An important article on how the US is trying to create the sense of individual property rights within Iraq, a critical element in intiating a solid economic growth cycle, legal structure, and political accountability to the people.
washingtontimes.com
Three out of four Iraqis do not hold formal title to their assets, according to a preliminary surveys by Peruvian economist Hernando De Soto, author of "The Mystery of Capital" and whose ideas are helping revamp economies from South America to the South Pacific.
Mr. De Soto, whose thinking is in vogue among economic conservatives as well as liberals, says poor inhabitants in the Third World and former communist countries — five-sixths of humanity — possess real property but lack deeds to it.
Without titles, Iraqis are left like many of their Arab neighbors in poor states such as Egypt and Morocco, with no legal standing to leverage their assets into wealth, said Mrs. Johnson. It can take years in many Arab states just to incorporate a business or buy a house.
Yet the future for Iraq's small entrepreneurs, like the soft-spoken Mr. Abed, rests also on hopes of a legal system that prevent speculators — both foreign and domestic — from buying up vast swaths of Iraq's fertile farmland and open desert.
While property sales are frozen by a lack of laws and security, the same real estate brokers who worked within Saddam Hussein's corrupt system are seeking out foreign partners with enough capital to obtain control of key properties and later to resell them to the highest bidder.
It is my prediction, albeit maybe premature, that Mr. De Soto will one day win the Nobel Prize for Economics.
I believe he has captured the essence of a previously under acknowledged aspect of economic stability and growth, as well as political accountability.
Hawk |
