(PART 1)
The economic forecast for what is left of this decade looks dim. When the political and business "crème de la crème" of the world gathered this past February at Davos (at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting), they couldn't agree on what will happen with the world economy this year. They have the knowledge, the money and the instruments to be the ones who can address issues like the financial crisis and the housing market debacle better than anyone else. Even so, they didn't accord on a united front that delineate where we are heading; when the meeting at Davos was over two blocks appeared in torrent opposition, some optimistic and others pessimistic (like that helps). Anything in between is not worth listening to.
On a February "Foreign Policy" article about Davos, Moisés Naím mentioned George Soros and US economist Nouriel Roubini as part of a ultrapessimists group, saying that they “argued that we had entered the most important economic crisis in the last 60 years.”
They may be right when they talk about a nebulous future, and lets be honest, they way things are developing it doesn´t take a genius to understand the magnitude of the catastrophic prospective.
One of this ultrapessimists, George Soros, said at Davos: "The current crisis is not only the bust that follows the housing boom, it's basically the end of a 60-year period of continuing credit expansion based on the dollar as the reserve currency.” If this comment turns out to be true then a long term crisis may be waiting to unfold and the world seems unprepared to handle it properly.
On another negative side at Davos, Nouriel Roubini said: "It's not about a soft landing or a hard landing but rather how hard a landing it will be.” This may sound as terrible news not just for the financial system but also for governments; over $169 billion dollars on a “stimulus package” in the United States were approved to, in some extent, prevent the economy from weakening.
While on the other side of the Atlantic, as The Economist reported on its last Thursday weekly resume, “Britain moved to nationalize Northern Rock” meaning that the efforts to sell it were dropped, also meaning that taking over this mortgage lender “is the best of a bad range of options…” …”if the state is to recover a reasonable chunk of the £25 billion ($49 billion) in loans and £30 billion in guarantees it has extended to the bank.”
In one way or the other, giving tax rebates as “stimulus packages” or saving bad lenders from drowning the financial system, governments are feeling the pressure of keeping some confidence on the market. While in the end, tax payers will be the ones who end up paying for this disastrous under-regulated mess.
All this problems have a father and a mother. One is call the “housing bubble” and the other the “weak dollar”. Both problems started when the United States was trying to avoid a deep recession back in 2001, both are the result of some terrible economic policies that I will describe later.
But for now lets ask this question. Who really knows what will happen?
So far the United States had not declared a recession, Ben Bernanke said before the Committee on the Budget, US House of Representatives, Washington DC, 17 January 2008, “Recently, incoming information has suggested that the baseline outlook for real activity in 2008 has worsened and that the downside risks to growth have become more pronounced." That understates the actual dimension of the incoming crisis.
On the same soft words, “hide what you can about the real shape of the economy -line" -- President Bush on his State of Union Address declared that, "We must have an economy that grows fast enough to employ every man and woman who seeks a job. After recession, terrorist attacks, corporate scandals and stock market declines, our economy is recovering -- yet it's not growing fast enough, or strongly enough. With unemployment rising, our nation needs more small businesses to open, more companies to invest and expand, more employers to put up the sign that says, "Help Wanted."". But hold on for a second, this was not in 2008 this was back in January 2003, it looks like America didn´t take the right measures to maintain a healthy economy on the long run.
We heard after five years George´s 2008 State of Union Address, “In the long run, Americans can be confident about our economic growth. But in the short run, we can all see that that growth is slowing.” This could put George in one awkward position, giving him the sad record of having two recessions while he was President, but it also could threaten the party that supports those “terrible economic policies” that I mentioned before.
The Economic Policy Institute released a statement back in 2003 called "Economists' Statement Opposing the Bush Tax Cuts” which stated: “Passing these tax cuts will worsen the long-term budget outlook, adding to the nation’s projected chronic deficits. This fiscal deterioration will reduce the capacity of the government to finance Social Security and Medicare benefits as well as investments in schools, health, infrastructure, and basic research. Moreover, the proposed tax cuts will generate further inequalities in after-tax income." They were right, after five years we are back into recession, one that could be worst than the last one.
On George´s 2008 statement he also implies that tax cuts were never the answer. This sad acceptance, that is always meant to be misleading, shows us that a economic slowdown could not be treated as lightly as it was, and that after a bubble burst, in this case the technological bubble, another could be created in no time by taking wrong economic policies, that just as the tax cuts, drove the economy to a more severe damage.
But tax cuts were only possible after a highly respected Fed chairman (Alan Greenspan) “endorsed” them before Congress. On a CNNMoney January 2001 article about Greenspan´s testimony before Congress, “… Greenspan played down the idea that tax cuts would provide an immediate boost to the economy, saying that tax reduction is appropriate as a long-term economic measure now because of estimates of a larger-than-expected federal surplus.” With that comment Bush got what he wanted, a boost from the most respected economist at the time, implying that it is fine to implement tax cuts.
