Isabel Sawhill and Quentin Karpilow of the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution recently proposed what they call a “no-cost” way to reduce poverty and inequality. The proposal combines an increase in the minimum wage with some fair

Mark WeisbrotPúblico, 9 de febrero, 2014The Guardian (Reino Unido), 22 de enero, 2014 En Inglés

Mark Weisbrot
Página/12, 19 de enero, 2014
The Guardian (RR.UU), 16 de enero, 2014

En inglés

Dean Baker
The Guardian, January 20, 2014

Ha-Joon Chang
The Guardian, January 21, 2013

Dean Baker
Truthout, January 20, 2014

Writing in Boston Review yesterday, CEPR Research Associate Jake Johnston looks back at the international community's efforts to provide housing to those displaced by the earthquake, finding that:

By September 2013, nearly four years after the earthquake, only 7,500 new homes had been built and 27,000 repaired—an incredibly small achievement when set against the billions of dollars and grand plans put together by the international community in the wake of the catastrophe.

Adding that:

The number of displaced persons is down to 200,000 from its 1.5 million peak, according to the U.N. But only 25 percent of that decrease has anything to do with official programs to provide housing. Many were given a paltry subsidy and evicted from their camps. The highest profile and most visible camps were closed down, but those tucked in alleys, out of the view of the convoys of aid workers' vehicles, remain forgotten. Fifty-five thousand Haitians who moved to areas known as Canaan, Jerusalem, and Onaville were recently removed from the "official" list of Internally Displaced Persons camps. Though those who were pushed out of the camps simply returned to their old homes, the international community claims progress....In fact, if another quake happened today, they'd be more likely to die than they were living under tents in clearings.

But how this came to be wasn't simply "the problems of reconstruction in a poor country," but rather what happens when political priorities are put before the needs of those on the ground. The Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission, led by Bill Clinton, was formed to coordinate all the various aid projects and ensure they were aligned with the Haitian government's goals, but instead, Johnston writes:

The commission's formation was handled not by the Haitian government, but by the staff of the Clintons, mainly Cheryl Mills and Laura Graham, as well as a team of U.S.-based private consultants. The commission's bylaws were drafted by a team from Hogan Lovells, a global law firm headquartered in Washington, D.C. A team from McKinsey and Company, a New York based consultancy firm, handled the "mission, mandate, structure and operations" of the commission. Eric Braverman, part of the McKinsey team, later went on to become the CEO of the Clinton Foundation.

According to Jean-Marie Bourjolly, a Haitian member of the commission, the body's "original sin" lay in concentrating the decision-making power in the Executive Committee of the Board, made up of Bill Clinton and then–Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive.

Six months after its formation, Bourjolly wrote to Clinton and Bellerive, warning that by "vesting all powers and authority of the Board in the Executive Committee, it is clear that what is expected of us [the rest of the Board] is to act as a rubber-stamping body." Another commission staffer told Johnston that many projects were approved by the commission simply because "they were submitted by USAID and State" and "that as long as USAID is submitting it and USAID is paying for it," it should be approved.