Sunday, September 26, 2010

Iron Test Low But Good Hemoglobin




Dambisa Moyo is what is called a rarity. Born in Zambia, not many years ago as his career seems to imply. PhD in Economics from the University of Oxford, has also the laurel wreath of the Master in International Development at Harvard University. It also has a degree in chemistry from the University of Washington, DC, where her resume quite fat at the same time with a Master in Business Management. At forty years, has made a career as a consultant at the World Bank, among others institutions of higher buskin. Regular contributor to the Financial Times and The Economist, has been prepared as one of the hundred most influential people of Planet Earth. Regardless of such academic and personal gear, ebony economist is the author of one of the ten works sold in U.S.: Dead Aid (The end of support). Her find the final flashpoint that ignites the barren paddy fields of political correctness and the Third World. The work itself is a statement of intent, a touch of spurs to the horses galloping towards the abyss burning shoes with those she calls the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse Africa: war, disease, poverty and corruption. And is that African economist has spent years dedicating themselves body and soul to point out that the emperor is walking naked with an explosive belt on his chest ready to detonate, put in grave danger of blowing up the entire African Kingdom. Or what it is.

Dambisa The good damn repeated like a mantra in various articles and interviews given how international financial assistance schemes that are not only sterile, but are also deeply harmful. A full metastatic cancer, a black plague running at breakneck speed through the arteries and routes of Africa, sweeping everything in its path. Y well, igniting the powder data and numbers, becomes the target of strong criticism of foreign aid to the various Western governments try to pass the comb from Cape Blanco to Cape Agulhas. It refers to the 50,000 million annually coming to Africa, or what is the same: a trillion dollars over the past sixty years. Quantities that, even causing dizziness, fall on deaf ears year after year, as it falls into the sea, Brig merchandise mortally wounded.

Many countries and organizations that fall down on their knees in front of the Golden Gryphon U.S. and the World Bank begging for a Marshall Plan Africa, such as the Organization of African Unity. Ignore each laments and litanies that the aid received by Africa since the beginning of the slow process of decolonization is equivalent to three Marshall Plans, as pointed out in his essay Revel anti-American obsession. Moreover, if we pass the numbers on the screen, we see that between 1960 and 2000, African countries were four times more credits than Latin America or Asia. Some loans extremely advantageous conditions and very long term. And some loans, however, end up being forgiven over time to various African governments.

However, there is always who you think little. We saw in the last UN summit in New York. Obama, in his capacity as Mago Berlin, announced the launch of a Global Development Plan, as the balm of Gilead, kill acute rheumatism which kept bedridden for the African child. But since there is no squire, Don Quixote, they soon break through the good of Sarkozy and Zapatero, backing the implementation of the Tobin tax with which international financial transactions in order to eradicate poverty and hunger. And to repeat prayers and sacred chants, like a Tibetan prayer mill concerned. However, James Tobin himself under the ground must be struck with astonishment the one who pays with a blue ticket and will return one red. And the economist, in an interview published in Der Spiegel for years, not only was clearly annoyed by the worship rendered by the anti-globalization, but also became deeply regret the way it was orchestrated their child. His theory, developed in the seventies, was rescued from the dark basement where it lay for reuse as a hatchet today, a fact that, in the words of the author, thought it totally "outdated", because the world has changed too much to put away the Tobin tax cut without being digested. Rotten meat. And he says the slaughterhouse. The team of archaeologists digging in charge of the Tobin tax and making it serve the cause was the anti-globalization group ATTAC, led by the director of Le Monde Diplomatique, I. Ramonet, and who are active, among other distinguished brigadier, Carlos Jiménez Villarejo and Noam Chomsky. A group with which the Nobel Prize in Economics, Tobin, would not have any approach in life, to the point of refusing a meeting in Paris with thousands of feverish advocates of a position "well intentioned but ill-conceived." A confrontation may be more than settled with a complete "Look, I'm an economist, and, like most economists, supporter of free trade. I am also in favor of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, the World Trade Organization. Abuse of my name. "

