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Friday, April 20, 2007

Money talks

Apply this to the U.N., the World Bank, and the budget of the United States, and the obvious way to do battle, even turn things around, is in the fiscal arena. No money, no talk is an expression as old as the hills. Those that have money have power and influence, as in maybe the emerging European Union and Japan and maybe even China. In other words, the US has competition.

There is a shift underway about Western loans to the third world. The shift is in the idea of results as a measurement. This is profound compared to the earlier standard of how much was loaned without results’ measurements, and how much the loaners were being paid. In the third world’s case, the leaders took much of the money at the expense of the citizens for which the loans were intended. And this situation flourished to the most embarrassing things going on today. No wonder there are cesspools still going on today in places many care about. And how about the inflated incomes of the loaners and consultants, and their conflicts of interest?

This fiscal corruption may be applied to we in the US today. Our elected public servants have control over vast public monies collected as income taxes primarily. Much is distributed in the best intended social science plans, to include uninsured medical payments of poor people and children of same, retirement vice support for retirement, senior type things like drugs, welfare for people who made bad choices, and a myriad of payments to we citizens, to include guaranteed and insured retirement plans. This is all fine if the votes are there, and the books balance. This is not fine, as in we will ruin our country, if the books don’t balance, and the vote still enables people to redistribute wealth until the whole thing collapses. There is no free lunch.

This idea carries over to the United Nations organization. We and others literally contribute billions of dollars to this organization. Yet it appears it has become a money machine to the many pitifully poor nations who benefit by the rules and customs as they exist today. This especially applies in New York City living standards for these U.N. people. The simple question for the U.N. today is: is it about the money or the mission? The predecessor League of Nations failed, and so can the United Nation organization.

Money talks. So do voters.

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