Has Jeffrey Sachs changed his tune...

Tom Lehman uswa12 at lorainccc.edu
Tue Sep 15 10:30:16 PDT 1998


Dear Doug and the LBOers,

Didn't the Nation run a story a few months ago called the Harvard Boys Do Russia?

If half of this stuff is true i.e. including Mark Jones website article and other sources, then Harvard may be holding an alumni meeting in the federal pen. Don't laugh there is already at least one Harvard grad doing time in Ohio for bank robbery. Maybe somebody ought to send some of this stuff to Matt Drudge.

Sincerely, Tom

Carl Remick wrote:


> ...or am I just tone deaf? Just read a piece of his in the current
> Economist (9/12) "Making It Work," where he emerges as a nemesis of the
> whole West-o-centric, top-down, model of global economic development.
> He says that a "G16" (including eight LDC members) should be substituted
> for the G8, that there should be massive cancellation of external debt
> in the poorest nations and that developmental aid should shift from
> short-term loans to outright grants. He says it should be recognized
> that the IMF/World Bank have no political legitimacy in the developing
> world, e.g.: "A G16 summit should take up fundamental reform of the
> international assistance process itself. The aim should be to restore
> legitimacy to local politics, and abandon the misguided belief that the
> IMF and World Bank can micro-manage the process of economic reform."
>
> To be sure, he also says: "Developing countries are not trying to
> overturn Washington's vision of global capitalism, but rather to become
> productive players in it" -- and that's what he want to help.
> Nonetheless, Sachs seems to be more fundamentally critical of central
> institutions of global capitalism than I had been aware. I'm confused.
> When The Wall Came Down, Sachs struck me as the embodiment of Western
> arrogance in his meddlesome, market-oriented prescriptions for Russian
> "reform." When did he become such a bleeding heart?
>
> Carl Remick



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