Independent research for global prosperity
Lawrence MacDonald, CGD vice president for communications and policy outreach, interviews a CGD expert in this weekly Podcast. The blog offers a short text summary.
When Dominique Straus-Kahn resigned suddenly as head of the International Monetary Fund last May, the world was thrown unexpectedly into search for his successor. Within days, CGD launched a survey of the global development community opinion on three issues: the selection process, criteria for rating the candidates, and ratings for 15 candidates identified in international media.
My guest this week is Todd Moss, senior fellow and vice president for programs here at the Center for Global Development. Our topic is the newly updated edition of his popular primer: African Development: Making Sense of the Issues and Actors.
Last week finance ministers and central bankers from around the globe convened in Washington for the annual meetings of the international Monetary Fund and World Bank. While the press and many of the meeting participants focused on the unfolding European financial crisis, below the radar there was plenty of discussion on development issues, including on the legacy of the Seoul Development Consensus and the role of development in the upcoming G-20 Summit in France.
“February 2021. It’s a cold blustery morning in Washington. The newly inaugurated president of the United States is on his way to the office of the Chinese managing director of the IMF to sign the agreement under which the IMF will provide 3 trillion dollars in emergency financing to the U.S. and the conditionality to which the U.S. will have to adhere.”
If you found a trillion-dollar bill on the sidewalk, would you pick it up? Michael Clemens thinks he has found a bunch of such bills—huge gains to the poor people and the world economy that could be achieved by easing restrictions on cross-border labor mobility.
What does extreme hyperinflation look like? Consider a pile of currency tall enough to encircle our entire galaxy. That’s how many Zimbabwean dollars you would have needed by the end of the country’s extraordinary inflationary crisis to equal one pre-crisis Zim dollar, according to CGD senior fellow Alan Gelb.
Here at CGD, we talk a lot about the “what” of policy. We’re in the business of ideas and that sometimes leads us to overlook the crucial question of the “who” in the policy process.
Most people understand the personal risks associated with smoking, but surprisingly few understand its impact globally. Every year, more people die from tobacco related illnesses than from HIV/Aids, TB and malaria combined. Nevertheless, governments and international aid agencies have yet to pay serious attention to what some believe to be one of the most needless disease burdens in human history.
It’s not often that the United Nations sees fit to officially declare a food crisis a famine. That’s a testament to the severity of the ongoing suffering in Somalia, a disaster of biblical proportions that has already claimed the lives of tens of thousands. But evidence abounds that famines are not only the result of natural occurrences. On the contrary, most are the shocking result of human error or, in the worst case, deliberate neglect.
The Wonkcast is taking a brief summer vacation. We’ve selected this show from our archives- it was originally posted on June 1, 2010.