Bono Meets Dr. Shock

One of the stranger duos in the performing arts hit New York City on October 5: Jeffrey Sachs and Bono. The economist delivered the inaugural Daniel Patrick Moynihan lecture at New York University, and the rock star was his warm-up act. Their common theme was the moral urgency of relieving African poverty, but all the fans and TV cameras dogging Bono made it easy to overlook that.

It's not often that an economist attracts a follower and promoter like Bono, lead singer of the bombastic Irish rock group U2. The pairing, and their common theme, seem especially odd to anyone who remembers Sachs's history from the late 1980s and early '90s, when he earned the nickname Dr. Shock.

In thinking about the New Sachs, it's worth recalling the Old Sachs. His debut on the global stage was as an adviser to Bolivia, where he recommended a combination of tight fiscal and monetary policy, which came to be known as "shock therapy," that helped bring down the country's inflation rate from 11,750 percent in 1985 to a mere 15 percent in 1987. That's not a wholly bad achievement--almost no one likes hyperinflation--but the disinflation did nothing to change Bolivia's status as one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere.

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