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G20 Should Bail Out the Poor: Kristof

By Kevin Spak, Newser Staff

Posted Apr 2, 2009 10:03 AM CDT

(Newser) – While world leaders waste bicker, the global economic crisis hurts more than your 401(k), Nicholas Kristof writes in the New York Times. The crisis will cause another 22 children to die every hour in 2009—and that’s the World Bank’s best-case scenario. So it’s really discouraging when European leaders indulge their “penchant for sniping at the Unites States instead of doing more to resolve the mess.”

“In London, Washington and Paris, people talk of bonuses or no bonuses,” said the World Bank president. In the poorest nations, “the struggle is for food or no food.” A week’s worth of interest on the $8.4 trillion in financial bailouts could all but eliminate death during childbirth, Kristof notes. The G-20 could address the poor with negligible sums—but instead, it’ll likely squabble as usual.

[Images (3)]

[Quotes (2)]

A Cambodian family grinds rice for the daily meal in a village west of Phnom Penh. (AP Photo)

Rohingya boat people queue for lunch at a refugee camp, Febr. 12, 2009, in Indonesia's Aceh province. (Getty Images)

A girl sleeps beside a begging bowl on the ground at a rice market in Dhaka, Bangladesh. (Getty Images)

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As usual, the greatest price for incompetence at the summit will be borne by the poorest people in the world—who aren’t represented there and who never approved any bad loans. - Nicholas Kristof

Wall Street plutocrats display a sense of entitlement when they demand billions for bailouts. But whether at home or abroad, the poor typically suffer invisibly and silently. - Nicholas Kristof

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