Faith and Credit
The World Bank's Secular Empire

The World Bank is an immensely powerful institution. This study ranges from personal criticism of the central players to a more reflective discussion of the blind faith characteristic of development economics based on the idea of perpetual growth.

The World Bank is an immensely powerful, though little-understood, institution. This study ranges from personal criticism of the central players to a more reflective discussion of the blind faith characteristic of development economics based on the idea of perpetual growth. The authors compare the ideologies of the free market with religious faith, giving the World Bank the role of a secular church setting out to convert the world's underdeveloped economies to the consumer capitalist way, and so to create an enormous secular empire. Susan George is the author of "Ill Fares the Land", "How the Other Half Dies" and "A Fate Worse than Debt", winner of the 1988 US World Hunger Media Award and French UNICEF Committee Prize 1989.