I wish this was a link to the original Oxfam audit. It's strange to me that an audit would say that there's somewhere between $23 and $41 billion missing. If the audit really knew what it was doing, wouldn't it have a more precise number What is unaccounted for?
That said, it's high-time for organizations like the World Bank to have fully transparent finances. Like, I should be able to go to a website and see where every single dollar is being spent. I say this as someone who's a citizen of a country who contributes heavily to the org And therefore, I think I have a right to know where my money's going.
> It's strange to me that an audit would say that there's somewhere between $23 and $41 billion missing.
Audits have degrees of certainty; an opinion may be unqualified, meaning the records are spotless, qualified, meaning there are issues but the records are trustworthy, and adversarial, meaning the records are inaccurate and do not represent the actual financial status.
If the records are questionable, it will usually take much more investigation than a standard audit to track down every money unit and produce a clean accounting of the money. Hence, it is possible to identify that records are wrong, but knowing exactly whether the money is still present but unaccounted for versus the money is actually gone from the organizations control without a record of the transaction isn't yet determined.
The DOD itself hasn't passed an audit ever. Money comes and goes without accounting meeting financial standards. That does not strictly mean that the money has been embezzled, only that the DOD and World Bank are unable to demonstrate that it hasn't been.
> Money comes and goes without accounting meeting financial standards. That does not strictly mean that the money has been embezzled, only that the DOD and World Bank are unable to demonstrate that it hasn't been.
Can you think of a better place to embezzle? Its risk-free without any accounting standards. 100% that embezzling is taking place and at a large scale.
It's hard to identify. I audited a Sheriff's account once because there was constant chatter that the funds were being misused. Out of an entire year I could only find one line item that was questionable (it was still a police item, but it should have come from a different fund).
What isn't clear is this: if say the Sheriff buys 100 riot shields from Company X, does his cousin own Company X and there is a kickback or a favor? I couldn't answer those questions because they would require a whole new level of investigation.
The 770,000 number for the DOD is just the civilian employee count. It becomes the "largest" when you also include the 2.1 million active service members of the military. I definitely could have worded that better.
Because you can't convict someone for embezzlement if you can't prove it. And you can't prove it if there are no records. This is the purpose of proper financial record-keeping standards - to know where the money is and where it came from and where it goes.
I'm not sure what that could be, but a general answer would be that neither faction wants too much scrutiny. They would therefore have mutual self-interest in maintaining a system where they can keep crappy records (or none) while still keeping mountains of money.
>Money comes and goes without accounting meeting financial standards. That does not strictly mean that the money has been embezzled
Coincidentally, the Liberal Democrat Party in Japan just lost their majority (and subsequently very likely the government) today due to widespread embezzlement and tax evasion.
Always argue for absolute transparency of public monies, there is no justifiable reason public monies have to be kept secret.
>wouldn't it have a more precise number What is unaccounted for?
The audit likely uncovered conflicting information and records. The range represents the high and low bounds of possible interpretations of that conflicting information.
It links to a report which seems to be the main publication, but frankly is very light on details of their audit. Also a lot of the claims are very strangely phrased which makes it difficult to figure out if the criticisms are legitimate or overblown.
The World Bank is an international organization, accountable to its shareholder governments, themselves accountable to their respective people, as all but China, Russia and Saudi Arabia are democracies.
Yes, and those govts can demand accountability. Its citizens cannot see the spending of other govts just because they feel entitled. No country funded the entire operation.
Your govt likely received foreign aid spent on citizens. Does this entitle citizens of that foreign govt to peer into your personal finances because part of them were mixed with foreign money? No, it doesn’t. Just because your govt put money somewhere that was mixed with other actor money doesn’t entitle you to seeing all financials of that entity.
If your standard is something even partially touched by tax money needs its finances made fully public, then you’ll need to include citizens making their finances made fully public. This is stupid, right?
Instead, if you do what all first world countries do, have your govt disclose where it spent money, then that is your accountability. Demanding what you want here isn’t good policy; it’s targeted outrage without thinking of its results.
> I’d guess you’re American based on your entitlement.
Probably. Only Americans demand accountability from governments and publicly funded international organizations. The rest of us have learned to shut up and keep our heads down, and continue to worship our masters.
Some context, Oxfam isn't a perfect organization. They struggle with fraud and graft. This is a part of their ongoing effort to reduce it, and sometimes yes that does mean pointing the finger past themselves too.
Remind me what happens to a US citizen if our personal finances "struggle with fraud" and unaccountability to the tune of 40% when it comes to the IRS?
Oxfam attempted to add up all the numbers in various PDFs linked on the World Bank's website and got a total that's less than the headline figure in the World Bank's press releases. (See the actual report at https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10...)
Some of that is probably missing data and some of it reflects that headlines like "USA donates 1 billion" don't actually always result in the US making a bank transfer for a billion dollars. For example sometimes it's a simplification of a complicated loan.
Your comment reflects a common misconception about audits. When the books don't add up that doesn't show that money is actually missing.
I don't love analogies to personal finance but a better one would be to suppose you asked a random US citizen what they spent money on last month and then compared it to their bank account. They'd probably be wrong, and you probably wouldn't have enough information to know exactly how wrong they were because they didn't save all their receipts and so on.
