TEXT OF INTERVIEW
BILL RADKE:
Pakistan’s finance minister is in the U.S. today,
talking to the World Bank about how to handle foreign aid sent to help victims of Pakistan’s recent flooding.
Foreign aid is the subject of today’s Marketplace Globalist quiz with our quizmaster Stephan Richter. Good morning.
STEPHAN RICHTER: Good morning, Bill. Are you ready for today’s question?
RADKE: I think so.
RICHTER: All right. Bill, we know that foreign aid is a very touchy subject. And my question to you is which country provides the most development aid as a share of GDP — so that we get some sense, not absolute dollar numbers, but X percent of GDP — which one does the most among these companies? The home champion, the United States, Germany, Norway or Sweden? Who does best at most?
RADKE: That’s the tricky part, compared to GDP. I’m going to say Europe is volatile, Germany is a leader there. So Germany is handing out the most aid.
BUZZ
RICHTER: Germany is a leader, but not the leader. You’re right that the Europeans in general do quite well. But Germany comes in second. So you’re very close, but need to ask you to guess again.
RADKE: I’ll say even given our huge economy, the U.S. has such an interest in the world order that the U.S. leads the way.
BUZZ
RICHTER: It does in some sense, in terms of the absolute number of dollars. But I asked about GDP, so the U.S. spends $27 billion in development assistance, but that with our large economy only translates into close to 0.2 percent of our GDP.
RADKE: Norway? It’s gotta be Norway, obviously. Why are we even having this discussion?
BUZZ
RICHTER: Because you were going to say Sweden. I mean, the one thing that’s pretty clear is that the Scandinavians always do very well on these things — like development aid and on gender issues and performance and so on. But it’s a toss up. I’ll give you Norway is quite close, but it’s third. Sweden is tops. Almost 1 percent of its GDP is spent on development aid, as does Denmark, as do the Netherlands and Norway. They are sort of up there leading the way for all of us to reach.
RADKE: If I could say utter failure in Swedish, I would. So I’ll just say thank you, Stephan.
RICHTER: Yeah. It’s probably something like…
RADKE: Indeed. Stephan Richter is publisher and editor in chief of The Globalist. You can learn more about the world economy, politics and culture by visiting TheGlobalist.com.
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