On a review of Greenspan latest book, the New York Times on a September 2007 article says the following, “Though he does not admit he made a mistake, he shows remorse about how Republicans jumped on his endorsement of the 2001 tax cuts to push through unconditional tax cuts without any safeguards against surprises. He recounts how Mr. Rubin and Senator Kent Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat, begged him to hold off on an endorsement because of how it would be perceived.”
But that was only one of the two mistakes made at the time, The Fed also under his leadership lower interest rates, back in 2001, to 1% in order to help the economy recover from the catastrophic technology bubble.
You can see the pattern here, bubbles are created during certain conditions in which the market push prices up for a prolong time, when its too late for the government to do something, it burst.
This is the connection between the inaction of the government that implemented fatal policies and private corporations that abuse a weak uncontrolled system. First tax cuts, those helped create the feeling that more money would go to the regular American, while it actually went to the richest, second was low interest rates, which created the feeling that money was worth almost nothing and that you could end up with big amounts of debt that won't affect your cash flow. That trigger two important private abuses, one was ultra sophisticated lending structures, which made people who couldn't afford a credit to get one, the other was pushing people to use their houses as collateral, creating the sense of wealth as the prices went up.
That created the housing bubble, that led to the current financial crisis. After this last bubble (the housing one) extrude problems around the subprime mortgage market, the lending market, the insurance companies and later on every financial institution, the results show that the stock market could be the latest to feel the wrath of a prolonged decline of prices, implying that it could bring down the world's economy before this 2008 summer ends.
But after this recession is over; which other bubble would be created? How the world economy will end up? Who will be the big winners and the losers? Which disastrous results will come from Bernanke's "rate cut policies"?
I will go into those matters on the second part of this article.
miércoles, 27 de febrero de 2008
domingo, 17 de febrero de 2008
Would We See the End of The American Empire in Our Life Time?
Few foreign policy experts dare to claim who will be the world´s next super power. Many of them broach to the fact that the United States is a falling “empire”, some critics mention George's last trip to the Middle East as prove that America has lost its path. We all saw when George was abase by Saudi Arabia -- who enjoys the ability to control its petroleum supply -- when he couldn’t negotiate a clear deal to bring the price of oil down. It seems that the United States has lost power and presence in the world, it can no longer dictate what could or not be done and with two wars, that seem a hubristic disaster, many allies had turned away from it.
Some foreign policy experts say that the world's hegemony is over and that a new world order will be driven by three powers: China, governing Asia some parts of Africa and will execute some influence in Latin America; Europe, who will expand its political model to all its continent reaching all the way to Russia; the last one will be America, hanging alone in the west, obviously without much influence over its so call “backyard”.
This new world order lies on the assumption that no new economic model will rise in the near future and that things will proceed as schedule and planned so far. As we economist like to say -ceteris paribus.
What they don't realize is that our current economic model has fundamental flaws that are not sustainable in the long run.
I don´t really get the creation of wealth, for example, based on the abstract reality of the stock market and more recently on the evenly ironic increase of the housing market.Wealth is composed almost entirely of “papers” (stock) that are “tradable” for money, which is “tradable” for “goods”. If the stock price goes up, your wealth increases, if it goes down the opposite happens. So you see how absurd is the idea of a individual being the richest man in the world and someone being the poorest. If I was to have millions of GOOG stock when the y first went public, right now I may be wealthy, without having anything to back it up (cause the price could fall to 0).
This is our current economic model, a big monopoly game where the bank (Fed) never runs out of money and where you can create value out of nothing. This is why Central Banks (almost all of them) can print as much money as they want to and companies can be worth more than the GDP of small country.
The diatribe between China and America is worth explaining so you get an idea of how their relationship works. The main concern of the "West" toward China is no other than economic; China gets billions of dollars for their surplus with America, which upsets the trade balance, and also China's excessive production and local growth is bringing the price of rough materials considerably up world wide.
That is why we should focus only on the economic factors that put tension in the China-America trade policies.The appetite for foreign goods in the Unites States was uncontrollable about a year ago, but now that the source of wealth for many families is falling (the housing market burst) that appetite is declining fast. The Chinese fear that souring prices will affect their exports, while Americans -already in a recession- have second thoughts about buying too much. This bring us to a serious problem; which other country could absorb the excessive Chinese production?
Look at the current situation of the Chinese-American export-import phenomenon. China will be "C", America "A" and the exportable “goods” will be reduce to: manufactured products "B” and service "D". "C" produces a lot of "B" that exports to "A", but "A" does not have the money to pay for all the "B" that "C" want to sell. So "A" needs to borrow money in order to buy those "B". "C" thinks that it is a good idea to lend money to "A" so "A" can buy "C"`s "B". "A" prints a lot of papers (Treasury securities) that are payable to "C" --with interest--, those papers end up in "C"`s bank account. In exchange for the papers "C" gives billions of dollars to "A". "A" takes those billions of dollars and purchase a lot of "B" from "C". "A" sells some "D" to "C", but that is not enough to make the equation "B"-"D"=0, or something close to that. That reflects the trade imbalance that "A" has with "C”.In the end what "C" does is: produces "B", sells those "B" to "A" and lends dollars to "A" so "A" can keep on buying, and the only one who benefits from this plethora of production is "A". Why "C" does all of this? It seem like a really stupid idea to me.
