Snow urges end to lend-and-forgive cycle - Yahoo! News

Following up on yesterday's story of the forgiveness of Nigeria's is today's speech by US Treasury Secretary John Snow who stressed that debt forgivenss alone is not enough:

Snow urges end to lend-and-forgive cycle - Yahoo! News:

"'The clearance of unsustainable debt is a critical component of the broader solution,' Snow said in prepared remarks to the Development Committee of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

He later largely parroted World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz' comments that corruption must end. That corruption must end is of course true, but if that alone is enough is debateable.

Wolfowitz's comments included:

"we must continue to stress the importance of good governance and our mutual responsibility for achieving it. Governance is critical to improving and sustaining development outcomes. Responsibility for this lies both with developing countries and with donors and IFIs through international law enforcement and support for global anti-corruption treaties, as well as strengthening national anti-corruption efforts."

Interesting on this Earth Day weekend, there was also a discussion of the energy side of things:

"What we are looking for is a “double dividend” —to meet the energy needs that are essential to fuel growth and to fight poverty on the one hand while preserving the environment - globally and locally - on the other. In the long run these are not conflicting goals. The economic impacts of climate change and the costs of adapting to climate variability impact poor countries disproportionately."

Stay tuned. This will obviously take years and years to sort out, but at least we are moving in the right direction. (The pace is a bit slow for my likes, but....)