*edit: this report provides no evidence money is missing. to be fair it doesn't disprove missing money either
Great comment. On one hand I like what Oxfam has done, which is to show that the World Bank has poor financial controls and should do a much better job tracking where funds are actually spent. On the other hand I don't like how this is reported/interpreted (and Oxfam I think deserves some blame for how their investigation is characterized) as "there is a ton of fraud at the World Bank". That's simply not accurate, and your edit sums up the situation very well
This analogy explains well but it's missing the important bit: private citizens don't have any requirement to save receipts. Charities and businesses do have that requirement.
While I'm continually frustrated by the complexity and opaqueness of the US tax code, your analogy doesn't make any sense to me. If your personal finances "struggle with fraud", it means you committed fraud. So yeah, of course you should be held directly responsible. That's very different from a large organization doling out money for tons of various complex projects, and those 3rd parties (or 3rd parties down the chain) commit fraud.
Heck, if you give money to someone and they commit fraud and abscond with your money, you get to take a tax write-off for the stolen funds.
> you get to take a tax write-off for the stolen funds.
At least for US federal taxes, that changed with a very partisan ~2017 law, where Republicans stripped it down to only cover federally declared unique disaster situations.
Thanks, I was unaware of that change. Note that limit largely just applies to personal property: "For tax years 2018 through 2025, individual taxpayers with theft losses are allowed a deduction if the loss is due to theft related to a transaction entered into for profit.", https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc515#:~:text=For%20tax%20year....
E.g. for financial fraud crimes, you much more than likely would still be able to take the loss.
They didn't find that there was fraud. They just found that the World Bank has poor financial controls and a lack of transparency in determining where funds are spent.
Of course, a lack of financial controls makes it easier for people to actually commit fraud, but the Oxfam report didn't go to that next level and look for specific evidence of fraud.
I have an uncle who actually audited a large org and found evidence of fraud. Each time something weird was found, he investigated, and alsmot each time fraud of some sort was involved. Pressure increased as the time passed, from all side (especially below, as he was near the top of that bank, but from the side too).
He and his team were physically threatened and had to have bodyguards (actually, it was cops, but they acted as bodyguards). In the early 2000s he decided to call it quit, after 8 years. He told us that the weirdest fraud of all was money laundering, as it was at the same time the easiest and the hardest to prove, depending on who did it.
All that to say actually finding fraud is hard, proving it is even harder, and can be dangerous even for lower orgs, so i won't criticize Oxfam for letting it rest where it is.
Seems like they are based in Kenya and fraud/corruption is rampant in some of these African nations. Really sad but its seemingly been like this for so long which is why many of the countries there are in constant civil wars, coups, and their populations poor/starving.
If hundreds of billions of dollars in aide over 2 decades isn't fixing these nations, what will?
One idea I've read in the works of Ivan Illich (among others) is that the best thing we could do for developing countries that struggle with corruption is to leave them the hell alone when it comes to financial matters (aside, perhaps, from canceling their World Bank debts, which often come from loans made to past corrupt governments and for which the people are unjustly held accountable) and let them sort their problems out. Injecting money, even with the best of intentions, tends to make things worse when there are already structural problems.
How exactly could we even "leave them the hell alone"? Developing countries are integrated into the world economy and financial system. Other countries trade with them. If they want to issue sovereign debt then someone will buy it, if not the World Bank then the Chinese government or random private investors. The World Bank isn't perfect but they're at least somewhat helpful with improving governance standards and avoiding the most egregious forms of corruption.
I mean, yes and no. The World Bank (and other multilaterals) are supposed to provide or facilitate loans which the private sector would not otherwise advance (or provide them on concessionary terms which the private sector otherwise would not offer). Absent this form of lending, countries have a stronger financial incentive to improve their governance to the point where they can borrow on better terms on the open market. This is how bond markets operate in developed markets - hence why eg Italy pays more to borrow money than Germany (despite both being in the Eurozone).
Most people would probably agree that the reduction in those basic financial pressures to reform is more than offset by the more formal governance requirements which are (sometimes) attached to the granting of multilateral loans (and the types of governance the private sector cares about don't necessarily always align with what the World Bank cares about). But it's not automatic, especially given "improving governance" isn't the main reason the multilaterals make loans in the first place.
There's a lot of change happening now in Kenya, especially in terms of stable and democratic governance, but in no way is it not corrupt. It ranks at near the top consistently amongst African nations for corruption and bribery at all levels of the government.
Oxfam is headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya because it's considered a relatively stable/safe country with relatively good facilities and infrastructure. Nairobi provides a good central location to reach other parts of Africa where much of their work is based, and Kenya also provides a favourable regulatory environment for these international organisations to operate. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) is also based there.
Both of these organisations certainly have their issues with corruption, fraud, and grift, but that would likely be the case no matter where they are based. If anything, being physically closer to where much of the money is being spent should help them keep a closer eye on the work that they're funding.
This problem inspired this program at Williams college. The locals get the opportunity to interact with the students by attending or hosting functions.
One of the functions is each student presenting their country and their interests.
Always got the sense the program is to train public officials on proper methods of government.
> In October [2021], David Beasley, head of the U.N. food agency, tweeted a cheeky congratulations to Musk for reportedly earning $36 billion in a single day. "1/6 of your one-day increase would save 42 million lives that are knocking on famine's door," he wrote.
> A few days later, Musk tweeted: "If WFP can describe on this Twitter thread exactly how $6B will solve world hunger, I will sell Tesla stock right now and do it."
Last I heard he owed $11B to the US Gov in taxes in 2021, I hope it was put to good use.
Kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy on his part, isn't it? $6B wouldn't solve world hunger, but it'd put a dent in it, and the size of that dent probably scales with how well the money is managed.
That's a big number, but I'm not shocked by the error/graft, nor its source (poor accounting).
A well-regarded development organization I used to work for went through a quiet reorganization in 2016 when a few million dollars came up missing. It turned out that just getting materials to rural places in Sub-Saharan Africa was really, really hard to do without graft along the way.
I don't know how things ultimately resolved, but it's not obvious to me that effective countermeasures would have been cheaper than letting some of the money leak out in the delivery chain. It's an inherently hard problem to disburse development aid to the right parties in the right amounts.
Deciding where to spend it is most certainly hard but accounting for it is very easy. Even if the money was $100K to Jimmy to get the stuff into Algeria, there would be some tracking and accountability.
It's weird that with the sort of numbers that could lift some countries out of poverty, we can't even write something down in a spreadsheet.
> It's weird that with the sort of numbers that could lift some countries out of poverty
This is not how you end poverty. This is how you pad the pockets of whatever entity is best positioned to receive that amount. It will promptly be flown with those people to the Dubai gold market where an all-gold suit will be purchased and the rest of the country never sees a dime.
Ultimately self sufficiency needs to be obtained in a stable and scalable way and then the proceeds can distribute across the economy better.
At the end of the day it's people time. And people time costs money.
So how many dollars et al. do you want you want to spend documenting how you spent your dollars?
Presumably < 100% and > 0%?
But what's the right number? If we spend $1 in accounting for every $1 spent on mission, and that produces a perfect audit trail, is that too much or little?
> getting materials to rural places in Sub-Saharan Africa was really, really hard to do without graft along the way
"Graft" shouldn't need to be an unknown monetary amount missing from a bank account, especially for something like transporting things:
* Can they wear hidden cameras/microphones to get the amounts documented?
* Are they using local transport companies and staff or are they valiantly parading their bright white Hiluxes and Range Rovers as UN type orgs are prone to do, which attracts an undue amount of attention?
At some point the transport cost becomes a fixed cost of whatever that can at least be reported back to donors. Nobody donating to this type of cause expects transport to be a small number.
Are you saying people in those countries will have a problem finding worthwhile investments?
The US spent ~$6 trillion in one year, 2023 [0] on ~330 million people. Billions live in the Global South and are in much greater need of resources, due to lack of accumulated capital investments.
That's an incorrect measure to look at though. Per capita social expenditure is highly dependent on the welfare structure of a country. There are developed countries (notably the Arab welfare states - for their citizens only!) which get away with a much lower expenditure even adjusted for PPP, simply because the government directly handles the provision of a lot of essential services such as education and healthcare. The US Medicare system is structured in a way to inflate its own costs.
Since China is apparently part of the "Global South" (despite being in the Northern hemisphere) I suppose they'll spend it on various things like coal-fired power plants, petroleum imports from Iran, condos in Vancouver, shark fin soup for Communist Party banquets, ICBMs to point at us, bribes to foreign politicians, etc.
> Activists are calling for the Global North to provide at least 5 trillion U.S. dollars annually in public finance to the Global South as a down payment on their climate debt to those least responsible for climate change but most affected by it.
Huh? I'm pretty sure the Global South produces significantly more carbon emissions than the Global North. Like double. (Someone please correct me if I'm wrong?)
From a quick Jupyter CSV excursion:
Region
North 13307.26
South 24518.75
Name: Emissions, dtype: float64
Okay but what are the numbers per population? If you include 80% of the world population in south it's quite unsurprising that they constitute a large part of the emissions.
Besides, the debt is something accumulated over time. Even if the emissions of India are large today they were much lower 40 years ago, while European emissions were probably larger at that time.
No it didn't the list is too long...I had originally included Australia in the GS but moved it to the GN as per that wiki page. Here's the list I ended up with: https://pastebin.com/f50S0TNa. (Some minor errors still in there, like North Korea and Taiwan are incorrectly labeled.)
Of course my "analysis" is incomplete, I wasn't trying to do a complete analysis, just get an idea for where all the carbon emissions come from. Apparently ~2/3 comes from the Global South (currently). Forecasting models don't have normative parameters.
Personally I don’t think China is a developing economy at this point. ~25k per capita GDP (PPP) and sub 5% economy growth per year. India by contrast is just 11k per capita GDP (PPP).
I'd maybe agree, not sure. I'm mostly interested in figuring out what the "activist demands" are, specifically. On the surface using these common definitions, they seem a bit extreme.
No, because market prices don't account for environmental externalities. Attempts to make them account for environmental externalities just cause industry to move to countries where they don't, which is what already happened.
I sense that no matter what the situation would be, people will always find a way to blame "the North" for everything and anything in the world, and absolve "the South" from everything and anything that they do. It's religion at this point.
- "As published on: africa.cgtn.com, Friday 18 October, 2024."
I can confirm the OP text is indeed identical to the text on that CGTN article (Chinese state-owned media). This is simple plagiarism—among other things.
edit: On that tangent, CGTN Africa itself plagiarized Oxfam's press release—it's obviously the same text, run through an LLM for rephrasing. It's SEO spam all the way down!
It's insane the way that browsers shit the bed if there's any issue with the certificate.
Just throw in a big red exclamation point on top of the little padlock icon next to the URL bar - it's literally only there to inform the user about any potential security issues. Use it and (unless the site is known to be or obviously malicious) load the bloody page.