What was described above is how China and the United Stated do business. The first one allocates most of its production in foreign countries, while those foreign countries allocate billions in investments. The second one borrows billions of dollars and purchases a whole range of products around the world, but without producing much to export.
Lately though, few countries, some of those OPEC members, had supported the claim by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the dollar is a "worthless piece of paper"- and that they should start pledging the price of oil to a credible hard currency. This means that the core of our current economic system is falling apart, if there is no trust in the exchangeability of the dollar, then there is no incentive to trade products with certain countries, in this case, the United States.
No trust- no "goods" sold to you.
If the world never loses its confidence on the dollar being "tradable", the United States could keep on borrowing money with no collateral. On the other hand, if the world loses its confidence on the dollar being “tradable”, the dollar will fall even further and it could end in a point where countries or individual companies will have no incentive for selling anything to the United States.
This brings us to the fact that America will officially fall into recession and possibly out of its unique position as the solely super power, one that lost its path after Bush was sworn President back in January 2001. (That is a bold statement, but nonetheless somehow true).
So which theory will be correct, another great superpower of three powers?
Both theories asume the following; that in neither case the United States would be the superpower that it is today. We all know that empires don't last forever, what we can't predict is when they are going to fall.
So the important question will be; would we see the end of the American empire in our life time?.
But to analyze an answer you have to know several factors that will determine how the future will unfold. Those are part of a complex level of paths taken by individuals, companies and governments that made it possible for some countries to be in the "first world" or in the "developed world" category.
For this current article I will keep any other factors that are not economic out of the equation; otherwise we would have to talk about the impact of global warming, elderly population in Japan, Russia and some parts of Europe, the scarcity of natural resources, shortage of water supplies, the likelihood of wars in some regions, the impact of brutal deforestation, the outcome of plagues, the health problems of an over polluted environments and China's crowded population.
Which is the critical resource that a country needs in order to become a superpower?
Its not oil or any other natural resource, its not the geographical space where a country is situated, its not the technology developed, its who made all this materials and inventions work. Yes the human capital. This brings us to the key element that will transform regions and countries in this century, this is the answer to which country will become the next superpower.
The United States had had a great influx of foreign people during its existence, in the last century millions flew from Europe and Asia to America in searching of a better life, on the past two decades millions of latinos had also gone for the same reason. This had kept the United States as a multiracial nation that was able to adapt its image and make it appealing to the world. We all know someone that lives in the US, the world follows what happens in the US, everyone around the world has some connection to the US, this is why the country has been able to stand as a great power.
Students all over the world fought on the last century for a place in an American University. The best minds were going to America to study, research, explore, forge an entrepreneur spirit and, maybe live there. This means that the "best minds" from the world left their countries and went to the West. The United States benefited from the billions of dollars saved in education that other countries paid (mainly for undergraduate studies) for their best students to left to the US.
This created a pool over six billion workers willing to travel from all over the world to America, this creates a bond from many cultures with America, this gave to America what no other country had, the immigration of millions of smart brains to its land, at $0 cost.
So the next super power(s) will be the one that takes the advantage of a globalize world and open its borders to as many foreign as it can handle.
Why there is not a passionate palaver from our world leaders about this?
You may want to look at the same phenomenon in your country (“immigration”) the most dynamic cities are the ones that have received lots of immigrants. The only countries that will succeed in the future will follow the same pattern. That is why people around the world once admire America and urn to go and live there, even when their own countries could have given them the same opportunities.
After 9/11 everything changed, obviously George W. Bush had to take some hard measures in order to protect the country and also to ensure that no more terrorist attacks could happened. However, the outcome (that was unintended) rested competiveness in the United States.
Millions of international students, after their visas were declined by the United States or the paper work was harder to comply, decided to go to Europe, Asia, Australia even Canada. That brain power that was filling the seats at prestige American Universities, were taking planes to other places other the United States.
After years of this same policy ("with-us-or-against-us" -George W- Bush), America was seen as a misanthrope creature that couldn't control its urge to invade countries, without plausible caused. Not WMD or chemical weapons, not enough troops or planning; the world had a feeling that any excuse was more important that the sake of human kind. North Korea and Iran, which were more aggressive than Saddam Hussein in Iraq, were not invaded, while the genocide in Sudan expanded to uncontrollable proportions without any intervention, even in America's soil things were going badly. The world watched as Katrina destroyed the beloved and unique New Orleans. The empire was trying to understand what was going on, what did it missed?
