Duncan Green
The arguments for a bailout to avoid systemic collapse are of course genuine and persuasive, but so are the arguments for aid and against standing by and allowing a child to die every 3 seconds, or a woman to die in childbirth every minute. 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)
- Half of annual global military spending ($1339 bn)
Priorities, priorities.
Originally appeared on Duncan’s From Poverty To Power blog.
Tags: creditcrunch, duncangreen, economics, financialcrisis
Thanks for the detail, Duncan. Something doesn’t sit right with me either, and I said as much a few days ago.
October 2nd, 2008 at 9:08 amhttp://www.stevebridger.com/2008/09/700-billion/
If we can summon up these resources when our way of life is threatened, why cant we do more for the world ?
After this crises is over we need to take a long hard look at what is important and use the world resources for the benefit of all not just the few.
October 11th, 2008 at 10:38 pmSo what does $700,000,000,000 look like
October 13th, 2008 at 7:55 amJust had a thought about trying to get my head around the huge sums of cash the US want to spend to bailout the economy instead of feeding the poor and so over my morning coffee armed with a BIGBOY calculator I came up with this. If you placed a $1 note end to end, Each Dollar bill measuring 6.4 inches long it would take 9900 of those dollars for every mile. If you then placed 700,000,000,000, dollars end to end it would span a distance of 70,707, 070.7 miles long that’s over SEVENTY MILLION SEVEN HUNDRED thousand miles. That’s a money line that could rap around the world 2996 times or if you had traveled into space on Aug. 27 2007, Mars was 34.65 million miles away so the line of dollar bills could have reached Mars and back.
Now that could feed a lot of starving people..
It saddens me greatly that some people prioritize their wallet over the lives of the poor and starving
[...] in the world hardest and they are the least able to cope with the effects, and the US government pledges enough money to its banks to end global poverty for two whole [...]
October 15th, 2008 at 9:06 amIts so true that the credit crunch highlights just what can be done-just what money can be found- when governments deem in necessary. Its also disheartening that this level of action, or financial support has not been put behind the Millenium Development Goals. This suggests that eradicating global poverty is not deemed such a necessity. This is not to say that the bailout is either wrong or right but is evidence that governments have the power take more significant action than they have previously have been.
The credit crisis also highlights the problem with relying on state-funding to support the UN Millennium Development Goals. State are always going to be primarily concerned with their national priorities. Not only is alternative funding needed, but it is also necessary to mobilise global support for the UN to direct government focus onto the bigger picture. The Influx Project aims to do just that. Please take a look at http://www.influxproject.org to find out more
October 15th, 2008 at 2:31 pmHow much is $700 billion? - a rather simple representation
There are about 6.4 billion people on Planet Earth. Therefore $700 billion represents more than $100 for each living person. How many of the 6.4 billion have ever had as much as $100?
October 21st, 2008 at 6:53 pm