the trillion dollar crisis:
Not one summit of the eight most industrialized countries, the G8, ends without a promise to increase ODA, particularly towards Africa, the continent which is most affected by poverty. Since 1970, the rich countries have promised to increase it to 0.7% of their Gross National Income (GNI). This figure is respected by only five countries: Norway, Sweden, Luxembourg, Denmark and the Netherlands. Last place is occupied by the US, with a figure of 0.16%.
(...) From a global perspective, the ODA does not rise above 0.28% of the GNI, despite a series of statistical manipulations designed to camouflage the low value of the aid money given by rich countries: in fact, they include in the ODA dubious figures such as debt relief, the expenses of the US to rebuild Iraqi and Afghan infrastructures that it destroyed, the tuition fees of students from the South who study in the North, the salaries of expatriated staff and the multitude of consultants who defend the interests of donor countries or who produce costly and useless reports. Furthermore, this aid is largely directed towards countries of geostrategic interest to the donor country, with flagrant disregard for the real needs of the countries of the South: apart from Iraq and Afghanistan, the major beneficiaries of US aid are the Sudan, Colombia, and obviously Israel.
(...) On the other hand, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the potential cost of the current international crisis is approximately 1,000 billion dollars, a result of the so-called 'subprime' crisis that emerged in the summer of 2007 and continues to wreak havoc. In a report published on the 8th of April, the IMF has estimated this cost at precisely 945 billion dollars for the international financial system, of which 565 billion is directly linked to the system of risk-laden mortgage loans. Here is what happened: to obtain astronomical profits on their liquidities, credit institutions loaned out to an already heavily indebted sector of the population, within the poor or middle classes, at a fixed and medium rate for the first two years to entice clients, before the rate increases sharply during the third year. The lenders asserted to the borrowers that the property that they were buying, which also acted as guarantee against the loan, would rapidly rise in value due to ascending prices in the real estate market. In 2007 the real estate bubble burst. The crisis then spread to multiple financial actors which had devised extraordinary debt structures and had carried out enormous operations off the books.
(...) In 2000, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) advanced the figure of 80 billion dollars over ten years as the amount required to guarantee universal access to drinking water--yes, universal ­, a decent diet for children, primary education for all, basic health care, including gynecological care. Thus, the challenge was to find 800 billion dollars in total. They were not found, and the living conditions of billions of individuals have continued to decline. The abrupt rise in the price of foodstuffs, due to the development of the production of biofuels, has now thrown tens of millions of inhabitants of Africa, Latin America and Asia into absolute poverty. Food riots have erupted in Haiti, Egypt, the Ivory Coast, Senegal, Cameroon, Burkina Faso and this is only the beginning. Instead of approaching the Millennium Development Goals, however tentative these may be, we are getting further away at great speed. The current banking crisis will cost 1,000 billion dollars, and will prove, that in the case of the 800 billion proposed by the UN to guarantee some basic human rights, it was the political will that was lacking. It is a flagrant violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international treaties. It is unacceptable and unforgivable. And it is the very logic of the economic model that should be questioned.