All this problems brought the United States to an awkward position, when the Bush administration had to decide just how much money and resources to put in the wars and how much in their own country.
With billons of dollars expended on two simultaneous wars the impact on the economy is enormous, but also the distraction that it creates from the future policies that must be adopted.
Japan was always reluctant to take immigrants and now faces a serious population problem, with some projections pointing that the decline will start as soon as next year. That translates into more people being out of work or too old to be a 100% productive and few young people trying to keep up the entire economy.
Europe faces the same challenging problem that Japan does. It is estimated by AP that Europe´s population in 2050 will be about 658 million down 70 million from the currently 728 million. China will have it worst, by 2043, as an article from Xinhua News Agency May 10, 2004 say, the population will start to decline, but also the sex disproportion of new born will accelerate.
From data projected with information provided by the United States Census Bureau and U.S. Department of Commerce, we see a trend of population growth in the United States until 2100. That gives the United States a wide advantage from other countries, in the best scenario which included immigration to America, the population will be over 552 million by 2050.
So my theory is that we wont see in our life time the fall of the America empire, nor the incredible rice of any other. China and Europe face some serious challenges in the near future, cause mainly by their loath to a rational immigration policy approach.
Its hara-kiri for a country not to address the challenging future with all the current resources available, only the strongest will survive and if politicians are too dumb to realize the need to bring the best brains to their countries, then we should elect sport coaches, they do realize that, in fact their teams are great, when they get the best players from countries all over the world.
Some foreign policy experts say that the world's hegemony is over and that a new world order will be driven by three powers: China, governing Asia some parts of Africa and will execute some influence in Latin America; Europe, who will expand its political model to all its continent reaching all the way to Russia; the last one will be America, hanging alone in the west, obviously without much influence over its so call “backyard”.
This new world order lies on the assumption that no new economic model will rise in the near future and that things will proceed as schedule and planned so far. As we economist like to say -ceteris paribus.
What they don't realize is that our current economic model has fundamental flaws that are not sustainable in the long run.
I don´t really get the creation of wealth, for example, based on the abstract reality of the stock market and more recently on the evenly ironic increase of the housing market.Wealth is composed almost entirely of “papers” (stock) that are “tradable” for money, which is “tradable” for “goods”. If the stock price goes up, your wealth increases, if it goes down the opposite happens. So you see how absurd is the idea of a individual being the richest man in the world and someone being the poorest. If I was to have millions of GOOG stock when the y first went public, right now I may be wealthy, without having anything to back it up (cause the price could fall to 0).
This is our current economic model, a big monopoly game where the bank (Fed) never runs out of money and where you can create value out of nothing. This is why Central Banks (almost all of them) can print as much money as they want to and companies can be worth more than the GDP of small country.
The diatribe between China and America is worth explaining so you get an idea of how their relationship works. The main concern of the "West" toward China is no other than economic; China gets billions of dollars for their surplus with America, which upsets the trade balance, and also China's excessive production and local growth is bringing the price of rough materials considerably up world wide.
That is why we should focus only on the economic factors that put tension in the China-America trade policies.The appetite for foreign goods in the Unites States was uncontrollable about a year ago, but now that the source of wealth for many families is falling (the housing market burst) that appetite is declining fast. The Chinese fear that souring prices will affect their exports, while Americans -already in a recession- have second thoughts about buying too much. This bring us to a serious problem; which other country could absorb the excessive Chinese production?
Look at the current situation of the Chinese-American export-import phenomenon. China will be "C", America "A" and the exportable “goods” will be reduce to: manufactured products "B” and service "D". "C" produces a lot of "B" that exports to "A", but "A" does not have the money to pay for all the "B" that "C" want to sell. So "A" needs to borrow money in order to buy those "B". "C" thinks that it is a good idea to lend money to "A" so "A" can buy "C"`s "B". "A" prints a lot of papers (Treasury securities) that are payable to "C" --with interest--, those papers end up in "C"`s bank account. In exchange for the papers "C" gives billions of dollars to "A". "A" takes those billions of dollars and purchase a lot of "B" from "C". "A" sells some "D" to "C", but that is not enough to make the equation "B"-"D"=0, or something close to that. That reflects the trade imbalance that "A" has with "C”.In the end what "C" does is: produces "B", sells those "B" to "A" and lends dollars to "A" so "A" can keep on buying, and the only one who benefits from this plethora of production is "A". Why "C" does all of this? It seem like a really stupid idea to me.
What was described above is how China and the United Stated do business. The first one allocates most of its production in foreign countries, while those foreign countries allocate billions in investments. The second one borrows billions of dollars and purchases a whole range of products around the world, but without producing much to export.
Lately though, few countries, some of those OPEC members, had supported the claim by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the dollar is a "worthless piece of paper"- and that they should start pledging the price of oil to a credible hard currency. This means that the core of our current economic system is falling apart, if there is no trust in the exchangeability of the dollar, then there is no incentive to trade products with certain countries, in this case, the United States.