Honestly, it's absolutely insane that the browser misrepresent out of chain HTTPS as more of a threat than HTTP.
I don't know why my bank's website's got this red button, but I really need to transfer my funds right now, so lemme just mash whatever button I need to mash to get to the website. Ugh, why are computers so dumb!
You'd think they could give a less-scary warning for like, the first week after expiration. It's not really any less secure 2 days past expiry than it was 2 days before, and a grace period would give the host a bit more time to address these issues.
edit: Misinformation, the below user is mostly correct. It IS still less secure than a properly validated TLS connection though.
The certificate is expired, your traffic to and from that site is not encrypted. If it were the case that your traffic could still be encrypted, what would even be the point of expiring the certificate?
You're correct that you can still access it, over an unencrypted connection, however.
An expired certificate still encrypts your traffic. You might have to change settings or click through a scary warning in your browser, but other than that a certificate doesn't magically quit working as soon as it expires. The expiration date is arbitrary.
You are correct, I had to do a bit of research. Because Chrome even explicitly states that traffic to a site with an expired certificate is unencrypted. But I guess that's mostly to scare you, because the truth is that it just opens you up to potential MitM attacks and other similar issues with regular ole HTTP, but traffic between you and an unverifiable identity is at least TLS encrypted.
The world bank used to just pay off autocrats under the guise of indebting their countries for "infrastructure," and for policy concessions to foreign extractive industries. Activists complained until they had control, and have clearly cut out the middle men and are looting it for themselves. POSIWID.
the readers here are being "chumped" IMHO .. lots of comments fall hook, line and sinker for an obvious rage-bait. Does not the article say that these are "declared allocated" but not yet dispersed? Is this related to the multi-hundred billions pledged through the Paris Accords system that have not actually been applied to anything yet?
Intelligent people here are quick to jump on a 2-dimensional puppet headline to provoke the predictable canned outrage.
Yes, outrage is certainly appropriate .. daily oil profits? wasteful and unrelenting energy practices across civilization?
> Does not the article say that these are "declared allocated" but not yet dispersed?
Not sure where you're seeing that in the article, it doesn't use that language at all. It actually directly contradicts what you're saying in the first sentence:
"Up to $41 billion in World Bank climate finance —nearly 40 percent of all climate funds disbursed by the Bank over the past seven years— is unaccounted for due to poor record-keeping practices"
I wish this was a link to the original Oxfam audit. It's strange to me that an audit would say that there's somewhere between $23 and $41 billion missing. If the audit really knew what it was doing, wouldn't it have a more precise number What is unaccounted for?
That said, it's high-time for organizations like the World Bank to have fully transparent finances. Like, I should be able to go to a website and see where every single dollar is being spent. I say this as someone who's a citizen of a country who contributes heavily to the org And therefore, I think I have a right to know where my money's going.
> It's strange to me that an audit would say that there's somewhere between $23 and $41 billion missing.
Audits have degrees of certainty; an opinion may be unqualified, meaning the records are spotless, qualified, meaning there are issues but the records are trustworthy, and adversarial, meaning the records are inaccurate and do not represent the actual financial status.
If the records are questionable, it will usually take much more investigation than a standard audit to track down every money unit and produce a clean accounting of the money. Hence, it is possible to identify that records are wrong, but knowing exactly whether the money is still present but unaccounted for versus the money is actually gone from the organizations control without a record of the transaction isn't yet determined.
The DOD itself hasn't passed an audit ever. Money comes and goes without accounting meeting financial standards. That does not strictly mean that the money has been embezzled, only that the DOD and World Bank are unable to demonstrate that it hasn't been.
> Money comes and goes without accounting meeting financial standards. That does not strictly mean that the money has been embezzled, only that the DOD and World Bank are unable to demonstrate that it hasn't been.
Can you think of a better place to embezzle? Its risk-free without any accounting standards. 100% that embezzling is taking place and at a large scale.
It's hard to identify. I audited a Sheriff's account once because there was constant chatter that the funds were being misused. Out of an entire year I could only find one line item that was questionable (it was still a police item, but it should have come from a different fund).
What isn't clear is this: if say the Sheriff buys 100 riot shields from Company X, does his cousin own Company X and there is a kickback or a favor? I couldn't answer those questions because they would require a whole new level of investigation.
Pay the sheriff in crypto then ;)
If there's an outflow from Company X back to Brother back to Sheriff then there's some clear kickbacks!
unless the kickback takes form of cash or favors
Cash is for criminal activity so if the CEO is withdrawing large amounts of it then clearly he's committing some crime.
Given that the DOD is the largest employer in the USA at nearly a million people, there's almost certainly some small amount going on at a minimum.
Walmart alone employs 1.6 million people: https://corporate.walmart.com/about/location-facts
The 770,000 number for the DOD is just the civilian employee count. It becomes the "largest" when you also include the 2.1 million active service members of the military. I definitely could have worded that better.
How do you know it’s risk-free?
I’ve heard the budget battles between the Navy and Air Force can get particularly severe.
> How do you know it’s risk-free?
Because you can't convict someone for embezzlement if you can't prove it. And you can't prove it if there are no records. This is the purpose of proper financial record-keeping standards - to know where the money is and where it came from and where it goes.
Why can’t one faction in the pentagon do something, other than trying to get a conviction, that still induces risks on another faction?
Like what?
