Jeffrey Sachs was interviewed by US News and World Report about the credit crisis. Sachs says that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has tried to keep the focus of poverty, hunger and rising food prices despite the other attention grabbing crisis.November 3rd US News and World Report Jeffrey Sachs, special adviser to Ban on the antipoverty Millennium Development Goals and an economist who directs the Earth Institute at Columbia University, says that the financial crisis "is front and center in the secretary general's attention," with particular focus on coordination efforts aimed at positioning the U.N. system—including the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank—so that it "can help to moderate a very deep crisis."Of particular concern to Ban and his advisers is ensuring that...
Every year Jeffrey Sachs presents an annual lecture for the student body of Columbia University. Sachs is a professor at Columbia and directs the University's Earth Institute and it's Millennium Villages project. The villages are a sort of test lab for how to pull people out of poverty.Jeffrey Sachs used this years student lecture to lament the fact that the rich nations are not hearing the cries of the poor, and the millions of people who stand up for them. He especially singled out the Bush administration.The Columbia Spectator's Maureen Stimola reports that Sachs says that people in the Villages cannot escape poverty without aid. Sachs stressed the need for more outside intervention. A major difficulty, he said, is the “poverty trap,” a phenomenon brought on by extended periods of...
The next big international meeting on development and trade is coming up in December in Doha, Qatar. The meetings sponsored by the United Nations hope to develop finance for the world's poor. But the recession felt thought the world may carry the agenda instead.A great article today in IPS talks about the preparations that EU member states have put into the upcoming meetings. Writer David Cronin gathers the opinions of aid groups and NGO's on what the European Union is doing.For past meetings similar to this, the EU was widely praised for their leadership, but now they are being criticized. Last week Jeffery Sachs gave what he would like to see on the meetings agenda. Today, we wanted to highlight the subject of tax havens from the IPS article. One of the most contentious issues on the...
Jeffery Sachs says that the credit crisis is a clear indication that the international financial system is broken. But he also stays it's broken in other ways. Such as a billion people being cut of from the system because of where they live, and no energy supply plan to address demand and climate change. The next big international meeting is in December. In his latest commentary, Jeffery Sachs proposes an agenda for the meeting, as found in the Guardian.Here, then, is an agenda for Bretton Woods II. First, we need to restructure global finance, based on an expanded system of capital adequacy standards, financial reporting, system-wide risk management, and new lender-of-last-resort capacities. Derivatives traders, hedge funds, and broker dealers would be brought under regulatory control....
As stated on the previous post, aid commitments from wealthy countries are falling far short from being payed out. The nations pledged $12.3 million dollars, but only $1 billion has been disbursed so far. The pledges came from an emergency meeting earlier this year that was called to deal with the jump in food prices. The wealthy nations blame the credit crisis for not fulfilling their pledge. But two people we respect a lot say that it is wrong to. From this Associated Press article found in the the Santa Cruz Sentinel, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan says poverty should not be ignored. "The financial crisis deserves urgent attention and focus. But so does the question of hunger. Millions (this year) are liable to die. Is that any less urgent?" Annan told journalists at the...
Economist Jeffrey Sachs signed on August 21 2008 an article at — The digital war on poverty — in which, summing up, he explains that [t]Thanks to market forces, even the world’s poorest people are beginning to benefit from the flow of digital information. Not that I do not agree, in general, with what is explained in his article, but there are some clarifications I’d like to make.
Over all, the tone of the article is optimistic. I am too optimistic about the ends, but not on the actual estate of the situation nowadays. Besides, I’m becoming more sceptic about leapfrogging, which is one of the strong points made by Sachs. Don’t get me wrong: I do believe ICTs are a revolution and will provide renewed energies for those who will be capable of benefiting from...
from the Guardian Thanks to market forces, even the world's poorest people are beginning to benefit from the flow of digital informationby Jeffery SachsThe digital divide is beginning to close. The flow of digital information – through mobile phones, text messaging, and the internet – is now reaching the world's masses, even in the poorest countries, bringing with it a revolution in economics, politics, and society.Extreme poverty is almost synonymous with extreme isolation, especially rural isolation. But mobile phones and wireless internet end isolation, and will therefore prove to be the most transformative technology of economic development of our time.The digital divide is ending not through a burst of civic responsibility, but mainly through market forces. Mobile phone...
