The Silver Bullet

Face it. The world is no closer to consigning poverty to history. Why is there still poverty from whole countries of the poor South, to the back streets, slums and trailer parks of the rich West? The good intentions, the money, the rhetoric, the pity and the media histrionics are but pinpricks to a world-rampaging monster. They say there is no silver bullet. Neither Geldof or Bono, nor the United Nations, nor the vast assembled hosts of international aid and development agencies have the answer. Doesn t every citizen of the world have an equal right to the good life? With so much wealth in the world, why are so many of us so poor, when we could rid ourselves of this monster? And the fact is, there is only one way to kill poverty...

Fred Harrison is a graduate of the Universities of Oxford and London. His journalistic career in Fleet Street was followed by a 10-year sojourn in Russia - where inter alia he was an adviser to the federal Parliament and to the Economics Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is research director of the London-based Land Research Trust, and co-founder of the communications company Motherlode Ltd and web-broadcaster The Renegade Economist.