Typos on the Skin of Men: The Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq

"The Coalition Provisional Authority settled on an imperfect solution whereby all state employees would continue to draw salaries, but subsidies were slashed and intra-government debts were canceled.[41] While missing and destroyed records prevented any accurate after-the-fact accounting, this action in effect subsidized the weakest state-owned enterprises by erasing their debts. Iraqis began to import fertilizer and cement because those factories couldn’t resume production.[42] The emphasis on stability hampered any potential foreign investment. When the Coalition Provisional Authority solicited leases on 35 factories, but on the condition that no workers could be fired, not a single foreign investor signed on.[43] Floundering and unproductive factories were hardly part of the plan, but they brought some small measure of stability of welfare to a society in desperate need of it."