Thread by @bansisharma

1. On Foreign Aid
How Much Foreign Aid the World Receives from the United States?
Well, this much ... marketwatch.com/story/us-forei…

2. Now as you look at the above chart, keep in mind, behind each bubble are many U.S. 'diplomats' in the U.S. and on the ground in those countries whose job it is to keep the money flowing to those countries.

3. As a matter of fact, the more money they shovel out, the more 'influence' they have on the recipients, and more nicely the 'recipients' treat them. Also remember, the recipients are almost always the people close to the heads of the states.

4. U.S. officials aren't allowed to give aid to the needy directly (that would be considered interference). They hand it over to the state officials. It is an open secret that a significant amount of the aid gets whisked off to 'Swiss bank accounts' of the 'recipients.'

5. Now of course it is the job of the U.S. 'handlers' to report back how the money is being used. And of course those reports are based on responses received from the recipients, and recipients have cultivated lifelong friendships with the handlers. The whole operation is smooth.

6. So smooth indeed that the U.S. handlers (read 'diplomats') go to the mat with their bosses in DC to ensure the aid only increases year after year. It is just like departmental budgets. The bigger the budget/aid, more powerful and feted the diplomat in charge of doling it out.

7. That's why whenever there is talk of cutting back foreign aid, the people who howl the loudest are the ones in the State Department. They will let their appropriate Congress members know how critical it is that the aid be maintained. It's a matter of life-and-death, they say.

8. Just look at the chart and know that there must be at least 10-20 State Department people behind each bubble on average (i.e. thousands in total) whose job it is to 'administer' all these aid packages.

9. They are handling billions of dollars of taxpayers' money for which there are no measures of success. There is no way of knowing if the money is being well spent or ill spent, so far as benefit to the U.S. or to the suffering poor in the recipient nations is concerned.

10. To the extent there is any measure of success it is that whether we have a "smooth working relationship" with the recipient nation. Guess what? The recipients know how their handlers' performance is judged by their bosses in DC, i.e. based on smoothness of the relationship.

11. So what do they do? They often throw temper tantrums to express their annoyance with the U.S. as a way of basically spoiling the "performance grade" of their handlers. So the handlers try their best not to bother the recipients too much about where the money is going.

12. And the ecosystem continues to flourish, year after year. Now I have no inside knowledge of how all this works. I have just pieced this together based on snippets of information gathered from here and there over time, and based on my experience with how bureaucracies work.

13. The largest, most complex, and the most influential lobby in Washington DC is the Department of State. No wonder it was so coveted by Hillary that SoS was the only job she wanted from Obama in return for Clintons lending support to him in 2008 after his nomination.

The End