I've always been impressed by the wide, wide gap between any reasonable measure of the rate of profit or the rate of return on equities on the one hand and the rate of interest on the other. Thus I have always felt that borrowing ought to be an excellent development strategy.
The interaction between kleptocratic governments that steal and then leave subsequent governments to repay is, I think, a disaster--and a good reason to forgive the *public* debt of damn near all of Africa.
>or does the IMF, by enforcing the collection of that debt;
Remember that the IMF's original loans delay (or at least spread out) the crisis, and the whole purpose behind IMF support is to give the country a little more time to figure out how to handle the situation (or, rather, for its politicians to convince each other that the IMF's way of trying to handle things is the only option). I haven't seen anyone (besides the Alan Meltzer's, with their touching faith in the goodness of the market) paint a convincing picture of the world in which we are better off without the IMF.
>or does the world intellectual property regime, by protecting patent
>monopolies contribute anything to maintaining the 5, 10, or 20 to 1
>income gap between the U.S. and the "South"?
This is really scary. It hasn't hit yet (and may never hit: software and entertainment piracy on a large scale continues across the Pacific). But it could be a real disaster over the next 50 years...
>Does the repeated willingess of the U.S. to overthrow any regime
>that dares attempt a non-orthodox approach to property and
>international economic relations contribute anything either? Three
>million dead in Indochina is a rather potent example, no?
Hey. The U.S. ruined the economy and society of Mozambique, Angola, Nicaragua, (for a time) Chile. The U.S. inflicted enormous devastation on Vietnam. But we got to see non-orthodox approaches to property over 40% of the world's population for between one and three generations. We still get to see non-orthodox approaches to property in Cuba and North Korea. (And there still is the disaster of the FSU.)
When was it when Leonid Brezhnev began advising African dictators to wait before they moved boldly ahead and took the socialist road?
Brad DeLong