the dismal science

Sept. 21, 2007—Military officials told Congress yesterday that contracts worth $6 billion were being reviewed by criminal investigators, double what they had said in the past. Also $88 billion in contacts and programs are being audited for irregularities, they said. … After thousands were sickened [by cholera] in northern Iraq, health officials have confirmed two cases in the capital, and another has been reported in Basra. NYT A1 The US 2d in command in Iraq acknowledged mixed results for security operations in Baghdad, saying violence is down but too many civilians are still dying. The Congressional Budget office said a long-term troop presence in Iraq in a peace-keeping role would cost between $10 billion and $25 billion a year. Bush refused to criticize Blackwater for a shootout that left 11 civilians dead, saying investigators need to determine if guards violated rules. WSJ A1 [Blackwater] guards’ shots not provoked, Iraq concludes. NYT A1

--The lesson of the story might appear to be that self-interested and ambitious people in power are often the cause of wastefulness in developing countries. The truth is a little sadder than that. Self-interested and ambitious people are in position of power, great and small, all over the world. In many places, they are restrained by the law, the press, and democratic opposition. Cameroon’s [sic] tragedy is that there is nothing to hold self-interest in check.—Tim Harford, THE UNDERCOVER ECONOMIST (Oxford, 2006) 193.

--Vice President Cheney as last as June 2005 predicted on Larry King Live that the major US involvement in Iraq would end before the Bush administration left office. “The level of activity that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will decline,” he said, with confidence. “I think they’re in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.” … In 2002, Glenn Hubbard, chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, predicted that the “costs of any such intervention would be very small.” In April 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dismissed the idea that reconstruction would be costly” “I don’t know,” he said, “that there is much reconstruction to do.” … “There a lot of money to pay for this that doesn’t have to be US taxpayer money,” Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz predicted. “And it starts with the assets of the Iraqi people .. We’re dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction.” Ian Ayres, SUPERCRUNCHERS (Bantam, 2007) 114-115