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 Wednesday, July 3, 2002
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Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics and former chief economist for the World Bank, says:
 The fiscal mismanagement of the current administration -- leading to a change in the fiscal position of the United States over the past year -- is absolutely phenomenal; going from huge surpluses to huge deficits and the deficits are probably going to be larger than people anticipated. That means that foreigners are already losing confidence in the United States because the United States had earned a reputation for sound fiscal management -- and now that reputation is being destroyed. The United States had a reputation for the best accounting standards in the world; now people are saying, we don't know. 
Um, I know: U.S. corporate accounting and regulation statndards are basically rotten to the core. But really the standards aren't the issue, it's the ethics and values of the people supposedly implementing or following them. When the bottom line is all that matters, there may be no amount of regulation that will stop people from screwing other people for an extra buck. All hail the "free" market! 12:52:40 PM 
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Today the U.N. Development Program released a first-of-its-kind "Arab Human Development Report 2002." A Google search turns up three different stories, each of which highlights the major areas in which Arab nations lag behind "developed" and/or "Western" nations -- "freedom, women's empowerment and knowledge." Plus, all the articles talk about the high rates of unemployment, the low GDP in these countries, the low per capita incomes, etc. All bad bad bad. Yet, none of those stories really mentions the areas in which Arab nations have improved over the last 30 years. According to the report's Executive Summary (a pdf file):
There has been considerable progress in laying the foundations for health, habitat, and education. Two notable achievements are the enormous quantitative expansion in educating the young and a conspicuous improvement in fighting death. For example, life expectancy has increased by 15 years over the last three decades, and infant mortality rates have dropped by two thirds. Moreover, the region[base ']s growth has been [base "]pro-poor[per thou]: there is much less dire poverty (defined as an income of less than a dollar a day) than in any other developing region.
So the fact that all the coverage of this report highlights all the negatives should give us pause. What's the purpose of this report? Or maybe the better question: Why is the press covering the report this way? It seems clear that both the report and the media coverage of it are designed to give "Western" readers more ways to justify Western intervention in Arab affairs. And while we shouldn't overlook the fact that these countries are not "free" in the ways that we think are pretty important, it's hard to see how current international initiatives (bombs and tough-guy rhetoric from Bush and Co.) will do much to encourage such freedoms. Furthermore, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or Per Capita Income (PCI) are really lame measures when it comes to talking about the "health" or quality of life in a country, unless we all agree that western capitalism -- which values the bottom line above all else in all questions -- is the way all nations and economies should be organized. As long as we use these numbers as our measuring sticks, the WTO and the IMF are winning. (And if I haven't explained the connection well enough, well... I'm a bit cynical recently about the value of connecting dots like this. Maybe later.)
8:08:50 AM
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