from the Guardian Jeffery Sachs calls on the G8 leaders to honor their commitments. - KaleThe G8 summit in Japan earlier this month was a painful demonstration of the pitiful state of global cooperation. The world is in deepening crisis. Food prices are soaring. Oil prices are at historic highs. The leading economies are entering a recession. Climate change negotiations are going around in circles. Aid to the poorest countries is stagnant, despite years of promised increases. And yet in this gathering storm it was hard to find a single real accomplishment by the world's leaders.The world needs global solutions for global problems, but the G8 leaders clearly cannot provide them. Because virtually all of the political leaders that went to the summit are deeply unpopular at home, few offer...
from the New York Daily News Bono's guru finally weighs in on the global food crisis. - KaleBY JEFFREY SACHSThe surge of world food prices this year came like a bolt out of the blue, but warning lights were in fact flashing. Imbalances of global food supply and demand had been building for years beneath the public view.It's our job now to restore a balance of food supply and demand, and to defuse the long-term factors that can still come back to haunt us.To date, American policy has been part of the problem, not the solution. In a mix of misguided energy policy and brazen special interest politics, the U.S. adopted a bio-fuel boondoggle. Taxpayers pay billions of dollars each year to subsidize large grain companies to covert corn to ethanol. Yet on balance, corn-based ethanol saves...
from the Sydney Morning Herald Jonathan Pearlman spoke to the "rock star economist" Jeffrey Sachs on the eve of his Australian visit.In a career that has spanned three decades and more than 100 countries, Jeffrey Sachs, perhaps the world's most famous macroeconomist (and certainly the economist with the most famous friends), has never come across a problem he thought could not be solved.Known for his boundless energy and furious work-rate, his non-stop quests have included boosting Mongolian trade, cutting Polish inflation and ending world poverty. Along the way, he has been likened to the British economist John Maynard Keynes, urged to run for the US presidency by the Sachs For President group, and described by Angelina Jolie as "one of the smartest people in the world".On his first...
from Middle East Online Jeffrey Sachs discusses global situation in relation to poverty in his latest work ‘Common Wealth’.Book review of: “Common Wealth – Economics for a Crowded Planet” by Jeffrey D. Sachs (Penguin Press, NY, 2008).Reviewed by Jim MilesEconomists some so intent on their money, not able to truly release themselves from their fundamental neoliberal values, afraid to admit that many of the policies they are advocating fall squarely into the rubric of ‘socialism’. That of course is a very sweeping definition, a rather broad paint stroke colouring them all with the same brush, but for Jeffrey Sachs it is suitable. While working at an eminently prestigious foundation, the “Earth Institute” at Columbia University, obviously intelligent enough to gather...
from the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation President Mwai Kibaki at his Harambee House Office met and updated Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, the Special Advisor to UN Secretary General, on the steps the Grand Coalition Government was taking to attain the millennium development goals.President Kibaki said despite the heavy investments required, the Government was giving priority to Health and Education sectors which were key to poverty reduction in the country.The President Thursday outlined achievements in the five-year-old free primary education programme and the progress so far made in implementing phase one of the free secondary education that was introduced in January this year.The Head of State outlined the measures being taken to boost food production including resettling the internally...
from the Santa Barbara Independent Real Answers to the World’s Biggest QuestionsBy Howard B. SchifferThursday, May 1, 2008Earlier this year, I traveled through India with Howard Schiffer, founder of Santa Barbara’s nonprofit Vitamin Angels, which was featured last week on the cover of The Independent (independent.com/india). As we discussed, literally, how to save the world, Schiffer kept referring to economist Jeffrey Sachs’s book The End of Poverty. So when it came time to find someone to interview Sachs and humanitarian Greg Mortenson in anticipation of their May 13 talk at UCSB’s Campbell Hall, the obvious choice was Schiffer, whose globe-trotting work for the past 14 years gives him a unique and powerful perspective on the work of these two men. I think you’ll agree. What...
from The Globe and MailJeffrey Sachs's ‘yes we can' attitude has its fair share of supporters – and detractorsSINCLAIR STEWARTTuesday, April 29, 2008NEW YORK — More than two decades ago, long before ambition and optimism conspired to make him the Man Who Would Save the World, Jeffrey Sachs was merely the Man Who Would Save Bolivia.As a precocious 28-year-old, already a tenured professor in Harvard's economics department, Mr. Sachs attended a lecture on the South American country's growing financial crisis. After listening to one speaker enumerate a host of ills, chief among them a crippling rate of inflation, he stood up and confidently declared, “I can fix that.”Mr. Sachs might be seen as the Barack Obama of the economics world, a self-appointed saviour who, no matter how...
