Development, savings rates, and billions of dollars

Charles Kenny, via William Easterly, on the successes of development. If you're down on development issues, this is a very worthwhile read.

Speaking of development, check out Intel's Small Things Challenge. It's kind of like the free rice site, except Intel donates money to a couple of charities, and if they get enough clicks, then they donate $300,000.

On an unrelated note, the personal savings rate was at a 15 year high this past quarter. It's still nowhere near where it used to be from the 60s to the 80s. I haven't looked at much international data, but it looks like a lot of countries are pretty low.

Here's a visualization of the billions of dollars that are spent on a variety of things.