Peter Sellers makes unexpected appearance at G-7 meetings

By William Easterly | Published April 25, 2009

In today’s NYT:

Headline: World Finance Leaders Meet, and Cautiously Glimpse ‘Green Shoots’ of Recovery

“American and European officials embraced a hopeful new buzz phrase — the “green shoots” of recovery.”

My wife immediately noticed the exact parallel to the classic 1979 movie “Being There.” A mentally-challenged gardener played by Sellers winds up by accident in Washington elite circles and is quickly embraced as a sage as he mumbles gardening platitudes about spring-time growth, at a time when the economy is in recession. By the end of the movie, he is being mentioned as a presidential candidate.

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The Aid Watch blog is a project of New York University's Development Research Institute (DRI). This blog is principally written by William Easterly, author of "The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics" and "The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good," and Professor of Economics at NYU. It is co-written by Laura Freschi and by occasional guest bloggers. Our work is based on the idea that more aid will reach the poor the more people are watching aid.

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Peter Sellers makes unexpected appearance at G-7 meetings

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