After World War II, hundreds of billions of dollars in cheap loans or grants were channelled to Third World governments via the World Bank, IMF and other organizations to foster growth.
Unresolvable The public record could not settle it.
Factual: Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?
The second judge would not resolve this claim; the verdict shown is the first judge's.
What would count as true or false
True: development-finance records show that from World War II up to about 2007, the World Bank, the IMF, other multilateral bodies and bilateral aid together channelled cumulative loans and grants totalling at least hundreds of billions of dollars to developing-country governments, on concessional terms or as grants, with stated aims of economic growth and development. Mostly true: the amounts and purposes are right, but a minor detail is off, for example much of the lending was on non-concessional terms. Mixed: the cumulative total is substantially below 'hundreds of billions', or a large part went to non-government recipients. Mostly false: the total was only in the tens of billions, or the stated purpose was mainly something other than growth. False: no flows of anything like this scale took place.
Set before the research began.
Evidence (4)
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E1 [PDF] Was Development Assistance a Mistake? William Easterly (New York University); American Economic Association Papers and Proceedings · May 2007
“Over the past 42 years, $568 billion (in today's dollars) has flowed into Africa, yet per capita growth of the median African nation has been close to zero.”
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E2 Millennium Flop: News Article - Independent Institute Independent Institute · 16 September 2005
“In almost six decades, some 2.3 trillion dollars have been dished out worldwide to poor countries by rich ones—about half the cost of World War II!”
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E3 History International Development Association (World Bank) · 19 October 2024
“Since its inception, IDA credits and grants have totaled $533 billion, averaging $36 billion over the last three years (FY21-FY23).”
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E4 Foreign aid | Definition, Examples, History, Purpose, & Facts Encyclopaedia Britannica
“but also by its size, amounting to trillions of dollars since the end of World War II, by the large number of governments providing it”
Reasoning
The evidence shows that aid flows to poor countries reached at least the hundreds of billions of dollars [E1][E2][E3][E4]. However, the quoted items do not show what share was concessional or grants, what share went to governments, or what the stated aims were. The criteria need these details to decide between true, mostly true, mixed and mostly false.
Cite this claim
Peter Thiel, “After World War II, hundreds of billions of dollars in cheap loans or grants were channelled to Third World governments via the World Bank, IMF and other organizations to foster growth.” (said 2007). Verdict: unresolvable. Reliability API, claim c_b55906a8df1c, method 0.1.0+3e03e2df, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_b55906a8df1c
This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.
Reply to this claim
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Verdicts are made automatically; how verdicts are made.