The Multinational Monitor

Jan/Feb 2003 - VOLUME 24 - NUMBERS 1 & 2

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THE LAWRENCE SUMMERS MEMORIAL AWARD*

The January/February 2003 Lawrence Summers Memorial Award* is shared by Larry Goldstein, president of the New York City-based Petroleum Industry Research Foundation, and Sir Charles Masefield, vice chairman of BAE Systems PLC, a UK firm.

"If we go to war, it's not about oil," Goldstein told the Wall Street Journal. "But the day the war ends, it has everything to do with oil."

"When there are wars, we feel it's been a failure of what all of us have been working for," Masefield told the Chicago Sun-Times. BAE Systems is a major weapons manufacturer. "Masefield commented that wars are waged against nations unprepared to fight, so the defense business provides a deterrent," the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

Source: Thaddeus Herrick, "U.S. Oil Wants to Work in Iraq: Firms Discuss How to Raise Nation's Output After a Possible War," Wall Street Journal, January 16, 2003; David Roeder, "Trade Called Best Way to Peace," Chicago Sun-Times, November 7, 2002.

Thanks to Chris McGinn and Joe DiGangi for forwarding these items.

*In a 1991 internal memorandum, then-World Bank economist Lawrence Summers argued for the transfer of waste and dirty industries from industrialized to developing countries. "Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs (lesser developed countries)?" wrote Summers, who went on to serve as Treasury Secretary during the Clinton administration. "I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that. ... I've always thought that underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly under polluted; their air quality is vastly inefficiently low [sic] compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City." Summers later said the memo was meant to be ironic.