March 15, 2024

Can Things Get Any Worse In Haiti?

March 15, 2024/ Francis Menton

For those interested in why some countries become wealthy while others remain in extreme poverty, Haiti is one of the most important case studies.
Despite being only a few hundred miles from the U.S. mainland, and even closer to Puerto Rico, with investment capital readily available and unlimited opportunities for trade, Haiti has essentially no economic development and is one of the poorest countries in the world.
And instead of improving, conditions in Haiti only get worse. The past few weeks have seen yet a new extreme low point, with the Prime Minister locked out of the territory and the country taken over by armed gangs.
At this blog I have returned repeatedly to the subject of Haiti over the years, in the attempt to understand how things could have gone, and continue to go, so terribly wrong.

January 18, 2024

China Versus Argentina: Place Your Bets

January 18, 2024/ Francis Menton

In a world of now close to 200 countries, every day provides an updated report card as to what works and what doesn’t in economic policy. As reported by the IMF, World Bank, and UN, some countries have per capita GDP as much as 300 times more than the per capita GDP of other countries. What are the poor ones doing wrong?
Most countries largely stick with the same collection of economic policies for long periods of time, with only small changes. Unsurprisingly, the rich get richer, because what they are doing is working. The poor may or may not get poorer, but at best they stagnate, unless they are ready to try the things that have made the rich rich.
But every once in a while you get a country that makes a relatively significant change. Two that are doing that now are China and Argentina.
Which one is more likely to be successful going forward?

September 22, 2023

September 22, 2023/ Francis Menton

It’s now more than sixty years since the independence movement in the late 1950s and early 1960s transformed nearly all of sub-Saharan Africa into independent countries.
Hopes soared for a new era of progress and prosperity. But six plus decades on, with essentially no exceptions (maybe Botswana?), the 49 countries of sub-Saharan Africa are about as poor as ever.

The New York Times treats the subject in a big piece by Patricia Cohen a few days ago on September 18. Sorry if this is behind their paywall, but I subscribe to this stuff so that you don’t have to.
In the treatment at the Times, this is just a case of the sad cruelty of nature, an extreme instance of “bad luck.” But we can learn a good deal about the true source of the bad luck by looking at clues that Ms. Cohen and the Times inadvertently drop in the course of their reporting, without even noticing that they are doing it.

January 19, 2023

January 19, 2023/ Francis Menton

If you follow developments out of China at all, you have likely noticed a spate of bad news recently. For years, even decades, it seemed that China could do no wrong in its growth toward becoming a major world power: China reported economic growth of 10% and up every year; it was becoming the hub of manufacturing for the entire world; and as its economy grew, its clout on the world stage increased rapidly.
Pundits on the left (and occasionally on the right as well), often with overt admiration for the Chinese model of authoritarian state-directed crony capitalism, widely predicted that China would supplant the U.S. as the world’s leading power some time not too far into the 21st century.
Suddenly that’s looking much less likely. What happened?
The fault lines have been there for a long time, but well-concealed by a regime with tight control over information flow, let alone by a Western press with a deep hatred of the West and not hiding its cheerleading for success of the Chinese model. In the last few months, as conditions have deteriorated, the regime has lost a big piece of its ability to keep the lid on.

January 03, 2023

January 03, 2023/ Francis Menton

Over in Europe, the energy cost crisis, particularly as to electricity, proceeds apace.

Germany, deep into its Energiewende (energy transition) that began in 2010, leads the way. Almost all coal and nuclear power plants have been closed in favor of a massive building plan for wind and solar facilities. After a decade of that, for the past couple of years, Germans have suffered consumer retail electricity prices of over 30 euro cents per kWh — close to triple average U.S. consumer rates. . . .
Can we here in the USA learn anything from this folly before it is too late? The answer is, if it is up to our EPA, then no.

September 28, 2022

September 28, 2022/ Francis Menton

We still have three daily newspapers here in New York — the Times, the Post, and the Daily News. I subscribe to the first two, but not to the Daily News. And I almost never read the Daily News either.
From my occasional encounters, my observation is that the Daily News has completely gone over to wokism, and is just a cut-rate, slimmed-down version of the Times, pushing the progressive narrative on all issues without concern for evidence or facts.
But like the Times, the Daily News can sometimes, undoubtedly inadvertently, shine a bright light on the twisted thinking of the progressive mind. Such was the case with a piece that appeared a few days ago (September 24) . . . .