his opinion, a lot of problems in developing countries do not require only a financial solution. if that were the case, Cambodia, or Papua New Guinea would be out of poverty a long time ago. Apparently, Cambodia has been getting about $600m a year for the past 10 years. The poor are still poor but the rich are richer. He sees the role of the World Bank to be changing, much more infromational now, much more educational - also he said that political awareness played a large role when it comes to persuading a government to take on a certain package.

Vietnam was this silent miracle - as they now have a 100-person strong office in Hanoi. They could see the economy physically grow and the country become stronger and stronger. Apparently, China was still the country - despite high levels of corruption - which offers best predictability for their investments and that continuously put the money to work where it said it would (the World Bank has crash team to verify this).

Similarly, a couple of days ago, we had lunch with our Ambassador. He described his job as that of a promoter of National Interest, and of reporter to the government back home. He said that anyone with the desire to have a fast action job should never accept an embassy mandate. It is about observing, meeting extraordinarily interesting people and getting to analyze a country/region extremely well. He was very open in his convesation - but I am not allowed to quote him here, he specifically requested this. This will largely limit my ability to tell you much more about the event.