by Patrick Appel
Janet Reitman checks in on Haiti. Felix Salmon, who begged donors to give unmarked funds at the beginning of the disaster, has been vindicated:
The first thing to note is that most of the money given to Haiti hasn’t even started to be spent yet: a whopping $11 billion was pledged by donor countries and financial institutions in the wake of the earthquake, but if you take the US as a good example, it’s so far managed to spend just $184 million of the $1.14 billion allocated to the country. Even the Red Cross is barely halfway into its $479 million fund — all of which has been earmarked for Haiti, and none of which can be spent elsewhere, no matter how much better it might be put to use in some other context.
Tyler Cowen calls the Reitman piece "mostly good" but contends that the article "is wrong, and arguably insane, to criticize the development models of Haiti’s past as too 'business friendly.'"
The Dish 