Pot loads of cash .... Thank you Mr Buffett
Warren Buffet. What a very lovely man.
Many of you may have heard - Mr Buffet, multi-gazillionaire, owner of Berkshire Hathaway (and hence half the world .... including a good part of Tescos, McDonalds, Coke etc) .... and apparently stock-market investor to God .... has donated almost all his personal fortune to charity .... the great bulk of which will be given to the Gates Foundation and its fight for improved global health and education. Apparently he and Bill play bridge together ...
The exact amount varies according to who you read ... and will definitely vary long term since it's all stocks/shares related ... but essentially its estimated at somewhere between $30 and 40 billion on current valuations.
On of the largest donations ever made by an individual.
In addition he has given several billion to other eponymous charities - which are pro-choice and promote family planning. 
And his generosity in one fell swoop elevates the Gates Foundation into being the wealthiest and probaly the most influential player in the game of international health .... not least due to the fact that the charity must spend the amount donated per year within that year .... essentially they must give away over $ 1.5 billion a year .... greater than the GDP of a good few African nations ....
As I have alluded to before - Bill Gates is thankfully unencumbered by ideological chains .... but it is worrisome that the alpha male funding body of the international health world is entirely subject to one man and his wife's idiosyncrasies. It is rather ironically - very unhealthy.
Now I don't want to post yet another polemic about a funding source .... but it does make you think about the role of traditional multilateral funding organisations, and the rise of such personal foundations to fill the gaps.
Perhaps this is inevitable after the self-interested and bungled development packages of the 70s, 80s and 90s. Mistrust is high. At least with such charities - to a greater degree - what you see is what you get .... and the fewer strata you have to deal with ... the less opportunity for "leakage" and the more for accountability. But .... it is worrisome if we keep having to rely on the Bill Gates and Warren Buffetts of this world ...
12 comments:
i COMPLETELY agree...which is why i wish he would have spread his money around more (although his decision to donate most of it rather than give it all to his descendants is highly commendable)...all this does it give the US and other wealthy nations an excuse to avoid increased funding especially for diseases like HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria (the Gates' 3 health-related focuses) so they can focus on supposedly more important issues like gay marriage and flag burning...God i hate republicans
yes, it does rather worry me that personal philanthropy takes the pressure off governments to be socialy responsible on a global scale.
And you can test your knowledge about it here....http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5125180.stm
I got 7 out of 10 must be cos I@m such a charitable case myself
i got 8 out of 10 - in your face!!! although i admittedly guessed on several of them
thanks goodness for American citizens and our unilateralist approach to foreign aid. waiting for our elegantly decaying "partners" in europe to get thier act together is out of the question. oftentimes, the entree of foreign aid is best served with american pie, not a crepe.
Shashank .... are you too chicken to sign your name?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1807482,00.html
Bless Warren Buffet for saying - "Bill and Melinda will do a better job than ... the federal treasury."
Btw - 9/10 ... i am THE champion ... who the hell knew about some brummie car dealer?
I've seen nothing that explains the view - expressed here only weakly - that Bill 'n' Melinda will spend their money more wisely than governments or the public. Just speaking personally I don't spend my money more wisely than the British government. It's true I don't start land wars in the Middle East [1], but the British government doesn't spend half its income on wine, so I think it wins that one.
[1] I once kicked someone in Barcelona, but that's miles away.
i totally applaud buffett - don't fault him one bit for picking a stock he likes and going with it. and don't see how the growth of private philanthropy somehow takes the pressure off governments to give foreign aid. besides the fact that it's a good thing to do, foreign aid is hugely important as a policy tool - the proverbial carrot, especially in dicey situations like north korea, and it's not going away. plus the US LOVES to see its flag printed on bags of grain in uganda and on the plastic sheets that darfur refugees cover their huts with.
every time i say this i feel like a republican, but here goes: sure, we'll never give away as much money as a percentage of GDP as europeans, but so what. our GDP is a hell of a lot bigger than theirs. plus, if you count what we've spent on this little democracy building program in iraq, our foreign aid expenditure goes through the roof.
(now if you'll excuse me - i have a NASCAR race to attend.)
Hmmm ... are we really dating?
Just because the american GDP is so much bigger than any other nation's isn't a reason for the yanks to give proportionally less than the europeans ... ESPECIALLY since a large aliquot of that "aid" goes directly back to america due to all the stipulations which come with that money ... much more so than any other government aid package ...
perhaps your country could just redistribute some of that $6 billion "development" aid given annually to israel or the millions spent hosting "enemy combatants" in cuba?
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