(2005-03-17) — Paul Wolfowitz, the U.S. deputy defense secretary nominated by President George Bush to head the World Bank, said today that his number one goal in his new role will be to install an automated teller machine (ATM) within five miles of every poor person in each developing country.

The World Bank, a shorthand name for the International Development Agency (IDA) and International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), provides low-interest loans, interest-free credit, and grants to developing countries. Its major goal is to cut in half the number of people who live on less than $1 per day by 2015 — currently about 1.2 billion people.

Under the Wolfowitz ATM plan, the World Bank would bypass governments and non-governmental aide organizations (NGOs) to provide direct loans and assistance through the machines to individual entrepreneurs in their own communities.

The World Bank’s 10,000 “development professionals” in offices in 109 countries would be redeployed as armored-truck drivers to deliver cash to the ATMs in regions like sub-Saharan Africa.

“Wealthy nations last year poured $9 billion through the World Bank funnel, most of which will not advance the cause of eradicating poverty,” said Mr. Wolfowitz. “Funding government projects has never ended poverty anywhere. Individual responsibility, creativity and initiative ends poverty. People who are sick of being poor, rise up and take their future, their governments and their fortunes into their own hands.”

Patrick Watt, policy officer at British charity Action Aid, slammed Mr. Bush’s nominee, telling the Associated Press yesterday that Mr. Wolfowitz is not “pro-poor” and that the ATM plan would never work because many of the nations that receive World Bank money live under corrupt, totalitarian or socialist governments whose officials would find ways to channel the money toward their own personal enrichment.

Mr. Wolfowitz simply said, “Mr. Watt is right. I’m staunchly anti-poor. So are most poor people.”

He added that his “plan B” is to fly airplanes over poor countries and drop $9 billion per year from the sky, “thereby increasing the chance that the funds will achieve their purpose.”

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