Wretchard makes an interesting observation in connection to the Wolfowitz nomination, - something that I've long held: foreign aid and institutions like the World Bank are failures by virtue of the fact that the developing world is still in poverty:

"The same thought has probably occurred to anyhow who has watched the World Bank and other international development agencies flail their arms against the tide of poverty. After spending hundreds of billions of dollars in the best ways academia could conceive, five decades of development aid hasn't even established whether the effort was useful. 'Never in the face of human effort has so little been been accomplished by so much'.

But if insanity is expecting different results from the same actions then the asylum is larger than it seems. The development bureaucrats are outraged that Wolfowitz might try to do things differently. Columbia's Jeffrey Sachs reacted to Wolfowitz's appointment saying "we need someone with professional experience in helping people to escape from poverty. Mr Wolfowitz does not have that track record". Neither, he might have added, did anyone else."

I'm all for Wolfowitz's nomination. Lofty-softies have been a failure at the World Bank, and the obvious proof is that Africa is still poor, and getting poorer. To keep ranting that more money must be thrown in just doesn't sound like intelligent thinking. It's time to try someone new.