I'm not sure what that could be, but a general answer would be that neither faction wants too much scrutiny. They would therefore have mutual self-interest in maintaining a system where they can keep crappy records (or none) while still keeping mountains of money.
Influencing relative promotion prospects?
>Money comes and goes without accounting meeting financial standards. That does not strictly mean that the money has been embezzled
Coincidentally, the Liberal Democrat Party in Japan just lost their majority (and subsequently very likely the government) today due to widespread embezzlement and tax evasion.
Always argue for absolute transparency of public monies, there is no justifiable reason public monies have to be kept secret.
>wouldn't it have a more precise number What is unaccounted for?
The audit likely uncovered conflicting information and records. The range represents the high and low bounds of possible interpretations of that conflicting information.
Here's the page on the Oxfam website: https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/41-billion-world-ban...
It links to a report which seems to be the main publication, but frankly is very light on details of their audit. Also a lot of the claims are very strangely phrased which makes it difficult to figure out if the criticisms are legitimate or overblown.
I don't think at this point they could publish a complete report since some information should remain confidential for further investigation.
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The World Bank is an international organization, accountable to its shareholder governments, themselves accountable to their respective people, as all but China, Russia and Saudi Arabia are democracies.
Yes, and those govts can demand accountability. Its citizens cannot see the spending of other govts just because they feel entitled. No country funded the entire operation.
Your govt likely received foreign aid spent on citizens. Does this entitle citizens of that foreign govt to peer into your personal finances because part of them were mixed with foreign money? No, it doesn’t. Just because your govt put money somewhere that was mixed with other actor money doesn’t entitle you to seeing all financials of that entity.
If your standard is something even partially touched by tax money needs its finances made fully public, then you’ll need to include citizens making their finances made fully public. This is stupid, right?
Instead, if you do what all first world countries do, have your govt disclose where it spent money, then that is your accountability. Demanding what you want here isn’t good policy; it’s targeted outrage without thinking of its results.
Think through the consequences of your outrage.
You should if they expect you to fund them
So we should demand public expense reports of those taking state money? Citizens too?
You don’t have a right to the money then.
Good thing govts aren’t so petty and shortsighted.
> I’d guess you’re American based on your entitlement.
Probably. Only Americans demand accountability from governments and publicly funded international organizations. The rest of us have learned to shut up and keep our heads down, and continue to worship our masters.
The dozens of countries ranked less corrupt than the US beg to differ.
Maybe if Americans were aware of things like this they’d learn from them instead of pretending they somehow are good at something.
Nonprofits do why no for profits too?
Nonprofits don’t. There goes your argument. They comply with tax laws, but you can’t see them.
Why do people just make crap up?
Sometimes I feel like a mug, because I am one of the chumps who is not stealing from the government.
Pesky conscience and personal ethics
How much of that is your ethics vs you not having the opportunity to?
If you run a business or consult, there's a ton of opportunity.
The amount of grey area advice I received from my ex-CPA taught me that there is ample opportunity there. This is also why she's my ex-CPA.
What's a CPA?
Probably "Certified Public Accountant"
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Maybe it's time for an update to the excellent Lords of Poverty (1994).
The author's wikipedia page is well worth a read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Hancock
Some context, Oxfam isn't a perfect organization. They struggle with fraud and graft. This is a part of their ongoing effort to reduce it, and sometimes yes that does mean pointing the finger past themselves too.
Remind me what happens to a US citizen if our personal finances "struggle with fraud" and unaccountability to the tune of 40% when it comes to the IRS?
The money is not actually missing*.
Oxfam attempted to add up all the numbers in various PDFs linked on the World Bank's website and got a total that's less than the headline figure in the World Bank's press releases. (See the actual report at https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10...)
Some of that is probably missing data and some of it reflects that headlines like "USA donates 1 billion" don't actually always result in the US making a bank transfer for a billion dollars. For example sometimes it's a simplification of a complicated loan.
Your comment reflects a common misconception about audits. When the books don't add up that doesn't show that money is actually missing.
I don't love analogies to personal finance but a better one would be to suppose you asked a random US citizen what they spent money on last month and then compared it to their bank account. They'd probably be wrong, and you probably wouldn't have enough information to know exactly how wrong they were because they didn't save all their receipts and so on.
*edit: this report provides no evidence money is missing. to be fair it doesn't disprove missing money either
Great comment. On one hand I like what Oxfam has done, which is to show that the World Bank has poor financial controls and should do a much better job tracking where funds are actually spent. On the other hand I don't like how this is reported/interpreted (and Oxfam I think deserves some blame for how their investigation is characterized) as "there is a ton of fraud at the World Bank". That's simply not accurate, and your edit sums up the situation very well
> they didn't save all their receipts and so on
This analogy explains well but it's missing the important bit: private citizens don't have any requirement to save receipts. Charities and businesses do have that requirement.
While I'm continually frustrated by the complexity and opaqueness of the US tax code, your analogy doesn't make any sense to me. If your personal finances "struggle with fraud", it means you committed fraud. So yeah, of course you should be held directly responsible. That's very different from a large organization doling out money for tons of various complex projects, and those 3rd parties (or 3rd parties down the chain) commit fraud.
Heck, if you give money to someone and they commit fraud and abscond with your money, you get to take a tax write-off for the stolen funds.
> you get to take a tax write-off for the stolen funds.
