BEST WAY TO BUY SHAKU MAKU

Several have asked me where to buy. I say, go direct, www.outskirtspress.com/philborden or http://outskirtspress.com/webpage.php?ISBN=9781432718114.

Or try Barnes and Noble (www.bn.com). I recommend against Amazon. They are trying to change their policy to take a greater percentage from the author and publisher (they already take the highest amount), and to drive up the retail price. Not nice.

LOS ANGELES TIMES INTERVIEW, APRIL 7

Please read this comprehensive interview by Cyndia Zwahlen on the Times Business Page:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-smallbiz7apr07,1,5735051.story

ARTICLE IN PENINSULA NEWS

To view, go to:
http://www.pvnews.com/articles/2008/04/03/local_news/news1.txt

INTERVIEW WITH BUSINESS WEEK ON LINE

Hear interview with Karen E. Klein of Business Week (Smart Answers), recorded March 16, 2008
http://www.businessweek.com/mediacenter/podcasts/smartanswers/smartanswers_03_26_08.htm

SUBMITTED OP ED ON DOD AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

IRAQ, THE DOD, AND ECONOMIC POLICY

A mid level State Department bureaucrat in Iraq named Manuel Miranda recently quit his post with a blistering letter to his boss, Ambassador Ryan Crocker, that has been making its way through Webspace. Miranda alleged that an ill-prepared State Department was out of its depth in handling Iraq’s economic and political issues, had the wrong mission, and featured “keystone cop” incompetence up and down the chain of command. Nobody in the embassy was prepared to “think outside the box.” The letter’s small truth obscured a larger one: that nobody in State or the Department of Defense (DOD) has been thinking inside the box, either, and that the matter goes far beyond incompetence.
Since 2003, State has been locked in a power struggle with the DOD over whose performance has been most effective and who will be granted the right to make economic and business development policy in the future. At the height of the violence in 2006 and 2007, State contracted with me as a small business expert to help remove obstacles in the way of creating new business and jobs. From what I learned then and from the e-mails I continue to receive, it is clear that that the Defense Department won the battle to impose its own forms of incompetence on Iraqi business development.
From the outset of the occupation, State had attempted to build the Iraq economy by supporting the growth of small and mid-sized businesses, coupled with some odd ideas about creating a stock market, presumably to stimulate foreign investment for large firms. By the time I left in April, the stock market consisted of a white board in the Jordanian capital of Amman. It was easy to track the trades on Iraq’s paltry number of stock corporations, because the majority of them were located in that city. But at least the policy toward small business was consistent with Bush Administration notions of entrepreneurial development as the bulwark of free enterprise, and ultimately democracy.
And why should small business not be considered the driver of economic development? The U.S. Small Business Administration and Census Bureau statistics show that it accounts for over 93% of all new jobs here. Worldwide, the impact of small business often is even higher.
So, what did DOD do after it dislodged State from the business development throne? It turned back the clock by investing in State Owned Enterprises (SOE), the massive ministry-payoff driven large businesses that once were owned or controlled by Saddam and his extended family. Based on the results of a single now discredited study suggesting that an employed populace is a happy one, DOD hired American business consulting firms to breathe life into the dead or moribund SOEs. Because there might be some other intervening happiness variables, like, say, the impact on Iraqi joy of occupation, mayhem, flight from the country, loss of all supporting social and service institutions, the premise was deeply flawed.
In order to resuscitate the SOEs, whose equipment had rusted and management scattered, the DOD has had to entice foreign partners to help. In a country whose daily ration of predictable electricity was worse in April 2007, then it had been when I first arrived, investment in hard infrastructure makes sense. But the best result of this strategy will be to revive some “old” employment for workers who either resettled elsewhere or now are employed in family small businesses. In other words, the employment benefits, if any, will largely be a wash, not a growth in new jobs.
There will be other beneficiaries, however. The consultants will do very well. Most Americans think of contractors in Iraq as ex-soldiers taking on private security roles, but economic development contractors have directly accounted for at least a half billion dollars over time. Until it was renamed, State’s Iraq Reconstruction Management Office had an annual budget of about a half billion for economic development. The DOD’s budget was and is more difficult to track. Another beneficiary will be the collaborating businesses outside of Iraq. They will be rewarded by DOD-backed contracts and profit percentages. We can expect the policy of SOE economic development will rain capital and profits on the outside investors and collaborators.
By endorsing state-driven enterprise, this “new” approach” bolsters the sources of greatest corruption in Iraq: the ministries that control contracts. It focuses on the glitziest 6 or 7 percent of job providers, ignoring the workaday small businesses that account for 93 or 94 percent of jobs created. It parodies the notions of free enterprise, free trade, and freedom of economic action that presumably kept us there after we got rid of Saddam. And, of course, the ministries, back in the bribery business, ultimately will discourage, not enhance, real foreign investment in Iraq.
In nearly every area of business development, things have gotten worse in Iraq since the occupation. Those left in country have as much to fear from their economy as from bullets. In comparative terms, while other countries in the Middle East explore new methods for Islamic business funding, forge ahead on anti-corruption measures, reduce the times and costs to get into business, and increase employee safety and security, Iraq has moved steadily backwards. In its 2008 comprehensive ranking of countries according to the effectiveness of doing business, the World Bank placed Iraq at 141. Iraq has slipped every year since we arrived, and seven places just since the DOD program began. In 2006, the last time the World Bank published an annual index of business corruption and transparency, Iraq ranked 154.

Meanwhile, we push business development policies at the wrong place in the economic development cycle, support corruption and the continued dismantling of Iraq’s economy, and betray what passed for the principles that caused us to stick our nose under Iraq’s tent in the first place. State did not help. DOD has not helped. Our billions in economic development investment have not helped. Until the direction of economic policy changes, we can expect more happy talk and more bad results.

RADIO INTERVIEW

Want to learn more about the book? Listen to Gayl Murphy interview me, February 13. And while you're at it, try www.bigmediausa.com for great and informative audio programming across a broad spectrum of interests.

HOWDY

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