[1] He grew up Brooklyn, New York City, where his father, who died when Woods was three,[2] had moved the family to find shipyard work.
[1] After graduating from high school, at the age of 17 Woods was employed on Wall Street as an office boy at the investment firm Harris, Forbes & Co.[1] At the company's urging, he attended night school in banking theory and finance,[2] and in the firm's underwriting department he drafted prospectuses, did statistical work, and drew up contracts.
[2] In 1930 Harris, Forbes & Co. was acquired by Chase Bank, and Woods was made vice president of the new firm.
[2] First Boston became one of the largest investment banking firms in the United States, and Woods played a major role in that expansion.
[1] In the summer of 1962, Black asked Woods to meet with the Kennedy Administration, which subsequently nominated him for president of the World Bank, and he accepted.
[6] By the end of Woods's tenure, the bank was engaged in a far broader range of developmental activities than at its beginning.
[13][14] The main beneficiaries of the new developmental lending were India and Pakistan, rather than the newly emerging African nations.
[15] In 1966, despite the General Assembly of the United Nations passing resolutions condemning the apartheid regime in South Africa and the continuing colonial subjugation of Angola and Mozambique by Portugal as violations of the U.N. charter, and despite a personal plea from U.N. Secretary General U Thant to Woods, the World Bank proceeded with a $10 million loan to Portugal and a $20 million loan to South Africa.
[9] Friedman worked to change World Bank preferences from infrastructure projects toward policy-based economic development.
He added that he was convinced that countries which accept this "will achieve their development objectives more rapidly than those who do not", and "that means, to mince no words about it, giving foreign investors a fair opportunity to make attractive profits".