United Development Bank
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| Abbreviation | UDB, UIA |
|---|---|
| Formation | 12 September, 2001 |
| Type | International financial institutions |
| Legal status | Active |
| Headquarters | Dervaylik |
| Location | |
Membership | Worldwide |
Official language | |
| Affiliations | Forum of Nations |
The United Development Bank (UDB), formerly referred to as the Periclean Investment Bank, is a global multilateral development bank chartered through the Periclean Forum and continued by its successor, the Forum of Nations, as an international bank and global lender of last resort. The bank was set up to provide finance to infrastructure and other investment projects as well as financial assistance to members across the world having issues with balance of payments. Most nations who are members of the Forum of Nations are members of the bank, although there are a few notable exceptions to this.
It is headquartered in Dervaylik, Yisrael. The small West Scipian nation, known for its banking and financial expertise, was selected as the host country, and many of the bank's employees and officers are Yisraelis. The UBD has a stated policy of "one member, one vote" and no nation has, on paper, access to veto powers. The UDB was created in 2001 during the millennium economic miracle inside the Periclean world to ensure every Periclean state - and, later, nation in the world - had access to investment funds and emergency support without 'economic or political bias'. The United Development Bank's membership is open to all internationally recognized states across the world.
Nonetheless, Latium, Sante Reze, and Yisrael all have strong informal power over the bank, its policy, and lending, much to criticism from other states with less market-based economies. Philosophically, the bank has largely been described as neoliberal, both by its proponents and critics, reflecting dominant attitudes in its most powerful members. However, during the Herzog administration, the bank's policy shifted to incorporate many elements of Oxidentalist economic thought. Upon its creation in 2019, the Kiso Pact members created their own multilateral banking organization to reflect their own anti-capitalist and socialist political economies in what was perceived by economic observers as an explicit reaction to the UBD.
History
Origins
In the aftermath of the Fourth and last West Scipian War between Yisrael and Sydalon, whereupon the Spiterianist Sydalene government attempted to invade and annex Yisrael, but was defeated in a three-year war, the major powers of the Western Periclean world wanted to implement a regional organization to foster peace and stability and prevent another major war. In 1966, upon the Fourth West Scipian War's conclusion, led by Latium, the Periclean Forum was founded by a number of Periclean nations. Eastern Periclean powers, such as Mesogeia, started joining in the 1970s, as well as Yisrael as part of the Yarden peace process.
One of the first major crises to hit the Periclean Forum was the 1973 succession crisis between Garza and Sydalon, leading to a restriction of oil exports among oil producing nations such as Ghant, causing sky-high oil prices, and steady emergence of stagflation across many states directly affected, such as Yisrael. After the succession crisis ended, Sydalon joined the Forum in 1974. By the late 1970s, the oil supply shock and inflation cooled, as states sought out other suppliers, new sources were brought online, switches were made to other alternative fuels (such as natural gas), and inflation-fighting methods such as interest rate increases and lending pullbacks fought the after-affects of the early 1970s crisis.
In the late 1980s, Yisrael faced a banking crisis due to the overleveraging of commercial real estate and high-yield corporate bonds. Gristol-Serkonos entered into a recession following the collapse of the country's asset price bubble in 1991. The country's economy begun to weaken in the early 1989 when the country's manufacturing output was sharply cutback. The country further experienced economic turmoil following the introduction of the National Goods and Sales Tax in 1990, which severely suppressed consumer spending during the first quarter. The bubble finally burst when several subsidiaries of the Lauzon-Philippe Handelsgruppe declared that they will no longer be able to repay its loans. The Conservative government under Chancellor Brian Kariwase organized a large-scale financial bailout program, with the GS Federal Government and the constituent countries coming up with about half of the bailouts to stabilize the markets and a foreign bailout from Belfras arranged to secure the remaining funds.
Mesogeia was hit with a long economic and political crisis from 1993-1997, whereas disruption in the mining industry, rise of hyperinflation, ballooning credit card and consumer debt, as well as unsecured corporate debt spiraled out of control. In Mesogeia's case, a foreign bailout was secured by Mesogeia's government, in which a coalition of Yisraeli and other foreign-based major banks, with their governments' blessings, provided emergency funds to stave off a currency shortage in return for shares of Mesogeian companies and structural reforms of the new neoliberal-friendly government.
Zilung Chen sovereign default crisis
The biggest financial crisis to hit the world in the 1990s, especially Periclean markets, occurred in Western Ochran in Zilung Chen. Zilung Chen built up a high international-funded national debt, which an investigation by the major Yisraeli bank Bank Leumi, Limited in 1996 uncovered a systemic fraudulent scheme and regional corruption within the Ochrani state's debt finances that demonstrated financiers in Zilung Chen had created widespread false data, statistics, and balance receipts as millions in foreign investors' money was embezzled by corrupt elites. The Zilung central government defaulted on the debt after a global market panic ensured following the report's release and amid international outcries of independent auditing of the allegations. In response to the default, global credit agencies downgraded Zilung's creditworthiness to "junk status" and lenders sued to force the state to repay its funds. At the behest of their banks who had invested funds in Zilung, Yisrael and Latium slapped economic and diplomatic sanctions on Zilung and its top government officials and Yisraeli banks seized Zilung funds sitting in Yisraeli accounts, a move later upheld by the courts. An international movement of bankers and finance ministers from across the global coordinated an "economic blockade" of sorts against Zilung, drying up its ability to raise foreign funds. The central government fell and a new government emerged that later made reparations and a repayment plan with many of its foreign creditors in the early 2000s.
Late 1990s crises form new consensus
By the 1990s, many bankers in Latium, Yisrael, and across the finance world, including Sante Reze, had proposed that regional banks "of last resort" be formed and funded to preempt future iterations of earlier crises like the 1973 Sydalon success crisis or the 1991 Gristol-Serkonos crisis. In the midst of the mid-1990s financial crises in Mesogeia and Zilung Chen, financiers and economic officials from Latium, Yisrael, Arthurista, Lihnidos, Belfras, and elsewhere started talks on that and other ideas. The West Periclean powers in particular settled on a regional "lender of last resort" as well as an investment bank that would fund projects under closer oversight. Since the Schwartz era in Yisrael, neoliberalism had been the dominant ideology in Yisrael and many allies and others who trained in Yisraeli schools and institutions.
The Omnes-led Latin government saw eye-to-eye with the Conservative administration of Yisraeli Presidents Greenbaum and Fishbein and together they and several other influential Periclean states started advocating the formation of such a bank chartered and run by the Periclean Forum. After several years of planning and vote chasing inside the Forum, the bank was chartered in late 2001.