At least for US federal taxes, that changed with a very partisan ~2017 law, where Republicans stripped it down to only cover federally declared unique disaster situations.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Cuts_and_Jobs_Act
Thanks, I was unaware of that change. Note that limit largely just applies to personal property: "For tax years 2018 through 2025, individual taxpayers with theft losses are allowed a deduction if the loss is due to theft related to a transaction entered into for profit.", https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc515#:~:text=For%20tax%20year....
E.g. for financial fraud crimes, you much more than likely would still be able to take the loss.
I don't read this as a problem of fraud within Oxfam. They audited the World Bank and found there was fraud in the bank. Or am I missing something?
They didn't find that there was fraud. They just found that the World Bank has poor financial controls and a lack of transparency in determining where funds are spent.
Of course, a lack of financial controls makes it easier for people to actually commit fraud, but the Oxfam report didn't go to that next level and look for specific evidence of fraud.
I have an uncle who actually audited a large org and found evidence of fraud. Each time something weird was found, he investigated, and alsmot each time fraud of some sort was involved. Pressure increased as the time passed, from all side (especially below, as he was near the top of that bank, but from the side too).
He and his team were physically threatened and had to have bodyguards (actually, it was cops, but they acted as bodyguards). In the early 2000s he decided to call it quit, after 8 years. He told us that the weirdest fraud of all was money laundering, as it was at the same time the easiest and the hardest to prove, depending on who did it.
All that to say actually finding fraud is hard, proving it is even harder, and can be dangerous even for lower orgs, so i won't criticize Oxfam for letting it rest where it is.
> They just found that the World Bank has poor financial controls and a lack of transparency in determining where funds are spent.
You mean like a certain crypto exchange CEO that recently went to jail for it?
Pretty sure that CEO was not just bad at accounting. In fact, he was pretty good at it, since all the "mistakes" were designed to benefit him.
Seems like they are based in Kenya and fraud/corruption is rampant in some of these African nations. Really sad but its seemingly been like this for so long which is why many of the countries there are in constant civil wars, coups, and their populations poor/starving.
If hundreds of billions of dollars in aide over 2 decades isn't fixing these nations, what will?
One idea I've read in the works of Ivan Illich (among others) is that the best thing we could do for developing countries that struggle with corruption is to leave them the hell alone when it comes to financial matters (aside, perhaps, from canceling their World Bank debts, which often come from loans made to past corrupt governments and for which the people are unjustly held accountable) and let them sort their problems out. Injecting money, even with the best of intentions, tends to make things worse when there are already structural problems.
How exactly could we even "leave them the hell alone"? Developing countries are integrated into the world economy and financial system. Other countries trade with them. If they want to issue sovereign debt then someone will buy it, if not the World Bank then the Chinese government or random private investors. The World Bank isn't perfect but they're at least somewhat helpful with improving governance standards and avoiding the most egregious forms of corruption.
I mean, yes and no. The World Bank (and other multilaterals) are supposed to provide or facilitate loans which the private sector would not otherwise advance (or provide them on concessionary terms which the private sector otherwise would not offer). Absent this form of lending, countries have a stronger financial incentive to improve their governance to the point where they can borrow on better terms on the open market. This is how bond markets operate in developed markets - hence why eg Italy pays more to borrow money than Germany (despite both being in the Eurozone).
Most people would probably agree that the reduction in those basic financial pressures to reform is more than offset by the more formal governance requirements which are (sometimes) attached to the granting of multilateral loans (and the types of governance the private sector cares about don't necessarily always align with what the World Bank cares about). But it's not automatic, especially given "improving governance" isn't the main reason the multilaterals make loans in the first place.
Kenya is not a rich country, but hardly suffers from "civil wars, coups, and a starving population". Not all African countries do.
If you really believe that, you should take a look at the Wikipedia page of Kenya, especially the history section.
Which part of it?!
Probably the 1982 coup and 1988 elections.
Recent years have also seen rigged elections and attempts to change the 2010 constitution.
I see someone hasn't worked in Kenya.
There's a lot of change happening now in Kenya, especially in terms of stable and democratic governance, but in no way is it not corrupt. It ranks at near the top consistently amongst African nations for corruption and bribery at all levels of the government.
Oxfam is headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya because it's considered a relatively stable/safe country with relatively good facilities and infrastructure. Nairobi provides a good central location to reach other parts of Africa where much of their work is based, and Kenya also provides a favourable regulatory environment for these international organisations to operate. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) is also based there.
Both of these organisations certainly have their issues with corruption, fraud, and grift, but that would likely be the case no matter where they are based. If anything, being physically closer to where much of the money is being spent should help them keep a closer eye on the work that they're funding.
This problem inspired this program at Williams college. The locals get the opportunity to interact with the students by attending or hosting functions.
One of the functions is each student presenting their country and their interests.
Always got the sense the program is to train public officials on proper methods of government.
Is there overlap between what you think needs to be fixed vs what the folks in those African countries think needs to be fixed?
> In October [2021], David Beasley, head of the U.N. food agency, tweeted a cheeky congratulations to Musk for reportedly earning $36 billion in a single day. "1/6 of your one-day increase would save 42 million lives that are knocking on famine's door," he wrote.
> A few days later, Musk tweeted: "If WFP can describe on this Twitter thread exactly how $6B will solve world hunger, I will sell Tesla stock right now and do it."
Last I heard he owed $11B to the US Gov in taxes in 2021, I hope it was put to good use.
Kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy on his part, isn't it? $6B wouldn't solve world hunger, but it'd put a dent in it, and the size of that dent probably scales with how well the money is managed.