No trust- no "goods" sold to you.
If the world never loses its confidence on the dollar being "tradable", the United States could keep on borrowing money with no collateral. On the other hand, if the world loses its confidence on the dollar being “tradable”, the dollar will fall even further and it could end in a point where countries or individual companies will have no incentive for selling anything to the United States.
This brings us to the fact that America will officially fall into recession and possibly out of its unique position as the solely super power, one that lost its path after Bush was sworn President back in January 2001. (That is a bold statement, but nonetheless somehow true).
So which theory will be correct, another great superpower of three powers?
Both theories asume the following; that in neither case the United States would be the superpower that it is today. We all know that empires don't last forever, what we can't predict is when they are going to fall.
So the important question will be; would we see the end of the American empire in our life time?.
But to analyze an answer you have to know several factors that will determine how the future will unfold. Those are part of a complex level of paths taken by individuals, companies and governments that made it possible for some countries to be in the "first world" or in the "developed world" category.
For this current article I will keep any other factors that are not economic out of the equation; otherwise we would have to talk about the impact of global warming, elderly population in Japan, Russia and some parts of Europe, the scarcity of natural resources, shortage of water supplies, the likelihood of wars in some regions, the impact of brutal deforestation, the outcome of plagues, the health problems of an over polluted environments and China's crowded population.
Which is the critical resource that a country needs in order to become a superpower?
Its not oil or any other natural resource, its not the geographical space where a country is situated, its not the technology developed, its who made all this materials and inventions work. Yes the human capital. This brings us to the key element that will transform regions and countries in this century, this is the answer to which country will become the next superpower.
The United States had had a great influx of foreign people during its existence, in the last century millions flew from Europe and Asia to America in searching of a better life, on the past two decades millions of latinos had also gone for the same reason. This had kept the United States as a multiracial nation that was able to adapt its image and make it appealing to the world. We all know someone that lives in the US, the world follows what happens in the US, everyone around the world has some connection to the US, this is why the country has been able to stand as a great power.
Students all over the world fought on the last century for a place in an American University. The best minds were going to America to study, research, explore, forge an entrepreneur spirit and, maybe live there. This means that the "best minds" from the world left their countries and went to the West. The United States benefited from the billions of dollars saved in education that other countries paid (mainly for undergraduate studies) for their best students to left to the US.
This created a pool over six billion workers willing to travel from all over the world to America, this creates a bond from many cultures with America, this gave to America what no other country had, the immigration of millions of smart brains to its land, at $0 cost.
So the next super power(s) will be the one that takes the advantage of a globalize world and open its borders to as many foreign as it can handle.
Why there is not a passionate palaver from our world leaders about this?
You may want to look at the same phenomenon in your country (“immigration”) the most dynamic cities are the ones that have received lots of immigrants. The only countries that will succeed in the future will follow the same pattern. That is why people around the world once admire America and urn to go and live there, even when their own countries could have given them the same opportunities.
After 9/11 everything changed, obviously George W. Bush had to take some hard measures in order to protect the country and also to ensure that no more terrorist attacks could happened. However, the outcome (that was unintended) rested competiveness in the United States.
Millions of international students, after their visas were declined by the United States or the paper work was harder to comply, decided to go to Europe, Asia, Australia even Canada. That brain power that was filling the seats at prestige American Universities, were taking planes to other places other the United States.
After years of this same policy ("with-us-or-against-us" -George W- Bush), America was seen as a misanthrope creature that couldn't control its urge to invade countries, without plausible caused. Not WMD or chemical weapons, not enough troops or planning; the world had a feeling that any excuse was more important that the sake of human kind. North Korea and Iran, which were more aggressive than Saddam Hussein in Iraq, were not invaded, while the genocide in Sudan expanded to uncontrollable proportions without any intervention, even in America's soil things were going badly. The world watched as Katrina destroyed the beloved and unique New Orleans. The empire was trying to understand what was going on, what did it missed?
All this problems brought the United States to an awkward position, when the Bush administration had to decide just how much money and resources to put in the wars and how much in their own country.
With billons of dollars expended on two simultaneous wars the impact on the economy is enormous, but also the distraction that it creates from the future policies that must be adopted.
Japan was always reluctant to take immigrants and now faces a serious population problem, with some projections pointing that the decline will start as soon as next year. That translates into more people being out of work or too old to be a 100% productive and few young people trying to keep up the entire economy.
Europe faces the same challenging problem that Japan does. It is estimated by AP that Europe´s population in 2050 will be about 658 million down 70 million from the currently 728 million. China will have it worst, by 2043, as an article from Xinhua News Agency May 10, 2004 say, the population will start to decline, but also the sex disproportion of new born will accelerate.
