[pf] Nicholas Stern (Chief Economist of the World Bank)'s opinions

At 11:30 2/10/2001 +1200, I sent a couple of excerpts from Alistair Cooke's
"Letter from America"; he quoted: "you've been expelled from the Garden of
Eden, and you've got to get used to it":
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/letter_from_america/newsid_1573000/15
73622.stm [all on same line in browser]
>

· Here is something different.

· While I was eating my lunch I was listening to an interview with Nicholas
Stern, Chief Economist of the World Bank - and 3/4 hour of looking hasn't
turned up anything on the web about his statements. I can only find:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44595-2001Sep29.html

· He was making a: "the poor in the Third World" justification for
continued growth in the US economy (& the OECD in general).

· He said something I remember (not very well) as:

 X percent reduction in US economic growth, via reduced imports from e.g.
poorer countries, creates Y percent reduction in the operation of their
economies, which reduces the money circulating there: jobs lost and
internal markets shriveled, which _increases_ the number of deaths by Z
million in those poorer countries. (From memory, Y=1 for a possible X.)

· I'm not quarrelling with the fact that there will be less foreign
exchange going into the supplier countries when the US economy contracts.

· It just seems to me basically too simple, like most economists views.

· The first thoughts I get are:

- The money economy in the poorer countries is a _much_ smaller fraction of
the total circulation of goods and services there, than in rich countries.
So while there's some effect from reduced foreign exchange earnings, it's
IMO usually minor to moderate, not major.

- The poorest (though not the destitute "basket cases") are the less
likely, IMO, to be significantly dependent on strong-currency inflows; the
average family there would hardly be affected by what the rich in those
countries are concerned with. I speak from experience of Ghana in the late
1960s.

· Should anyone be paying any attention to what a rich man in a New York
tower thinks as he looks through his spyglass at the average person in the
poorest third of the rest of the world?

David.
David MacClement [davd @ ihug.co.nz] (remove spaces)
http://davd.tripod.com/GrRR-010921_titles.html#top
http://www.geocities.com/davd.geo/index.html#top
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