New Economy Working Group

However, Robin Broad from the American University and John Cavanagh from the Institute for Policy Studies warned on the Triple Crisis blog that the Bank's figures are "highly unreliable … and typically over-optimistic," as the 2010 estimates "are extrapolated from significantly smaller samples."

As Broad and Cavanagh of the Institute for Policy Studies argue, the progressives of the world should have backed the best progressive candidate for the job of heading the World Bank rather than promoting Jeffrey Sachs' bid, on the simplistic basis that he represents the lesser of two evils. They highlight not only the consequences of Sachs' history of neoliberal shock therapy but also his present day "top-down and formulaic" approach to development.

"She wouldn't represent much of a change in the bank's general worldview, although the fact that she's a third-world woman would in itself constitute a major advance for the institution," said John Cavanagh, Global Economy director and former president of the Institute for Policy Studies.

Cavanagh said he preferred Ocampo as "someone who has challenged the neo-liberal paradigm that has dominated the bank for the past 30 years".

John Cavanagh, director of Washington's Institute for Policy Studies, says of 99% Spring, "We're building a new infrastructure of the progressive movement."

In fact, “President Obama’s upcoming proposed military budget for 2013, while a bit smaller than what we previously expected, is still going to be bigger than last year’s budget,” said ISP director John Cavanagh, who co-authored the report, “America is Not Broke.”

“This military budget will exceed the budgets of the next 10 largest militaries put together,” Cavanagh added.

"I think why the Occupy movement has struck such a cord, and been so popular, that they are the living embodiment that that story is no longer true," Cavanagh says.

"This tribunal is illegitimate and it shouldn't exist," said John Cavanagh, director of the Institute for Policy Studies and a rally organizer. "It's an attack on democracy."