From data projected with information provided by the United States Census Bureau and U.S. Department of Commerce, we see a trend of population growth in the United States until 2100. That gives the United States a wide advantage from other countries, in the best scenario which included immigration to America, the population will be over 552 million by 2050.
So my theory is that we wont see in our life time the fall of the America empire, nor the incredible rice of any other. China and Europe face some serious challenges in the near future, cause mainly by their loath to a rational immigration policy approach.
Its hara-kiri for a country not to address the challenging future with all the current resources available, only the strongest will survive and if politicians are too dumb to realize the need to bring the best brains to their countries, then we should elect sport coaches, they do realize that, in fact their teams are great, when they get the best players from countries all over the world.
lunes, 4 de febrero de 2008
The Imbecile Continent
(draft)
No one cares what happens or what doesn´t happened in Latin America. People talk about politics with the same ignorance as any other habitant of the democratic world.
Politicians manipulate the poor with élan causing entire masses to gather around for causes that should be left in someone´s closets.
I could say that I don’t like Hugo Chavez, Rafael Correa, Evo Morales and Alvaro Uribe. But I never took the time to learn their policies, to understand the countries that they govern and the perspectives that they had outlined for their citizens.
I, as an Ecuadorian, dislike complete Rafael Correa, I happen think that the President of my country should behave as a respectable public dignitary that would not be engaged in public displays of kinder garden games with the despicable mayor of Guayaquil Jaime Nebot Saadi.
But I haven’t investigated his proposals, I haven’t read about his ideas of a “new Ecuador”, I haven’t follow his comments on the future direction that our country should take and of course I had not learned anything about his political advisers.
So I am the least qualify critic of his presidency, nonetheless I oppose firmly anything that he tries to do, because his approach to the general public is full of contempt and his annoying personality erases any sympathy that I could draw toward our head of state.
This usually happens when we belong to a different line of thinking that our leaders. What Latin America lacks is that the opponents of political movements, that seem in the general picture to be doing nothing to take us out of poverty, gather in an New York like “intellectual faculty” where the weight of our thinking could generate some questioning toward our politicians.
This of course doesn’t happen, the intellectual elite is nothing but a group of so call opponents that frustrated with their economic condition fight in low end newspapers with words and ideas worth of high school headlines.
The critique of some brilliant writers is left into the edge of our commonly ignorance, as people with high educational levels feel ashamed of showing intellectual curiosity at any kind, the leaders that acknowledge this, create a masquerade to entertain the masses with great results.
While Chavez insults the “American Empire” Citgo sell gasoline in the empire´s gas stations. While Correa is courting the Chinese, Ecuadorian upper middle class people plan their next trip to Miami. All of this with the disparity of rich and poor that plagues our continent.
The problem is not that there are serious disparities between rich oligarchs and poor workers, the sad story is that no one wants this to change. Our youth is so high on “drugs” that the entrepreneur spirit is part of clubs and parties, trips and alcohol, that there are no serious thinking about developing our countries into a new globalize world.
This means that we will be stock with the same lame ass presidents for decades to come, with the same corrupt public officials, with the same group of faulty politicians, but wait, this happens all over the world.
But they have accountability which means that the common citizen could change matters if he or she wants to pursue a bad official. Also they can lobby to make laws more favorable to their business and also vote from a big range of candidates that at least hold their principles close to the policies.
This means that the next decades will be much of the same, a bad situation that has pushed us back into this third world statutes.
Who is to blame?
Not the poor people that have to worry about food on their table, they were left with no education, so we cant blame them for our failures.
The ones that deserve the blame are with no doubt the owners of big companies, the “intellectuals” that write op-ed with no consequence at all. This are the people that have the means and education to push for a change that drastically guide us toward a better future. The story is different though, they have the political connections to surge with no effort whatsoever. So we are left with a rich segment that lives in a “dream world” while the masses watch football games with bear so they forget about their daily problems.
The imbeciles in this continent blame the emigrants for not staying here, they blame the government for not doing its job, they blame everyone but themselves. What they don’t realize is that the most brilliant and hardworking people are leaving the Imbecile Continent, so we can let them govern themselves, as they please.
Cheers my two face friends!
No one cares what happens or what doesn´t happened in Latin America. People talk about politics with the same ignorance as any other habitant of the democratic world.
Politicians manipulate the poor with élan causing entire masses to gather around for causes that should be left in someone´s closets.
I could say that I don’t like Hugo Chavez, Rafael Correa, Evo Morales and Alvaro Uribe. But I never took the time to learn their policies, to understand the countries that they govern and the perspectives that they had outlined for their citizens.
I, as an Ecuadorian, dislike complete Rafael Correa, I happen think that the President of my country should behave as a respectable public dignitary that would not be engaged in public displays of kinder garden games with the despicable mayor of Guayaquil Jaime Nebot Saadi.
But I haven’t investigated his proposals, I haven’t read about his ideas of a “new Ecuador”, I haven’t follow his comments on the future direction that our country should take and of course I had not learned anything about his political advisers.
