Give a man a fish, every day, and you keep him stunted and dependent for life.

Throw money at the problem; it's so the easiest and "nicest" thing to do.
http://tinyurl.com/cehzyh
Don't Forget About Foreign Aid /Prosperity depends on stability. * MAY 5, 2009
By MADELEINE K. ALBRIGHT and COLIN L. POWELL
...Obama's inaugural address...ringing endorsement of U.S. engagement...we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds."...joined with other world leaders in pledging support for poor countries...with Congress to double support for agricultural development,.. ***A noble and "feel-good" endeavor. But is it effective? (Do the noble care? The bureaucrats make careers in any case. )***
Foreign Aid for the Unrepaid Is Mostly a Masquerade* APRIL 14, 2009
As timely as Mary Anastasia O'Grady's "Aid Keeps Latin America Poor" (Americas, April 6) is, its underlying message is also long overdue. She mentions the list of U.N.-sponsored institutions that have poured billions in aid to Latin America since 1959, all to no avail in the alleviation of poverty. The Alliance for Progress promoted by the Kennedy administration in 1961 can be added to the list. It was largely managed through the Inter-American Development Bank, expending $22.3 billion in 1960 dollars through 1969. It was infamously unsuccessful. Yet, its managers found that the fault could be set at the feet of corrupt governments and military dictatorships -- which took the money and laughed all the way to an off-shore bank.

Though the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's Development Assistance Committee calculated a rise of 10.2% in Official Development Assistance (ODA) to $119.8 billion in 2008, a significant percentage is phantom aid. DAC doesn't issue public disclosures on the percentage that is debt forgiveness. In 2005, debt cancellation accounted for more than 20% of ODA from Austria, Germany, Italy, the U.K., France, Japan and Spain. Nearly 70% of Portugal's ODA came from writing off bad loans to poor countries, often to its former colonies.

In debt forgiveness, not a single new dollar or euro leaves a developed country for a developing country.Most of the credits were insured by export credit guarantee agencies, which reimbursed the lenders years ago. But since the debt was not formally canceled until recently, that unpaid interest had accumulated, often to more than double the principal. When the World Bank forgives a bad loan, the debt is charged off to its capital members who must then reimburse the bank in an amount equal to what was forgiven. This is a double whammy for its largest member: the U. S. government. It paid for the bad loan, then pays again to forgive that loan.
Jeremiah Norris Director Center for Science in Public Policy Hudson Institute Washington
http://tinyurl.com/d2rmuj
Aid Keeps Latin America Poor
For real progress, they need the means to accumulate wealth.By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY
...the restatement of the obvious has become the first duty of intelligent men.-- George Orwell, 1939
U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has a lot on his plate...Still, President Barack Obama's top fix-it man managed to jet down to Medellin, Colombia, a week ago for the Inter-American Development Bank's (IDB) general assembly. His big contribution was to get behind a proposal to nearly triple the development bank's capital....supporting the bureaucratic status quo in Latin America,...Geithner strengthens himself politically. All hail the Obama administration's first-string hurler, a man who never meets a problem that can't be solved by throwing more money around. But ...expansion of the already menacing IDB is grim news for the serfs...in the feudal Latin American systems...the bank calls its "clients."...Latin America remains poor and backward not despite multilateral "assistance" but, in a large part, because of it.
The IDB has been going at the problem of poverty in Latin America since 1959, but it hasn't acted alone. In the postwar period the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and untold bilateral agencies have blanketed the region with aid. World-wide foreign aid has boomed. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, "in 2008, total net official development assistance (ODA) from members of the OECD's Development Assistance Committee (DAC) rose by 10.2% in real terms to USD 119.8 billion. This is the highest dollar figure ever recorded.
..."the empirical evidence..."Foreign Aid, Income Inequality and Poverty," from the research department of the IDB itself, ...found "some weak evidence that foreign aid is conducive...however, this result is not robust...consistent with recent empirical research on aid ineffectiveness in achieving economic growth or promoting democratic institutions."...now that we know it doesn't work, Mr. Geithner wants more of it. This is what the late, great development economist Peter Lord Bauer called "the disregard of reality." ...he called the claim that poverty is a trap that cannot be escaped without external aid an "obvious conflict with simple reality."...For Bauer, foreign aid was not just a waste of money; it worked against getting things right in those areas that really matter to progress....the critical link between economically free people and prosperity...."The decisive element" in bringing a society out of poverty is "the development of the entrepreneurial reserves that exist in its men and women,.."The institutions that grant more freedom to their citizens and more security to their citizens' possessions are those that best facilitate the accumulation of wealth."
...obvious that economic liberty and property rights are the key drivers of development, and that there is no correlation between the volume of foreign aid a country receives and its respect for these values.