from the Seattle TimesBy Kristi HeimAny one of the problems that economist Jeffrey Sachs takes on would be daunting by itself: finding sustainable energy sources to avoid environmental destruction; stabilizing world population; ending extreme poverty and creating a new system for global cooperation.Yet Sachs, who directs the Earth Institute at Columbia University, tackles all four in his new book, called "Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet."He argues that finding solutions to these interconnected problems is not only possible, it's inexpensive, and would take just 2 to 3 percent of the world's annual income. He talked about a few of his ideas during a visit to Seattle. Below is an edited transcript.Q: How dangerous a point has the world reached?A: We're unprepared for the...
from the Daily Cardinal By: Caitlin Gath Students watch a live web cast from Jeffrey Sachs, UN director of the Millennium Project, about economic disparities across the globe.Jeffrey Sachs, a prominent economist and director of the United Nations Millennium Project, spoke to students Tuesday via a live web lecture regarding his plans to eradicate poverty.Sachs spoke on behalf of Project 40/40, an awareness and fundraising campaign for the Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative. The project’s goal is to connect UW-Madison’s 40,000 students with 40,000 HIV positive Ugandans who are in desperate need of funding for their AIDS medication.Members from Project 40/40 said they tried for over a year to convince Sachs to speak to UW-Madison students.“He’s like a rock star. He’s basically Bono,”...
from the EconomistFrom The Economist print editionIF GILBERT AND SULLIVAN were looking for the very model of a modern intellectual, they would surely pick Jeffrey Sachs. He is so “right on” that when Time magazine featured him in its global list of people who influence the world, his profile was written by Bono, a rock singer. His job titles—director of the Earth Institute and special adviser to the United Nations Secretary-General on the Millennium Development Goals—seem almost tailor-made to get up the noses of conservatives.Nor is Mr Sachs lacking in ambition. His previous book was called “The End of Poverty”. Now he has moved on to tackle a wide range of other challenges facing the planet, from climate change through to disease eradication. His goals include stabilisation...
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from TimeBy Jeffrey D. SachsThe 21st century will overturn many of our basic assumptions about economic life. The 20th century saw the end of European dominance of global politics and economics. The 21st century will see the end of American dominance too, as new powers, including China, India and Brazil, continue to grow and make their voices heard on the world stage. Yet the century's changes will be even deeper than a rebalancing of economics and geopolitics. The challenges of sustainable development—protecting the environment, stabilizing the world's population, narrowing the gaps of rich and poor and ending extreme poverty—will render passé the very idea of competing nation-states that scramble for markets, power and resources.The defining challenge of the 21st century will be to...
from All AfricaPublic Agenda (Accra)By Jeffrey D. SachsThe outpouring of aid in response to the Indian Ocean tsunami brought hope to a troubled world. In the face of an immense tragedy, working class families around the world opened their wallets to the disaster's victims. Former US President Bill Clinton called this response a "democratization of development assistance," in which individuals lend their help not only through their governments but also through their own efforts.But, while more than 200,000 people perished in the tsunami disaster, an equivalent number of children die each month of malaria in Africa, a disaster I call a "silent tsunami." Africa's silent tsunami of malaria, however, is actually largely avoidable and controllable.Malaria can be prevented to a significant...
from the Daily TimesA more peaceful world will be possible only when Americans and others begin to see things through the eyes of their supposed enemies, and realise that today’s conflicts, having resulted from desperation and despair, can be solved through economic development rather than warMany of today’s war zones — including Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, and Sudan — share basic problems that lie at the root of their conflicts. They are all poor, buffeted by natural disasters — especially floods, droughts, and earthquakes — and have rapidly growing populations that are pressing on the capacity of the land to feed them. And the proportion of youth is very high, with a bulging population of young men of military age (15-24 years).All of these problems...
