Archive - March 27, 2009

You have mostlikely heard about, or read about, Dambisa Moyo and her new book: Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa that was published this month by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Dambisa Moyo was born and raised in Zambia. She completed a PhD in Economics at Oxford University and holds a Masters from Harvard University. She worked at the World Bank in D.C., then at Goldman Sachs for 8 years in the debt capital markets, hedge fund coverage and in global macroeconomics teams. Her new book says that foreign aid is preventing Africa from becoming self-reliant. She proposes that within the decade, all foreign aid to Africa be cut off. To make her point about ‘dead aid’ she has gone after Bono and other celebrities who flock to Africa to get babies and give aid. She has earned herself the title, Anti-Bono. Her . . .

The Mayflower Hotel Gang outlined “seven steps” to form the Peace Corps in a February 22, 1961 memorandum to Kennedy. This memo is interesting for several reasons. The first point Shriver made was that the Peace Corps should be established by an Executive Order within the Mutual Security Program. William Josephson, then the only lawyer in the ‘new’ Peace Corps was the principal author of the President’s Executive Order. [This is not entirely true for Shriver was a lawyers, as was Wofford, among others, but Josephson had come in with Wiggins with their Towering Task Memo, and was a government employee, as was Warren Wiggins who was made Director ad interim. And, therefore, the FIRST DIRECTOR of the agency.] Shriver was appointed by Kennedy on March 4, but subject to Senate confirmation. It was May 21 before Shriver made his appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and his appointment was confirmed. . . .

What Shriver also said in his original memo to Kennedy was that other countries should establish programs like the Peace Corps. He wanted Kennedy to send a letter to all heads of state at the United Nation “to avoid as best we can the possibility of misunderstanding in the rest of the world about the Peace Corps’ function and purpose and irritation with an appearance of arrogance in assuming that young Americans automatically can teach everybody…” Shriver suggested that Kennedy “invite other countries to form their own Peace Corps units and propose that this become a truly international project through UN coordination.”      Other nations did create programs like the Peace Corps. In fact, Great Britain had their version of a ‘peace corps’ in operation before the U.S. and soon France, Germany, etc., and Japan, were sending volunteers into the Third World.      Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman’s All You Need Is . . .