PRESTOPUNDIT -- "An intense brain-buzz, guaranteed" (2blowhards)

The SacBee's Dan Walters is on fire:

A sad but undisputed syndrome of humankind's unquenchable thirst for oil is that the discovery of rich petroleum deposits in Third World nations usually brings few benefits to their impoverished residents while fueling corruption, despotism, internecine warfare and economic decay. Quite often, international financial bodies such as the World Bank intervene and compel these nations to adopt more realistic, if austere, fiscal policies because they have proven themselves incapable of managing their own affairs.

The latest poor nation to experience an oil boom is Chad, where an international consortium led by Exxon Mobil Corp. is investing $3.5 billion to develop oil fields. But this time, the World Bank is trying to interrupt the familiar pattern by setting up a broadly based committee to ensure that the $100 million annual revenue flow to Chad is spent for public benefit, not siphoned into Swiss bank accounts.

The new approach could, the Wall Street Journal says, "reverse the violent curse of oil money in Africa. In recent years, the gross domestic product of some oil-rich nations has actually declined, amid bloodshed and corruption."

Here's a thought: When the World Bank is finished with Chad, it should come to California, whose public finances these days resemble those of a Third World corruption pit more than those of a modern, presumably enlightened, industrial society ..

Read the rest.