World Bank had advance knowledge of Libyan-NATO revolution

The World Bank is normally in the business of lending money to countries that don’t have enough. Those tend to be what are technically termed poor countries. As the poor country struggles to repay the loans, the loan repayments themselves become a significant cause of poverty. Indebtedness to the World Bank becomes a vicious cycle, the net result of which is that the poorest end up poorer at the end of the cycle than they were at the beginning.

During his term as head of the African Union Colonel Gaddafi had proposed an alternative to the World Bank that would allow the poorest of Africa’s countries to escape this cycle. He envisioned a pan-African monetary union to which the wealthier countries such as Libya would donate and the poorest would receive interest-free loans or outright grants. Needless to say, such an enterprise would render the World Bank irrelevant.

It comes as no surprise then to learn that the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund came up with a plan to take over Libya’s banking system before the Gaddafi plan put them out of business on the continent. Speaking to Reuters, the new Governor of Libya’s central bank let it slip that those organizations have been busying themselves for two to three years preparing a “new” banking model for the country.

Which raises an interesting question; why?  Why would the IMF and the World Bank be planning a new banking system for Libya two years before the revolution broke out?