And is that the Tobin tax, like any type of artificial injections, among many other side effects described in the prospectus, would generate high inflation, as a violin does not support more than four strings. This applies, for example, Zimbabwe, hyperinflation has reached 250,000,000% reach, and where the government prints money up to $ 100 billion. To get an idea in Zimbabwe prices double every twenty hours. Nothing new under the sun, on the other hand, it is being implemented common among the various African governments to use foreign aid funds to print money. Thus, it is clear that foreign aid programs are equally effective when transferring wealth to the very idea of \u200b\u200bwanting to make a transfer of water into their own hands. Logically to the square, the vast majority of the water escapes between the fingers. According to Moyo Dambisa only aid the World Bank have corrupted 100,000 million dollars lost on the road in search of the African sunrise. However, Western governments continue to bear the crime of complicity even without knowing it to have the blessing of their consciences. Nothing worse than a Jiminy Cricket sated with goodness. Think that the mere idea of \u200b\u200bit will end with the problem as if they were real miracle workers, not just primitive but also destructive and childish. Especially when the milk is old in new bottle.

not think that this whole legion of potters is new. Quite the contrary. As emerging from one of these cryogenic chambers that hold the bodies of hundreds of degrees below zero, resurfacing the apostles of development. Already in the 50's, with the aftermath of the Second World War, a plague of well-intentioned economists tried to put up a new Africa imperial weaned from his mother, even mediocrity economic science itself. Thus, economists the likes of Hirschman and Arthur Lewis made the Third World because his own crusade. Their lives reflected what Hirschman called it the "calamitous train wrecks in history." Was the generation that lived and suffered the war and thus perhaps, eventually changing the complex economic orthodoxy by the dictates of the heart shakes. All of outrages gazpacho. Believing that the economy is created or destroyed by the winds blow from the will, had their first setback to India's Nehru. Hyperrationalism scientism that were designed with the development plans as if they were mere mathematical equations did nothing but widen the gap further still bleeding. Attended the macabre spectacle of a decolonization ended up favoring the creation of more poverty and greater inequality. Were also midwives in the birth of the World Bank for Reconstruction and Development. European Reconstruction and Development in Africa. A development that would be truncated again and again due to the connivance of Western governments with African dictators who seized the scepter of their various countries.

Front and back of the hand. Heads and tails of the same coin. Yesterday, as today, direct aid to the highest leaders of African countries have not achieved anything other than create a situation of absolute dependence on the outside. While the money keeps falling from the sky like manna from heaven, the various African governments will not find more incentive than calling for greater efforts to follow the West. According to Moyo's own, who knows Africa cross the ball, two basic ideas are subtracted from all this support model. The first, direct support from government to government lacks the capacity to generate real jobs. And second, that Africans want exactly the same as Westerners. The company is the heart of a company and the worker's blood that irrigates the country. While conditions are not conducive to entrepreneurship and the entry of foreign capital, markets are paralyzed or are nonexistent. Therefore, the solution is the creation of transparent government and an independent judiciary that guarantees the right to private property. Professor Huerta de Soto, who exudes the rigor of a taxidermist and the madness of a poet, wrote a pragmatic and beautiful at the same time for TIME magazine in which stressed the indissoluble Rule of Law and the development of wealth of a country. It tells how the Government of Indonesia was invited as a consultant to perform work location of the assets of the extralegal sector, which lived 90% of the population. Walking through the rice fields of Bali, he noticed that when entering a different property will a different dog barked. Then he said to his companions with the Chinese oracle appealable has: "Learn to hear the barking of dogs" is because the dogs, even without awareness of the property, knew well the limits of the economic assets of its owners - paddy fields in this case. Is that the first step in creating an ownership society. The house is not to be house as refuge, as well as economic assets are not to be delimited by a barking dog. Titles are guaranteed by a transparent legal system that allow the loincloth and the leap from village to civilization and jeans.

