"UN says wealthy failing the poor."

I'm barely versed in the literature on foreign aid, but from what I've read, giving gobs of money to poor countries usually a) doesn't do much, b) doesn't do anything, or c) makes things worse. But the UN is chastising rich countries for not giving $18 billion to poor countries (why rich countries agreed to this in the first place, besides the good PR, is beyond me).

The UN report on progress towards the millennium development goals says this is threatening targets for drastically reducing world poverty by 2015.

Adam Smith wrote in 1776 how we could drastically reduce world poverty, and the UN hasn't done much to promote his ideas of free trade.

"We are already in the second half of our contest against poverty," [Ban Ki-moon] continued. "We are running out of time".

I'm not really sure what he thinks will happen when we run out of time, or what delineates the first from the second half of the poverty contest.

But, the last line got me to laugh: Against a backdrop of gloomy economic news, food shortages and high fuel prices, the UN's argument that more should be done to help the world's poorest could be difficult to sell.

No kidding. Does anyone else think the UN is basically electric football in a big building? It makes a lot of noise, the participants move around a lot but don't really go in any particular direction or accomplish anything.