

U2 frontman Bono, who has become an international spokesperson in recent years on global poverty, is astounded by how quickly the U.S. government was willing to part with $700 Billion to bail out flatlining investment banking firms. The singer says he and other advocates have had trouble getting just a fraction of that amount to help end poverty in underdeveloped nations for years. Bono teamed up with former President Bill Clinton yesterday to ensure that this latest economic crisis in the U.S. doesn’t overshadow the ongoing need for global aid.

The U.S. financial crisis making global waves is no excuse for governments and companies to walk away from helping the world’s poor, former U.S. President Bill Clinton and rocker Bono said on Wednesday. As Congress debates a White House-proposed $700 billion bailout for the worst financial crisis since the Depression of the 1930s, Bono questioned why wealthy countries had not been able to come up with enough aid for the world’s problems. “It is extraordinary to me that you can find $700 billion to save Wall Street and the entire G8 can’t find $25 billion to save 25,000 children who die every day of preventable treatable disease and hunger,” the U2 lead singer told Clinton’s fourth annual philanthropic summit in New York. “That’s mad, that is mad.” “This crisis is not an excuse to walk away from the world’s challenges, but a compelling reason to intensify our efforts to meet them, around the corner and around the world,” said Clinton, who has focused on humanitarian work since leaving the White House in 2001. The Group of Eight wealthy nations vowed in 2005 to raise annual aid levels $50 billion by 2010, $25 billion of which was to go to Africa. But under current spending plans, the G8 will fall $40 billion short, according to a June report by the Africa Progress Panel set up to monitor implementation. “Bankruptcy is a serious business and we all know people who have lost their jobs,” Bono said, referring to the bankruptcy declared by Wall Street investment bank Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. “But this is moral bankruptcy.”

[From Yahoo News]

Perhaps someone (like maybe a certain former president?) should have explained to Bono that the reason the U.S. government was so willing to hand over that kind of money to bail out Wall Street is because it’s not really their money- its the taxpayers who will be footing the bill for this little exercise in corporate welfare. It’s easy to give away something that’s not yours to begin with. Still, the rocker does have a point- our economic woes are a walk in the park compared to what people in poor and warring parts of Africa go through on a daily basis. They lack access to some of the most basic human needs and for the most part, nobody cares.