That's a big number, but I'm not shocked by the error/graft, nor its source (poor accounting).
A well-regarded development organization I used to work for went through a quiet reorganization in 2016 when a few million dollars came up missing. It turned out that just getting materials to rural places in Sub-Saharan Africa was really, really hard to do without graft along the way.
I don't know how things ultimately resolved, but it's not obvious to me that effective countermeasures would have been cheaper than letting some of the money leak out in the delivery chain. It's an inherently hard problem to disburse development aid to the right parties in the right amounts.
Deciding where to spend it is most certainly hard but accounting for it is very easy. Even if the money was $100K to Jimmy to get the stuff into Algeria, there would be some tracking and accountability.
It's weird that with the sort of numbers that could lift some countries out of poverty, we can't even write something down in a spreadsheet.
> It's weird that with the sort of numbers that could lift some countries out of poverty
This is not how you end poverty. This is how you pad the pockets of whatever entity is best positioned to receive that amount. It will promptly be flown with those people to the Dubai gold market where an all-gold suit will be purchased and the rest of the country never sees a dime.
Ultimately self sufficiency needs to be obtained in a stable and scalable way and then the proceeds can distribute across the economy better.
At the end of the day it's people time. And people time costs money.
So how many dollars et al. do you want you want to spend documenting how you spent your dollars?
Presumably < 100% and > 0%?
But what's the right number? If we spend $1 in accounting for every $1 spent on mission, and that produces a perfect audit trail, is that too much or little?
I think the top-level spreadsheets are accurate - it's the spreadsheets five layers down that might have errors (intentional and otherwise).
> getting materials to rural places in Sub-Saharan Africa was really, really hard to do without graft along the way
"Graft" shouldn't need to be an unknown monetary amount missing from a bank account, especially for something like transporting things:
* Can they wear hidden cameras/microphones to get the amounts documented?
* Are they using local transport companies and staff or are they valiantly parading their bright white Hiluxes and Range Rovers as UN type orgs are prone to do, which attracts an undue amount of attention?
At some point the transport cost becomes a fixed cost of whatever that can at least be reported back to donors. Nobody donating to this type of cause expects transport to be a small number.
What is the Global South going to spend $4 trillion on?
I imagine flood mitigation for population centers, hydroelectric dams, renewable energy, electricity grids, rail lines and public transportation, etc
That's what's on the label, but clearly not what's in the tin.
Healthcare, education, housing, food ...
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Are you saying people in those countries will have a problem finding worthwhile investments?
The US spent ~$6 trillion in one year, 2023 [0] on ~330 million people. Billions live in the Global South and are in much greater need of resources, due to lack of accumulated capital investments.
[0] https://www.cbo.gov/publication/59727
That's an incorrect measure to look at though. Per capita social expenditure is highly dependent on the welfare structure of a country. There are developed countries (notably the Arab welfare states - for their citizens only!) which get away with a much lower expenditure even adjusted for PPP, simply because the government directly handles the provision of a lot of essential services such as education and healthcare. The US Medicare system is structured in a way to inflate its own costs.
However you measure it, finding investments for $4 trillion will not be hard.
Most will be wasted through corruption I'm willing to bet
To pay World Bank consultants, of course!
Since China is apparently part of the "Global South" (despite being in the Northern hemisphere) I suppose they'll spend it on various things like coal-fired power plants, petroleum imports from Iran, condos in Vancouver, shark fin soup for Communist Party banquets, ICBMs to point at us, bribes to foreign politicians, etc.
> Activists are calling for the Global North to provide at least 5 trillion U.S. dollars annually in public finance to the Global South as a down payment on their climate debt to those least responsible for climate change but most affected by it.
Huh? I'm pretty sure the Global South produces significantly more carbon emissions than the Global North. Like double. (Someone please correct me if I'm wrong?)
From a quick Jupyter CSV excursion:
(based on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...)(edit: updated, miscategorized Australia)
Okay but what are the numbers per population? If you include 80% of the world population in south it's quite unsurprising that they constitute a large part of the emissions.
Besides, the debt is something accumulated over time. Even if the emissions of India are large today they were much lower 40 years ago, while European emissions were probably larger at that time.
"Global South" doesn't mean literally countries in the Southern hemisphere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_North_and_Global_South
I know? I am using that page as a reference.
> I am using that page as a reference.
Where? I don't know if your comment had the actual lists of countries in the global north and south previously but it doesn't have it now.
In any case, your analysis is incomplete. It's missing per-capita emissions and cumulative historical emissions.
No it didn't the list is too long...I had originally included Australia in the GS but moved it to the GN as per that wiki page. Here's the list I ended up with: https://pastebin.com/f50S0TNa. (Some minor errors still in there, like North Korea and Taiwan are incorrectly labeled.)
Of course my "analysis" is incomplete, I wasn't trying to do a complete analysis, just get an idea for where all the carbon emissions come from. Apparently ~2/3 comes from the Global South (currently). Forecasting models don't have normative parameters.
Edit: NM, putting Australia but not China in the global north is an odd use of north and south.
Aren't China and India in the Global South? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_North_and_Global_South
Personally I don’t think China is a developing economy at this point. ~25k per capita GDP (PPP) and sub 5% economy growth per year. India by contrast is just 11k per capita GDP (PPP).
I'd maybe agree, not sure. I'm mostly interested in figuring out what the "activist demands" are, specifically. On the surface using these common definitions, they seem a bit extreme.
