Ending poverty one hand gesture at a time

Jeffrey Sachs, perhaps one of Columbia’s most well known faculty member, is at it again. This time, the Director of the Earth Institute, is not seeking to simply advise economically insolvent countries, he wants to help them out of the mess himself. Sachs threw himself into the ring with an op-ed he wrote for the Washington Post on March 1st.

Here’s an excerpt from the article entitled, “How I would Lead the World Bank”:

Unlike previous World Bank presidents, I don’t come from Wall Street or U.S. politics. I am a practitioner of economic development, a scholar and a writer. My track record is to side with the poor and hungry, not with a corporate balance sheet or a government. Yet the solutions work for all — the poor, companies, governments and the rest of us — by creating a more prosperous, healthy and secure world.

I don’t seek the bank presidency because of its financial muscle. The bank’s net disbursements (disbursements minus repayments of funds from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development as well as the International Development Association) were about $16 billion in fiscal 2011. That’s a meaningful sum — but global markets easily eclipse the bank as providers of finance.


  Jeff via Wikipedia