Despite the evidence, not only messages in a bottle thrown into the sea of \u200b\u200bdeafness, smoke signals about impossible for a political clique out of the impasse as best they can pull the heart and not of reasons. Choose to hold their own quixotic illusions with which to draw a more just world without more effort than the political. Tartarin of Tarascon by miles for nothing. And do not walk alone on this journey. Criticism of the model has meant to aid Moyo Dambisa all attacks and hunts by NGOs. It is these organizations who, in tandem, doing the dirty work of Cyrene Western governments throwing the furrows of earth African Arriscado seeds of poverty and corruption. According to the economist or even surprised, because it seems logical enough to undo him in criticism of those who have made the Third World because their own work and lifestyle. No more. That is why, yet it funny that the NGOs are the first to avoid any serious discussion on the problem of poverty and hunger in Africa. Do not even hesitate to look the other way as the wild flowers grow among so scorched earth. This is the case of the famous Asian Tigers-Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, who slowly take flight after decades of immobility, the As a converted South Korea into a paradigm of development for anyone with eyes in his head: a country in the 50's was completely burnt and destroyed after the war with North Korea, being among the poorest in the world with a Per capita GDP not exceeding $ 100 in 1963 and today is at the forefront of battle. Hence, Professor Ezra Vogel, an expert on Asian affairs and an instructor of real leap of Deng Xiaoping, came to say: "South Korea is unrivaled even in Japan, regarding the speed with which went from no have, practically, industrial technology, to occupy a place among the nations more industrialized world. No nation has gone so quickly, leaving the craft to heavy industry, from poverty to prosperity, inexperienced leaders to modern planners, managers and engineers. "

But most striking is how, in Africa itself is chosen, one of the greatest miracles thanks to economic freedom and not to direct aid programs: Botswana. A country that, since 1968 maintained a growth rate of 7% and enjoying some economic freedom indices perfectly comparable to Western countries. Without going any further, Botswana is ranked number 28 in the world ranking of economic freedom over Spain, Norway and Czech Republic, among others. The final acid test of how development assistance programs do not fulfill the role assigned to them on paper and how, instead, an economic policy that encourages business creation and the right to private property ends up in the real wood-fired boiler of the train of progress and prosperity. But the hypocrisy and cynicism have become the governess of authentic African politics. Complaint Dambisa how Moyo has implemented the circular logic to believe that if there is support debts are not settled, and without these debts can not be satisfied Africa out of poverty. In this way, help perpetuate the cycle of abuses and corruption, but, above all, what is perpetuating poverty.

cynicism becomes a stabbing when the European Union through barriers blocking the entrance of African agricultural products while sending billions so that not only destroy the economy outside of Africa, but the home market. Moyo used the example of nets, "In a village, a small company engaged in the manufacture of networks' anti-mosquito." It has 10 employees, who support their families, a total of, say, 150 people. Suddenly, an extraordinary grant distributed outside 100,000 networks for free. What happens? Local production company disappears, it can not compete with free networks, so these 10 families lost their income. In addition, the networks, after two years, cease to be useful, but can not buy back because the industry disappeared, so the situation ends up being worse than before help arrived outside "living image of what happens when you block a natural process of market. Welcome to Africa.

However, Moyo Dambisa good you can sit on top of a hill to see how half of Africa is engulfed by its own termite thanks to financial support from governments while western half gets up and learn to walk alone through an economic model that the Europeans and NGOs bigwigs despise. At this point, would enclose another message in a bottle with the words of Valle Inclán as a warning to mariners: "There is honored to be devoured by lions, but none to be coceado by donkeys." The African economist will always wrestle with the desperate hope of drowning until your beloved Africa wake of this tale of witches. And several NGOs and activists give their hooves where good can ...

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