For those who do not know, for a good part of Cyclops’s ill spent youth he worked for an affiliate of the World Bank.
- The WB flatters itself as THE world’s most important Aid Agency.
- It is a major multilateral, international bureaucracy
- Dedicated to
feather bedding its staff and providing excellent retirement benefits alleviating World Poverty.
In Cyclops day the Bank itself It was a not particularly effective institution;
- Promoting worldwide socialist, capitalism;
- the Bretton Woods Concensus
- Safe space for World Leader Wannabes; and
- Front for the Elders of Zion.
Its effectiveness has diminished yet further since the departure of HRHKC
- No evidence of causality just the existential inevitability
- of entropy, empathy ,sycophancy and longevity.
And - the appointment of
- A succession of inadequate
- Self serving Bank Presidents by
- A succession of uninterested US Presidents
after Lyndon Johnson used it as a landing spot for McNamara of Vietnam.
The Bank ,and its affiliates ,is owned by everybody and therefore responsible to nobody other than the US Treasury from time to time.
Cyclops was employed by the Bank’s “Private Sector Arm”; the International Finance Corporation, IFC.
As was Liz Cheney.
The IFC mandate was
- to finance, “without recourse to government guarantee”
- the private sector in developing countries.
More pithily described by some of its iconoclastic staff as
“mobilising the taxes of the poor in rich countries to enrich the wealthy in poor countries”.
The IFC was in fact the JEWEL hidden in the dross of the larger WB .
Going into its downward spiral only after it was forced, by some ignorant WB president or other,
to Kow Tow to its decrepit older brother.
HRHKC remains very fond of the IFC :
- its hypocrisies ,
- its successes ,
- its people ,
- first class travel
- five star hotels
- its pension plan and
- the many war stories it has furnished for his grandchildren.
For Cyclops it was truly :
join the Bank and see the World---before the Internet, globalization and homogenization
Liz Cheney’s recent well deserved prominence has triggered Cyclops to
- recall and reminisce
- about others who served this little understood agency
- Some going on to have “illustrious careers"
- in Government, Commerce ,
- Religion and the Arts.
IFC has spawned
- Presidents,
- Prime Ministers,
- Central Bankers,
- Moguls,
- Bloggers,
- Bishops;
- Members of Cabinets,
- Legislatures and
- the House of Lords.
And not a few, decent grand parents
Interestingly HRHKC has yet to find a single example of an alumni
- Heading a philanthropic organisation
- Teaching in a Barrio
- Joining the Salvation Army
- Serving in a leper colony
- Ministering to fallen women[much less men] or
- Taking vows of poverty
CYCLOPS himself did flirt with the idea of creating Financieres sans Frontiere but could not raise the Bit Coins.
READ ON
1. In 1978 Cyclops was hired as an Economist by the then IFC CEO.
An Economist himself appointed by the Sainted Robert McNamara of Vietnam.
You are DIGRESSING
- This gent later went on to become Pakistan’s military appointed civilian prime minister
- For three months in 1993.
- He was presented as a neutral technocrat with an international reputation
- Who could "hold the ring" until civilian elections.
- In his short tenure he announced a slew of radical and far reaching reforms He returned from Islamabad WB as its #2 .
- When he retired he founded a Private Equity Company
- To manage Funds focused on infra structure Investment in Developing Countries. 2. Cyclops arrived at IFC HQ in 1978. . .
- By remarkable coincidence his office was adjacent to one recently occupied by the IFC CHIEF Economist and
- Namesake---PPK--Pedro Pablo Kuczynski.
- Another Jewish ECONOMIST son of refugees from Central Europe
- HRHKC realised he had found his milieu
- Although he could not pronounce the word
- He had stumbled into a cult of Semitic ECONOMISTS
- PPK's successor and Cyclops boss was also a cult member --and concert pianist--from New York ED: Sorry CY but wasn't the IFC CEO a practicing Muslim-- not Jewish
CY: Sure but a Sunni --close enough for this BS . ED: You are DIGRESSING - In any event PPK had left IFC a couple of months before HRHKC arrived
- To head up a mining company developing resources in West Africa
- Three years years later he returned to Peru as Minister of Mines and Petroleum
- By that time, Cyclops had been tasked
- By the foresaid IFC CEO
- With creating IFC's Oil and Gas investment Strategy
- Cyclops’ telephone number was one digit on from Pedro-Pablo’s
- As Minister, PPK regularly visited the WB/IMF/US GOVT.
- Using his IFC Philippine secretary as a contact point for calls
- The WB switchboard had both of them listed as Dr. Kuczynski--one digit apart
- This led to many interesting conversations and some excellent war stories.
His story gets very complicated, interesting and pertinent to current events in DC. I have expanded on it at the end of this post for those interested
Suffice to say, after a career in investment banking and politics
- Co chair of Credit Suisse International
- Minister of Mines and Petroleum
- Prime minister
- Founder of Private Equity Company in Miami 40+ years after PK had been Peru's Central Bank Chief He became President of Peru
Elected at the Second attempt
Within a year he was impeached Twice - Second time for pardoning a predecessor
- President Fujimore
- This overturned by Supreme Court
- Narrowly Survived the First Impeachment Vote
- Resigned before the Second
- He was then Incarcerated for three years--
- In "investigative Custody"
- While being investigated for corruption
- He has not been tried
- Much less found Guilty
He is still in Prison. So is Fujimore
ED: You seem sympathetic to this IFC Alumnus
CY: Well ,Kuczynski Economists are not a large group
There was another Kuczynski Economist,Jurgen
Holocaust survivor, Communist who became leading Economist and
party ideologue in Hoeneker's East Germany
Harold Wilson asked me about him back in 1974
Said he studied his Econometric theories when he,Harold ,taught at Cambridge.
