Okay, so I know I promised more personal accounts of poverty, but I just realized that I spent a lot of time quoting the World Bank in my last post and I never actually explained what it is.

In my experience, a lot of people know what the World Bank is – an international bank designed to reduce world poverty – but not many people know the details (for example, the difference between the World Bank and the IMF, or the biases they represent, etc.). And, as Sherman Alexie so aptly noted, “it’s the details of any life that are most important, right?”

OVERVIEW

The World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and World Trade Organization (WTO) are all International Financial Institutions (IFIS), economic structures designed to regulate the world economy.

• The World Bank’s mission is to reduce world poverty and encourage human development by providing loans to developing nations.
• The…