So I am the least qualify critic of his presidency, nonetheless I oppose firmly anything that he tries to do, because his approach to the general public is full of contempt and his annoying personality erases any sympathy that I could draw toward our head of state.
This usually happens when we belong to a different line of thinking that our leaders. What Latin America lacks is that the opponents of political movements, that seem in the general picture to be doing nothing to take us out of poverty, gather in an New York like “intellectual faculty” where the weight of our thinking could generate some questioning toward our politicians.
This of course doesn’t happen, the intellectual elite is nothing but a group of so call opponents that frustrated with their economic condition fight in low end newspapers with words and ideas worth of high school headlines.
The critique of some brilliant writers is left into the edge of our commonly ignorance, as people with high educational levels feel ashamed of showing intellectual curiosity at any kind, the leaders that acknowledge this, create a masquerade to entertain the masses with great results.
While Chavez insults the “American Empire” Citgo sell gasoline in the empire´s gas stations. While Correa is courting the Chinese, Ecuadorian upper middle class people plan their next trip to Miami. All of this with the disparity of rich and poor that plagues our continent.
The problem is not that there are serious disparities between rich oligarchs and poor workers, the sad story is that no one wants this to change. Our youth is so high on “drugs” that the entrepreneur spirit is part of clubs and parties, trips and alcohol, that there are no serious thinking about developing our countries into a new globalize world.
This means that we will be stock with the same lame ass presidents for decades to come, with the same corrupt public officials, with the same group of faulty politicians, but wait, this happens all over the world.
But they have accountability which means that the common citizen could change matters if he or she wants to pursue a bad official. Also they can lobby to make laws more favorable to their business and also vote from a big range of candidates that at least hold their principles close to the policies.
This means that the next decades will be much of the same, a bad situation that has pushed us back into this third world statutes.
Who is to blame?
Not the poor people that have to worry about food on their table, they were left with no education, so we cant blame them for our failures.
The ones that deserve the blame are with no doubt the owners of big companies, the “intellectuals” that write op-ed with no consequence at all. This are the people that have the means and education to push for a change that drastically guide us toward a better future. The story is different though, they have the political connections to surge with no effort whatsoever. So we are left with a rich segment that lives in a “dream world” while the masses watch football games with bear so they forget about their daily problems.
The imbeciles in this continent blame the emigrants for not staying here, they blame the government for not doing its job, they blame everyone but themselves. What they don’t realize is that the most brilliant and hardworking people are leaving the Imbecile Continent, so we can let them govern themselves, as they please.
Cheers my two face friends!
domingo, 3 de febrero de 2008
The Easy Choice
You may vote for a candidate because of his or her electability, because you like him or her, because you like her or his policies, because you want to. Anyways there are million different reason why. In this 2008 elections you have to wonder on the Democratic side, who is the best?
With policies pretty much alike you can pick either of them and expect the same outcome, although you want tough with negotiation power, with and iron fist if the country feels threaten and with the ability to push for diplomacy in international affairs (we don't want another Iraq). You want the perfect candidate that would be the perfect president. Maybe were are dreaming on a fairy tale.Its not enough that the political practice can, as in Hollywood, shape the public exposure of certain candidates to appear more likable, they also can change past events in order to best serve their interest. This bring us to the purpose of electing a good official. Whether Clinton can beat Obama is not the question, she sure will win in the Super Tuesday, her margins are much better than Obamba --who wasted too much time in the small states that voted earlier, were with his charisma he won them over but forgetting that the big ones are the ones that matter.
The Gulliani strategy was not that bad, sadly he is too fake and too 9/11 to project the whole attributes of a perfect candidate. It may be that after the war in Iraq, which distracted America from the rightfully war against the authors of 9/11, a lot of people saw that violence may not be the whole answer to international problems. I figure that if you are a terrorist and you try to commit an evil attack against innocent civilians you must be brain washed and incredible retarded, but also part of an international organization that is dedicated to hire people just like that.
Even when the economy is what drive people's sentiment right now, there are other major problems that need to be acknowledge. Terrorist plots must be prevented at any cost, there is no other way to do that than the hard way. The international declined of the United States has to be a priority of the next president, don't forget the threat of a nuclear Iran and North Korea.
The most trouble subject is the falling dollar and this could be the one that destroy the country. So the easy choice will be someone that is not a Republican, after Bush and the incredible support among his peer in Congress, Republicans need to learn a hard lesson, that is to stop the inept policies that somehow are part of a old philosophy of a XX century autocrats. Emigration is the core of any country that wants to be in the lead of this century, energy independence will bring billions of dollars back to the United States and will rest power to OPEC countries.
Getting out of Iraq ASAP will be the wise thing to do -- you invade a country, destroy its army, build one from scratch, let the government run as it wants to, spend a trillion dollars, put the international community against you, put your own people against that war and not happy with it you commit your army for an indeterminate number of years. What?