Dead now --both Jurgen and Harold
ED: After all this time ,I still do not know if you are making this up CY: Well more detail of PPK below * .
He is now 82 and HRHKC hopes he will be free and back in the US very soon.
These two fellow followers of the ECONOMIST CULT seem to be the most successful Bureaucrats/Politician/Businessmen IFC Alumni
At least according to their publicists.
But there are others.
One in particular is still active in Cote D'Ivoire and
may yet surpass the first two and become President
Or perhaps CEO of IFC
3. Cyclops himself hired a young congressional staffer to lobby for a capital infusion from the US.
ED : I thought these agencies were not allowed to lobby congress?
CY: Quite right,I misspoke--it was not actually lobbying just some general PR stuff.
He joined IFC during the Reagan Presidency
He was/is a Publican but a good and decent chap.
He went on to be a member of the House for Illinois and then a Senator until 2018.
4. At around the same time a couple of colleagues took leave to work in the Reagan WH but seem to have vanished into banking
5. Cannot think of anymore Presidents or Prime Ministers[yet] but
- One friend became finance Minister in Lebanon
- Then Chairman of a Bank
- Another became Chairman of a Bank and
- Then a member of Parliament in Monaco
- One of Cyclops successors retired and became CEO of a pan African Bank
- Then Minister of Petroleum and Finance Minister in Cote D'Ivoire
- Still on the Rise
- One colleague I believe went to head the Central Bank on Nicaragua
- Then Chairman of a Bank
- Another was offered the same position in Haiti
- He wisely declined and went on to run an up market brasserie in Paris
- Not yet chairman of a bank
- A good and dear friend went on to be a big wig in the UN and
- Was then drafted into Gordon Brown's Labour Cabinet in the UK
- Not even a party member
- Elevated by Brown to the House of Lords
- This Baron has recently been joined by a Baroness who, inter alia
- Joined IFC management committee at the height of the WB interference
- She has been elevated by Boris Johnson
- They now form the core of the WB caucus in the "Upper Chamber"
- They sit as "cross benchers"
- Not sure what they have to be cross about ED:Is there no pun too weak for you to resist? CY: Probably not
This post has become rather long so I will reserve : Businesses and Boards ;Arts and Sports ;Religion for Part III
One extraordinarily high profile CEO of a FTSE 100 listed oil company
Not yet identified a Sepp Blatter Doppelganger.
One Bishop, hell of a story[pun intended]
Reportedly defrocked because of accusations of unfrocking impressionable congregants of the female persuasion.
My theological friends must educate me on what constitutes a Schism in his Anglican Church
PPK
** Following his stint at Mines and Energy, Uncle Peter PPK returned to the US for ten years as Chairman of a Swiss International Investment Bank. Even offering Cyclops a job in New York.
He left New York for Miami as founder of his own Investment fund for Latin America. Ten years on he returned to Peru as Finance Minister and then Prime Minister under President Toledo.
Toledo had succeeded disgraced President Fujimore. Fujimore had been charged with corruption in 2000 and fled to Japan. He offered to resign by fax but the Congress insisted on impeaching him 62-9.
ED: Now I see why Cyclops is dwelling on PPK.
Fujimore remained in Japanese exile while facing charges in Peru for corruption and Human Rights abuses.
He was arrested and extradited while on a personal visit to Chile--shortly before the death of his friend General Pinochet,91.
He was convicted ,inter alia ,of corruption, human rights abuses and sentenced to 25 years.
PPK ran for President in 2011 coming in third ;and then fatefully again in 2016.
He garnered a meagre 21% in the first round but
then astonished himself by winning the runoff--against Fujimore's daughter--
50.12% to 49.88%, a margin of thirty-nine thousand out 18 million cast.
He was 77 years old and like Trump in that same year the oldest President of his country.
The Congress was dominated by other parties.
Within a year he was impeached for corruption whilst he had been finance minister over a decade earlier.
Of the 130 members of Congress 78 voted to impeach ,19 not and 21 abstained. Twelve heroic souls failed to show up for the vote.
Removal required 2/3rds or 87 votes,
PPK survived
A week later PPK granted Fujimore,79, a pardon.
On health grounds.
The supreme court overturned the pardon in October the following year.
Fujimore returned to prison.
He is still there
PKK was threatened with impeachment a second time in March 2018.
He refused to resign .
The day before the vote, videos and audios, known as Kenjivideos, were released Showing his lawyer and Kenji Fujimori, attempting to buy the vote against impeachment .
PPK resigned.
He was subsequently charged with unrelated corruption offences from his time as Minister in 2005.
He has been in pre-trial detention since April 2019 while these corruption charges are investigated.
He ,like the man he pardoned Fugimore , is in prison.
PPK has not been convicted of anything.
Resignation of Pedro Pablo Kuczynski In favor: 105 congressmen
Against: 12 congressmen
Abstentions: 4 congressmen
Absents: 9 congressmen
