This week’s announcement by the presidents of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — the so-called BRICS countries — that they will create their own international financial institution was greeted with polite scepticism and some criticism in Washington DC. But on this issue, the BRICS are doing the right thing.
At the BRICS summit in Fortaleza, Brazil, the leaders of the world’s biggest emerging markets — a mixed bag of dictatorships and democracies — announced the creation of a development bank and a lending bank with $100 billion in capital each, that will be used as alternatives to the Washington-based World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
The BRICS’ New Development Bank (NDB) will be based in Shanghai, China. After a diplomatic struggle between China — as the biggest economy, it wanted to
