The Group of Seven appeared to have achieved a compromise on aid to the Third World on Saturday, proposing "up to" 100 percent multilateral debt relief to poor nations, G7 sources told Reuters.Third world "debt" is an annoying racket at best. The Thugocracies repeatedly blow the dough and the wealthy nations repeatedly cover their debts.
British finance minister Gordon Brown had sought a complete debt write off for the world's poorest nations, but faced resistance from the United States.Sounds right to me.
Washington had objected to his proposal to use IMF gold reserves to fund the debt write off and also to create a new financing mechanism that would double aid
The plan has the backing of South Africa's Nelson Mandela who made an emotional appeal to the G7, equating the fight against poverty to the struggle against apartheid.Ah, Africa - the spiritual home of Thugocracy and its apologists like Nellie. Hey, where's Desmond Tutu?
"Do not delay while poor people continue to suffer," the 86-year-old former political prisoner said, putting all his moral weight behind his plea. He demanded a full write-off of African debt and $50 billion extra a year in aid for the next decade.
U.S. Treasury Under Secretary John Taylor said he disagreed with the Brown plan to double existing aid by using rich countries' guarantees to raise money in the capital markets, and using gold reserves to fund a debt write-off.The Thugocracies aren't about results, they're about big Mercedes sedans. Niall Ferguson has nice article on British leftoid guilt and the African Thugocracies in the Telegraph - Africa doesn't need handouts: it needs honest governments:
"What we think is the main, major problem now is the funds are not being used effectively. We've got to demand results," Taylor said on BBC radio.
As it is, the only people falling over themselves seem to be Mr Blair and Mr Brown, as they vie with one another like a pair of holier-than-thou student politicians to see who can do more to assuage Britain's post-colonial guilt about Africa.Such a deal!
...
The trouble is that what both Blair and Brown are proposing are mere variations on an old, familiar theme known as "aid". (As Mr Brown's advisers well know, there is no real difference between "debt forgiveness" and handing poor countries a large, gift-wrapped cheque.) But we have been here before. Between 1950 and 1995, Western countries gave away around $1 trillion (in 1985 prices) in aid to poorer countries. But these efforts yielded pitiful results, as New York University economist Bill Easterly has shown, because the recipient countries lacked the political, legal and financial institutions necessary for the money to be used productively.
Indeed, much of the money that has poured into poor countries since the 1950s has simply leaked back out - often to bank accounts in Switzerland. One recent study of 30 sub-Saharan countries calculated that total capital export for 1970-96 was some $187 billion, which, when accrued interest is added, implies that Africa's ruling elites had private overseas assets equivalent to 145 per cent of the public debts their countries owed. The authors of that study conclude that "roughly 80 cents on every dollar borrowed by African countries flowed back [to the West] as capital flight in the same year".
Which brings us back to Kenya and to the fundamental problem of African politics: corruption. In the past week or so, two stories have illustrated just what is wrong with the way Kenya has come to be governed since independence. The first was the response of the authorities in Nairobi to the blunt remarks made by our High Commissioner, Sir Edward Clay, on the subject of the country's "massive looting and/or grand corruption".But they aren't slouches at playing the old sad tunes to get the usual leftoids reaching for the taxpayers' wallets.
Sir Edward was telling it like it is. According to the think-tank Transparency International, Kenya is one of the dozen most corrupt countries in the world. But the Kenyan government blew a gasket. "Sir Edward Clay has just behaved as an enemy of this government," declared the country's justice minister.
The other story that caught my eye concerned the violence that flared up last month in the Kenyan Rift Valley. Just another case of ancient ethnic hatred, in this case between Maasai and Kikuyu? Not quite. As the BBC reported: "The trouble is thought to have started when Maasai herdsmen accused a local Kikuyu politician of diverting a river to irrigate his farm, prompting a water shortage further downstream."
Like Mr Brown, I, too, recently visited Tanzania, where I got to know the son of an opposition politician. For most of his life, his father had been in jail. "You see," he explained to me, "what African politicians find hard to understand about democracy is why, once they have got power, they should have to hand it over to someone else just because of an election."
For power means, above all, money. It means being the guy to whom Brown hands the bulging envelope. So Africa's problem is not a problem that aid can solve. On the contrary: aid may simply make the problem worse. Africa's real problem is a problem of governance...
Speaking of which, the "governors" have got another scam cooking - AU: Pay up for slavery:
Addis Ababa - The African Union plans to relaunch attempts to gain reparations for the countless Africans who were abducted from the continent and sold into slavery over the centuries, the pan-continental body said.I thought they got paid originally when they sold their fellow citizens?
In a statement released late on Friday from its headquarters in Addis Ababa, the African Union said its executive Commission would push the issue, and would also call on African parliaments to do so.Lots of luck with that. I'm still trying to get the Frenchies to pay reparations for the 100 Years War.
Talks on the issue took place on the sidelines of celebrations in Ethiopia to mark what would have been the 60th birthday of the late Jamaican singer Bob Marley.They need more ganja money, I guess. Meanwhile in Asia, the local economies are just humming along.
Marley's supporters, the Rastafarians, have in the past pushed a demand for the main western nations involved in the slave trade and slavery - notably Britain, France, the United States, Spain and Portugal - to pay reparations.
