Author Archives: William Easterly

From today’s NYT:

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Six Pakistani employees of the American Christian charity World Vision were killed Wednesday and seven others were wounded in an attack on the aid group’s offices in a remote village in northern Pakistan.

The Seattle Times on the same story:

When suspected extremists armed with assault rifles and a homemade bomb burst into a World Vision office in northwestern Pakistan this week, killing

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Jeffrey Gettleman reports today from Sauri, Kenya on the debate on the Millennium Villages.

People on Twitter yesterday and today called attention to this thought-provoking critique of yours truly (from Chris Conrad at his blog The Big-Push: Development and Aid Effectiveness)

I did want to take issue with one of Easterly’s tweets from yesterday, in which he sardonically impugns USAID’s efforts in Afghanistan, suggesting that the most benefit Afghanis have realized from USAID’s years of war-time effort is the use of USAID-labeled vegetable oil cans

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Toronto Globe and Mail columist Margaret Wente:

Who can offer the most help to the desperate children of Haiti? Is it Bill Clinton, Jeffrey Sachs, the World Bank or the UN? Is it the many experts who are calling for a Marshall Plan to “fix” Haiti once and for all, or the donor nations that have pledged billions for the task?

Personally, I would choose people like Eric and Nicole Pauyo. The Haitian-Canadian

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From the blog FabFi (HT to blog Whirled Citizen)

{A} World Bank funded infrastructure project to bring internet connectivity to Afghanistan began more than SEVEN YEARS ago and only made its first international link this June. That project, despite hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, is still far from being complete.

{Meanwhile} the Fabbed Long-Range Wireless Antenna Project, … as of December 2008 is working on an installation

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Well, at least in my inexpert opinion. The final statements indicated a lot of agreement between Ross Levine and Joe Stiglitz. Yet you can distinguish between the two when each makes their most colorful or most forceful statements:

Ross Levine:

Again and again, the regulatory authorities (1) were acutely aware of problems, (2) had ample power to fix the problems, and (3) chose not to.

Joe Stiglitz:

If products like CDSs are sold

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I just found out about another contribution to the exploding development satire field. It’s in EXTREMELY bad taste, is often disgusting, and always features  lacerating and offensive  satire  … therefore, some of you will LOVE it.

It’s based around a blog called HR International (to keep our blog’s PG-13 rating, I will not at this time spell out what HR stands for).  I found out about it because I am one of the 3 people that…