Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/un3bailout021509.html
UNITED NATIONS, February 15 -- It seemed like a parody headline, "UN lobbies for share of bank rescue funds," like something from the satirical newspaper The Onion. To those who know the UN system better, the ham-handed attempt to latch on to a buzz word or money train was dishearteningly in character. While there is little doubt that people in the developing world will suffer from the global financial crisis, for the UN to cite this fact as a way to raise its own budget, half of which goes to salaries, without yet reforming its procurement and currency exchange and coddling of dictators, is par for the course at the UN.
The pitch for 0.7 percent of the bailout and stimulus packages, including the $787 billion approved last week by the U.S. Congress, was made by the UN Millennium Campaign. This unit, run by the UN Development Program, was in the news last year when its director, Evelyn Herfkens, was exposed as taking $280,000 from the Dutch government for luxury housing while also being paid by the UN. Herfkens' doubled-dipping was defended by the UN, until finally she left, without repaying a penny of it. This is the unit asking for more money?
Likewise not answered are questions raised by the UN's begrudging admission that it was losing at least 20% of the funds it raised from the public for Myanmar in the wake of Cyclone Nargis. First the UN denied the loss, then when Inner City Press obtained and published internal memos admitting it, the UN temporarily changed its tune, its top humanitarian official John Holmes saying that a review would be conducted. But now the UN has reverted to saying there never was a problem, without disclosing in what other countries it accepts government-dictated currency exchanges at a loss. This is how funds would be exchanged in the future?
The payments of $700 billion in Troubled Asset Relief Program funds to the likes of Citigroup, which tried to buy another jet, and Bank of America, which signed off on huge Merrill Lynch bonuses and office rehabilitations, are equally troubling, as is U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's failure to timely pay taxes, and attempt to continue to evade based on the statute of limitations.
Geithner spoke at the G-7 meeting in Rome with a confidence he lacked in Washington, and the World Bank's Bob Zoellick called the 0.7% request a vulnerability fund, which he said would be spent on such programs as "work for food." In Myanmar, that has reportedly meant using aid to induce villagers to build roads for the military. In Sri Lanka, the UN is appealing for money to partner with the government which is reportedly preparing detention centers for civilians in the Tamil Tiger-held war zones it is assaulting. These are how the funds would be used?
And see, www.innercitypress.com/un3bailout021509.html
and, author interviewed, http://www.foxnews.com/video-search/m/21880520/un_bailout.htm