And people vote Republican? I mean its is great that there is a conservative movement, that religion is part of peoples lives, that certain policies are fought by both sides and a consensus is made. But that has to be the end of it, you as voters, should push the Republican party to focus on those issues that you like, instead of using those issues to pursue others that the whole country truly dislikes.
So vote for a Democrat until the Republican understand that you can't be in Iraq forever, the phrase "we step down when they can step up" its like saying to your kids, we will support you until you can do it by yourself, and your kid is not 5 years old but 25 years old.
The sad thing about this is that Democrats could fall in the same voracious path of power, they could start policies out of touch with this millennium, or pull out of Iraq so fast that the country is left in chaos, or not be hard on terrorism. This is the outcome of one of the most complicated presidencies in resent world history.
Neither Bin Laden was captured nor Iraq is save and with a year left for George to be out of the office, the economy is falling apart, the dollar is crumbling, the American people think the country is in the wrong direction, American Universities are not getting all the brain power that they used to, the price of oil is giving to petro-countries the money to sustain the unsustainable in normal conditions, Global Warming is threatening the world as we know it and most important, we don't have a leading country that could enforce peace, change or guide us toward a sustainable future.
Shame on you who lack the intelligence to govern the most powerful nation in the world; whatever you do affects more than 6 billion people, and the future of human kind.
Vote for a Democrat, or to be more specific for Hillary Clinton when she wins the primary.
With policies pretty much alike you can pick either of them and expect the same outcome, although you want tough with negotiation power, with and iron fist if the country feels threaten and with the ability to push for diplomacy in international affairs (we don't want another Iraq). You want the perfect candidate that would be the perfect president. Maybe were are dreaming on a fairy tale.Its not enough that the political practice can, as in Hollywood, shape the public exposure of certain candidates to appear more likable, they also can change past events in order to best serve their interest. This bring us to the purpose of electing a good official. Whether Clinton can beat Obama is not the question, she sure will win in the Super Tuesday, her margins are much better than Obamba --who wasted too much time in the small states that voted earlier, were with his charisma he won them over but forgetting that the big ones are the ones that matter.
The Gulliani strategy was not that bad, sadly he is too fake and too 9/11 to project the whole attributes of a perfect candidate. It may be that after the war in Iraq, which distracted America from the rightfully war against the authors of 9/11, a lot of people saw that violence may not be the whole answer to international problems. I figure that if you are a terrorist and you try to commit an evil attack against innocent civilians you must be brain washed and incredible retarded, but also part of an international organization that is dedicated to hire people just like that.
Even when the economy is what drive people's sentiment right now, there are other major problems that need to be acknowledge. Terrorist plots must be prevented at any cost, there is no other way to do that than the hard way. The international declined of the United States has to be a priority of the next president, don't forget the threat of a nuclear Iran and North Korea.
The most trouble subject is the falling dollar and this could be the one that destroy the country. So the easy choice will be someone that is not a Republican, after Bush and the incredible support among his peer in Congress, Republicans need to learn a hard lesson, that is to stop the inept policies that somehow are part of a old philosophy of a XX century autocrats. Emigration is the core of any country that wants to be in the lead of this century, energy independence will bring billions of dollars back to the United States and will rest power to OPEC countries.
Getting out of Iraq ASAP will be the wise thing to do -- you invade a country, destroy its army, build one from scratch, let the government run as it wants to, spend a trillion dollars, put the international community against you, put your own people against that war and not happy with it you commit your army for an indeterminate number of years. What?
And people vote Republican? I mean its is great that there is a conservative movement, that religion is part of peoples lives, that certain policies are fought by both sides and a consensus is made. But that has to be the end of it, you as voters, should push the Republican party to focus on those issues that you like, instead of using those issues to pursue others that the whole country truly dislikes.
So vote for a Democrat until the Republican understand that you can't be in Iraq forever, the phrase "we step down when they can step up" its like saying to your kids, we will support you until you can do it by yourself, and your kid is not 5 years old but 25 years old.
The sad thing about this is that Democrats could fall in the same voracious path of power, they could start policies out of touch with this millennium, or pull out of Iraq so fast that the country is left in chaos, or not be hard on terrorism. This is the outcome of one of the most complicated presidencies in resent world history.
Neither Bin Laden was captured nor Iraq is save and with a year left for George to be out of the office, the economy is falling apart, the dollar is crumbling, the American people think the country is in the wrong direction, American Universities are not getting all the brain power that they used to, the price of oil is giving to petro-countries the money to sustain the unsustainable in normal conditions, Global Warming is threatening the world as we know it and most important, we don't have a leading country that could enforce peace, change or guide us toward a sustainable future.
Shame on you who lack the intelligence to govern the most powerful nation in the world; whatever you do affects more than 6 billion people, and the future of human kind.
Vote for a Democrat, or to be more specific for Hillary Clinton when she wins the primary.
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