Earlier this month we linked a New York Times account of how Hillary Clinton's brother Tony Rodham was hoping to earn $1 million on post-earthquake Haiti recovery efforts. Now the Providence Journal has an op-ed from the head of a school in Haiti raising more questions about what the Clintons were doing there:
One example of Bill Clinton's dressing a wolf in lamb's clothing with his win-win spell is the Irish telecom mogul Denis O'Brien. Clinton cannot seem to praise his billionaire friend and foundation donor enough. In an article he penned for Time, Clinton wrote, "In Haiti ... phones have revolutionized the average person's access to financial opportunity," and goes on to write glowingly about O'Brien's role in Haiti's mobile "revolution."
What has O'Brien accomplished in Haiti? He has succeeded in driving out his U.S.-owned competitor through his deft handling of the Haitian government. He also maneuvered Digicel into the position of being the mobile distributer of relief dollars sent to Haiti from abroad and of Haiti's own state welfare program for single mothers. Unbelievably, he beat the partially state-owned Natcom for these contracts.
Today, Digicel soaks up nearly 10 percent of Haiti's real GDP by taking veritable pennies at a time from the pockets of the poorest people in the Western Hemisphere. To get a bit more, O'Brien has encouraged his clients to play the lottery on the same phones Clinton claims have revolutionized banking for the poor. To be clear, O'Brien essentially put a slot machine in a bank parlor.
Link via Greg Mankiw.