Asymmetrical Information: Wolfie for the Bank

Interesting discussion of the historical forces behind world poverty...

Asymmetrical Information: Wolfie for the Bank: "Wolfie for the Bank

Paul Wolfowitz takes the helm of the World Bank today. So far, so good. But fighting poverty nation by nation is perhaps the hardest job in the world today. A while back I had an interesting debate with Laura, of the ever-excellent Apartment 11D, on whether or not 'unregulated capitalism' was good for the third world. My answer is that when we look at the third world, our heart cries out, as it should, but that doesn't mean that those in the third world are victims of anything but nature. The appalling poverty of Sri Lanka or Mozambique is not some bizarre aberration that can be tracked to a cause we can cure. We are the aberration; Sri Lanka and Mozambique are the normal state of human history. Trying to figure out how to reproduce those abnormal results in a couple hundred more countries is very, very hard. Fascinating, and unbelievably important. But tricky. If Paul Wolfowitz thought he was controversial before, wait until he tries to finance his first dam."