I know it's been a while since I have written. Time is very precious right now, and I really don't have a lot to say.

As much as I enjoy coaching basketball, this is still my last year, just too much of a sacrifice on the family.

I'm almost feeling led to a different sort of career or at least a job change. But I am convicted of that since I have things so well here at KHS, I don't know if things could ever get better than here, at least in the marketplace.

Finally, I've begun this great book by Jeffrey Sachs, "The End of Poverty." In honesty, I began the book as a way to strengthen my rebuttal to those who are lobbying for the government to forgive all debts and up the enormous amount of aid we already provide to developing countries. I have written much over the past few months on this issue, noting how I see private investments and careful consideration of the governments of the countries we provide the aid to, questioning why the country got into debt in the first place, etc. Furthermore, I have cited several cases where it is shown that the aid does not go to the people, it simply fills the pockets of the corrupt government heads.

Anyway, I digress, this book has been phenomenal, I can't put it down! A few thoughts:

- I've believed for a while that part of the problem in the Church and government and social ideas of America is that deep down we are racist, we don't believe that the lives of these people are as important as ours. Bono makes the same point in the forward to the book, "Deep down, if we really accept that their lives-African lives-are equal to ours, we would all be doing more to put the fire out. It's an uncomfortable truth."

- He discusses a lot of the problems of the World Bank and IMF, some of them I understand, some I don't. Overall, though, he seems to lean toward the fact that we can't just tell the governments that they are wrong, which I agree with, we need to ask the right questions and provide a prescription for getting them out of their problems. He says that in the past Western governments have simply told the developing nations to privatize ownership of land and business and open up their markets. True, but there's more to it. Again, I have no qualms of what he is saying. My problem is that sometimes governments are the problem. Take, for instance, North Korea. There is no reason those people should be starving and that it is a developing country, with S. Korea attached and most profitable. That is the case where the government is the problem, and there are others. Much of Africa, I'm afraid, is in the same boat, with all of their natural resources and opportunities for tourism, yet their are corrupt and despotic and their people suffer.

- He cites John Maynard Keynes with another appropriate quote, "extreme poverty no longer exists in today's rich countries, and is disappearing in most of the world's middle income countries."

- Using India as an example, he defends the outsourcing of many American countries, "Some rich-country protestors have argued that Dhaka's apparel firms should either pay far higher wage rates or be closed, but closing such factories as a result of wages forced above worker productivity would be little more than a ticket for these women back to rural misery...Not only are Indian IT workers providing valuable goods and services to US consumers, but they are also sitting at terminals with Dell computers, using Microsoft and SAP software, Cisco routers, and dozens of other empowering pieces of technology importer from developing countries."

- the rural misery he refers to it extraordinary poverty, illerteracy and no education, chronic hunger and domineering, patriarchal society

- He is an advocator of microfinance, so am I, this past summer in Kenya I spent a day with a pastor in the Hrumba slums who offers small loans to people in his ministry, as low as Ksh500 (USD $.75), which allows them to start a business and change their lives. AMAZING!

- "Let me dispose of one idea right from the start. Many people assume that the rich have gotten rich because the poor have gotten poor...This interpretation of events would be plausible if gross world product had remained roughly constant, with a rising share going to the powerful
regions and a declining share going to the poorer regions...The key fact in modern times is not the transfer of income from one region to another, by force or otherwise, but rather the overall increase in world income, but at a different rate in different regions." AMEN!

- What causes a country to increase or decrease economic output? According to Sachs, saving or lack of saving, trade or lack of trade, tech advancement or reversal, resource boom or natural resource decline, adverse productivity shock (flood, heat wave, pest problem, etc.) or
population growth (which in rural areas means more family members sharing less land which cannot meet their needs)

- One question still remains, what is the duty of richer countries to help (or bail out) developing countries? Is it our obligation? Of course, as Christians, I believe we are obligated to help a brother in need, but this is the government, not the Kingdom, what should our part be?