Callous foreign-aid fraud.(Correction, Please!)

ITEM: The Financial Times for August 13 reported: "Rich countries have largely failed to back their voluble lip service to combating global poverty by doing more to help, according to an annual assessment by a leading think-tank. The Washington-based Center for Global Development said that while two-thirds of rich countries had improved their policies towards poorer nations in the last three years, seven had gone backwards." The president of the CGD, Nancy Birdsall, said, "the rich countries' achievements 'fell far short of leaders' soaring rhetoric in 2005, the so-called Year of Development.'"

ITEM: A Dow Jones release published on the Easybourse website on August 13 similarly reported: "The U.S. and U.K. both fare poorly on their commitment to assist developing countries, despite the billions of pounds the two countries commit to foreign aid each year, a new report has found.... Even though the U.K. and U.S. commit vast amounts' of foreign aid each year, the aid is small relative to the size of the respective economies, the analysis showed."

CORRECTION: There is not enough wealth in the world to meet a fraction of the demands of the foreign-aid proponents, who never tire of calling for the spending of other people's money. In addition, as long as there are handouts available, there will be authorities willing to testify that just a bit more funding will do the job. One of the true experts in this field, the late Peter Bauer, quoted an official from a developing country who was astoundingly honest and admitted, "We shall produce any statistics that we think will help us to get as much money out of the United States as we possibly can. Statistics which we do not have, but which we need to justify our demands, we shall simply fabricate."

A year ago, the United Nations called for yet another doubling of foreign aid. Not surprisingly, more relief is again being sought. Yet after decades of foreign-aid failures, both foreign aid and the pain of poverty go on. As economist Walter Williams recounts: "Nearly every sub-Saharan African nation is poorer now than when they became independent during the '60s and '70s. Since that time, food production has fallen by roughly 20 percent. Since 1975, per capita GDP has fallen at a rate of half of one percent annually. Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo estimated, 'Corrupt African leaders have stolen at least $140 billion from their people in the [four] decades since independence.' The call for more aid by George Bush, Tony Blair and other G-8 leaders will produce nothing but more of the same."

Most of those with vested interests won't admit the truth. One who has, however, is Thomas Dichter, the author of Good Intentions: Why Development Assistance to the Third World Has Failed, who has worked for the World Bank, United Nations Development Program, and Peace Corps, among other organizations. "Somewhat late in my career," he writes in a briefing for the Cato Institute, "I have come to believe that as a means of reducing world poverty, aid has not worked, is not likely to work in the future, and cannot work.... I don't know a single colleague with long field experience who believes whole-heartedly that aid has been effective."

The reasons for this are fairly straightforward, boiling down to the inescapable fact that such aid fosters dependence, increases resentment, props up dictators and corrupt governments, and throttles true economic development. Of course, this is not really ...