ABSTRACT
The International Monetary Fund (IMF), which had extended more than $9 billion in loans by 1997, was reasonably content at the time with the performance of the Russian economy. The debt was being serviced in a timely manner; but IMF conditions had called for a withholding of government salaries and pensions totaling almost $7 billion, and teachers, scientists, miners, and soldiers had reported delays of up to a year in disbursement. The United Nations (US) has identified more than a million popular organizations with community development potential in the Third World. And as US government funding levels for development programs, as such, slip, other governments and nongovernmental organizations move into the breach. Investing the tribute is a strategy that shows more promise in development than in most fields for a number of reasons. It is a profession that attracts the idealistic as well as, and probably more than, the opportunistic.
