Millennium Challenge Account Update

On March 14, 2002, President George W. Bush announced the creation of the Millennium Challenge Account, a five billion dollar fund to promote economic development in developing nations. The nations have to meet certain criteria (i.e. they have to want to be like us) to be eligible. The criteria have been debated, but, actually, it probably is a good idea to have such criteria.

I was curious to see how our President is doing with his initiative. So I looked around on the 'net. I ignored disreputable sites, not wanting to aid in the dissemination of forged documents or anything like that. What I found is that the government has linked up with an entity called the Millennium Challenge Corporation. The MCC is responsible for administering the MCA. The have a website.

Because it is a corporation, it has all the advantages of corporate operations: speed, flexibility, freedom from govermnetal red tape, etc. It can get things done much more quickly than a ponderous bureaucracy ever could.

Their latest press release was issued on August 26, 2004. This details the process used for selecting countries to benefit in 2005. That is not what I really wanted to know. What I wanted to know is: how much aid actually has been provided since the time of the announcement, in early 2002?

Hmmmm. It looks as though the amount of aid they actually have contributed is, like, nothing.