from Arabian Business by Joel Bowman Environmental issues, such as the lack of potable water and arable land, are the driving forces behind much of the world's conflict, according to renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs."Mankind's impact on the environment is unprecedented. Humans are changing the earth in a way that threatens our collective survival more even than war," Sachs told attendees at The Gate Lecture on the fourth night of the Dubai Invernational Financial Centre (DIFC) Week.Environmental problems invariably lead to political ones, observed Sachs, citing the ongoing catastrophe in Darfur - caused primarily by a shortage of water – as a prime example. Sachs also made reference to the violent instability in countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan as examples of systemic...
from The Malaysian StarBy SHAHANAAZ HABIBKUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia can play a powerful leadership role in helping end global poverty, said world-renowned economist Prof Jeffrey Sachs. He urged Malaysia to help poverty-wracked countries in Africa and Asia as it had in hand “weapons of mass salvation” that could be offered as lessons to the rest of the world. The weapons include community-based development projects such as Felda, Mada, and Felcra that benefited the people, micro-financing which could help thousands of families, social services for health and education and infrastructure. “This is what needs to be done worldwide. There’s no need to wait for the United States and Europe to take up what this country can do,” he said in his public lecture on The End of Poverty at...
from Scientific American Targeted investments can trump a region's geographic disadvantagesBy Jeffrey D. Sachs The most destitute regions of the planet—in Africa, Central Asia, the Andes and a few other places—are not merely poor: they are seemingly trapped in poverty and prone to internal violence and political collapse. The regional distribution of these poverty traps is not random. None are in Europe or North America. Asia now has only a few. Most of tropical Africa is in a poverty trap or barely emerging from one, but northern Africa and South Africa are not. What can we learn from these geographic patterns?As noted in previous columns, the primary problem in most impoverished places is low food productivity, typically as a result of dependence on irregular rainfall rather than...
from The Daily Star Commentary by Jeffrey D. SachsAfghanistan's future hangs in the balance as its weak national government struggles to maintain support and legitimacy in the face of a widening insurgency, warlords, the heroin trade, and a disappointed populace. Across an arc extending from Afghanistan to East Africa, violence now also surges in Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia, and beyond, to Sudan's Darfur region.Everywhere, politicians, generals, and even diplomats talk of military strategies and maneuvers, but everywhere something utterly different is needed. Stability will come only when economic opportunities exist, when a bulging generation of young men can find jobs and support families, rather than seeking their fortune in violence.We are seeing again and again that a foreign army -...
from All AfricaThe Monitor (Kampala)Ben SimonProfessor Jeffrey Sachs is the Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, a top adviser to the United Nations Millennium Development Project and author of Make Poverty History, an international bestseller. On a recent visit to Uganda, he said that if the country did not drastically step up its development efforts, it would not achieve the Millennium Development Goals. After his speech, he offered these thoughts to Sunday Monitor's Ben SimonSunday Monitor: Prof. Sachs, two years ago you identified Uganda as a country that can absorb more foreign aid, and [that it] should receive more foreign aid. Do you still feel that way?Sachs: I've always said that Uganda can absorb more aid. The arguments against absorption of aid were wrong....
from All AfricaElias BiryabaremaKampalaUGANDA is still plagued by "massive poverty" and the welfare of a broad section of the population is appallingly inadequate, the United Nations top advisor on the Millennium Project, Prof. Jeffrey Sachs has said."Doubtless, the situation in Uganda is woefully inadequate. There's so much rural poverty in Uganda," he said. He was briefing journalists about his impressions on Ugandan's development rate vis-à-vis Millenium Development Goals (MDGs), a global agenda for development by 2015.The Millennium Project is the UN's main vehicle for efforts to achieve a set of the eight MDGs. Some of them include halving the number of people suffering extreme poverty, universal access primary education, cutting by two thirds the mortality rate in children under...
from Peace JournalismBy Jeremy ClarkeNAIROBI, Jan 17 (Reuters) - Curbing poverty in Third World countries will not only satisfy life and death needs for the poor but also provide security for rich nations, one of the world's best-known economists said on Wednesday.Jeffrey Sachs, special adviser to the United Nations on the Millennium Development Goals, said extreme poverty was fuelling conflicts in places such as Somalia and Sudan's Darfur region."Instability will grow where poverty festers in an extreme form, that's what we're seeing in the Horn of Africa. This isn't a crisis about Islam, this isn't a crisis about geopolitics, this is essentially a crisis of extreme poverty," Sachs said."Whether it's Darfur or Somalia or other conflict regions, people are in conflict because they're so...