The euro was originally created as a counter balance to the US dollar. The yen was in the end too small to effectively challenge the greenback and China had not yet come roaring onto the world stage. The goal was to remove the US currency’s sole “reserve currency” status.
Government representatives from around the world gathered last week in Dubai to chart the future course of the Internet. They voted to kill it as we now know it.
The UN has just issued a report calling for a wealth tax on “billionaires” to increase foreign aid to poor countries.
The report claims the money will help the world’s poor. But empirical evidence suggests that foreign aid given to governments does not help the world’s poor. Indeed much of foreign aid ends up in the off-shore bank accounts of the crony capitalists running the poor country’s government.
Even if aid were not siphoned off by kleptocratic rulers, would they invest it more successfully than the billionaires themselves? Billionaires usually got to be billionaires by making successful investments. Successful investments create and sustain jobs. What do governments know about making successful investments? Even if they mean to focus on creating real jobs and not just on doing whatever it takes for the moment to hang on to power.
