This surprised me, It seems that I’m swinging between feelings of how easy and hard achieving the MDGs is.
01 October 2008
What could a development economist buy for $700 billion?
Duncan Green puts the bailout in an international perspective:
To put the proposed Wall Street bailout into perspective. $700bn:
* Would clear the accumulated debt of the 49 poorest countries in the world ($375bn) twice over
* Is almost 5 times the annual amount of extra aid needed to achieve all the Millennium Development Goals on poverty, health, education etc ($150bn a year)
* Is about 7 years of current global aid levels ($104bn in 2007)
* Is enough to eradicate all world poverty for over two years (UNDP calculates it would take $300bn to get the entire world population over the $1 a day poverty line).
On the other hand it’s:
* only a quarter of the cost of the Iraq war ($3 trillion on Joseph Stiglitz’ calculation )
* a half of annual global military spending ($1339 bn)
Chris Blattman’s Blog: What could a development economist buy for $700 billion?.