Some good news out of the donors' conference in Madrid.

The BBC says the conference is finishing up with pledges of between $18 and $20 billion. A good bit of that seems to be in form of low-interest loans. And I'm not certain just how that fits into the equation.

Most reports note that this remains well short of the $36 billion the US was looking for. But I don't think anybody thought that was even remotely possible.

I remain curious about the spread of loans and grants.