The South emits a lot producing products consumed in the North
We export our pollution to them...
If we stopped exporting our pollution to them, then their economies would collapse (because the pollution is caused by export-producing industries).
So isn't the North already paying the South for this pollution?
No, because market prices don't account for environmental externalities. Attempts to make them account for environmental externalities just cause industry to move to countries where they don't, which is what already happened.
I sense that no matter what the situation would be, people will always find a way to blame "the North" for everything and anything in the world, and absolve "the South" from everything and anything that they do. It's religion at this point.
Why not link to the horse's mouth instead of some random site with expiring TLS certs? https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/41-billion-world-ban...
Changed from https://www.ifcreview.com/news/2024/october/green-finance-ox... above. Thanks!
@dang: maybe change the submitted link? Thanks!
you have to email the mod team, hn@ycombinator.com. i think?
Yeah, this domain is weird spam.
- "As published on: africa.cgtn.com, Friday 18 October, 2024."
I can confirm the OP text is indeed identical to the text on that CGTN article (Chinese state-owned media). This is simple plagiarism—among other things.
edit: On that tangent, CGTN Africa itself plagiarized Oxfam's press release—it's obviously the same text, run through an LLM for rephrasing. It's SEO spam all the way down!
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Original source: https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/41-billion-world-ban...
Changed now (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41965323). Thanks!
https://archive.is/TJR4l
Site certificiate expired October 25, two days ago.
Site is not authoritative/original link:
https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/41-billion-world-ban...
https://archive.is/5Zhg0
The report itself:
> Download Oxfam’s new report “Climate Finance Unchecked.”
> https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10...
getting an invalid cert warning when heading to this domain
We've since changed the URL (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41965323).
>Expires On Friday, October 25, 2024 at 11:20:58 PM
yup. I'm sure the one dude responsible for it will get to it on Monday.
Yeah--it's expired. One of the pitfalls of the push to encrypt everything.
One of the pitfalls of not using commonly available certificate renewal and rotating services.
It's still encrypted and you can still access it.
It's insane the way that browsers shit the bed if there's any issue with the certificate.
Just throw in a big red exclamation point on top of the little padlock icon next to the URL bar - it's literally only there to inform the user about any potential security issues. Use it and (unless the site is known to be or obviously malicious) load the bloody page.
Honestly, it's absolutely insane that the browser misrepresent out of chain HTTPS as more of a threat than HTTP.
I don't know why my bank's website's got this red button, but I really need to transfer my funds right now, so lemme just mash whatever button I need to mash to get to the website. Ugh, why are computers so dumb!
Seems fine.
Well that seems "obviously malicious", feel free to re-read my comment if you're feeling less illiterate than before.
You'd think they could give a less-scary warning for like, the first week after expiration. It's not really any less secure 2 days past expiry than it was 2 days before, and a grace period would give the host a bit more time to address these issues.
edit: Misinformation, the below user is mostly correct. It IS still less secure than a properly validated TLS connection though.
The certificate is expired, your traffic to and from that site is not encrypted. If it were the case that your traffic could still be encrypted, what would even be the point of expiring the certificate?
You're correct that you can still access it, over an unencrypted connection, however.
An expired certificate still encrypts your traffic. You might have to change settings or click through a scary warning in your browser, but other than that a certificate doesn't magically quit working as soon as it expires. The expiration date is arbitrary.
You are correct, I had to do a bit of research. Because Chrome even explicitly states that traffic to a site with an expired certificate is unencrypted. But I guess that's mostly to scare you, because the truth is that it just opens you up to potential MitM attacks and other similar issues with regular ole HTTP, but traffic between you and an unverifiable identity is at least TLS encrypted.
> Because Chrome even explicitly states that traffic to a site with an expired certificate is unencrypted.
If that's the case, then Google's condescension is doing a disservice to its users.
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When it comes to non-profits and NGOs, it's the thought that counts.
Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments here.
And corporate accountability.
Applies to government organizations too.
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Please don't do this here.
Oh, I see.
I can cry foul towards Microsoft all day here, but not some faux charity which hosts fuck parties with underage and forced prostitutes.
Makes sense.
Please elaborate.
Probably this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43112200
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The world bank used to just pay off autocrats under the guise of indebting their countries for "infrastructure," and for policy concessions to foreign extractive industries. Activists complained until they had control, and have clearly cut out the middle men and are looting it for themselves. POSIWID.
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the readers here are being "chumped" IMHO .. lots of comments fall hook, line and sinker for an obvious rage-bait. Does not the article say that these are "declared allocated" but not yet dispersed? Is this related to the multi-hundred billions pledged through the Paris Accords system that have not actually been applied to anything yet?
Intelligent people here are quick to jump on a 2-dimensional puppet headline to provoke the predictable canned outrage.
Yes, outrage is certainly appropriate .. daily oil profits? wasteful and unrelenting energy practices across civilization?
> Does not the article say that these are "declared allocated" but not yet dispersed?
Not sure where you're seeing that in the article, it doesn't use that language at all. It actually directly contradicts what you're saying in the first sentence:
"Up to $41 billion in World Bank climate finance —nearly 40 percent of all climate funds disbursed by the Bank over the past seven years— is unaccounted for due to poor record-keeping practices"
You don’t actually expect us to do something about this, do you?
Outrage posturing is the name of the game. Say a lot. Sound serious. Threaten action. Do nothing.
The work on the Esplanade. No show jobs, no work jobs