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Tag Archive | "Brazil"


Peru and The Latin American (Economic) Way

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By: Dr. Alfonso Dingemans

Dr. Alfonso Dingemans.The Left Turn

Twenty years ago, it was much easier to describe the economic organization of Latin American countries. The debt crisis, which spawned the so-called “lost decade” of the 1980s, had given the final blow to the import substituting industrialization (ISI) project. characterized by both the dirigiste dogma, in words of Deepak Lal’s (in)famous book-title, and an inward-looking development strategy. The economic chaos was so profound that something had to be done, and quickly. Sooner or later, all countries would swallow the “bitter pill” of pro-market reforms, better known as the Washington Consensus, to a greater or lesser extent. Even Cuba had to give in, although it hardly became Latin America’s China, neither in terms of economic success, nor in terms of the breadth and width of its pro-market reforms.

At first, everything seemed to go well. After decades of suffocation, market forces were finally released, under the auspicious and watchful eyes of the IMF and the World Bank, unleashing a very promising economic future. The 1994 Tequila crisis was a major complication (and scare) for the region’s economies, but it was effectively contained by the jumping in of various actors of international financial institutions. The Asian crisis, however, was a whole different story. The damage it caused to the Latin American economies was considerable. For instance, in Argentina, it triggered a chain reaction of events which eventually would lead to the collapse of its economic organization, accompanied by public rejection, and a dramatic rise in the poverty levels. In other countries, like Chile, the damages were much better contained. Nevertheless, a new spirit invaded the region, in line with its well-known bipolar social psychology: the Washington Consensus had to be replaced, because it was the root of all social problems. True, it wasn’t (and isn’t) a recipe for guaranteed success, higher earnings come with higher risks, and many social issues demanded, in times of low or negative economic growth, urgent attention. But Latin America’s social problems did under no circumstance begin with the implementation of the Washington Consensus reforms. The fact that populist Presidents promised that these reforms would end poverty altogether, is quite a different story. And so is the fact that many pro-market reforms were accompanied by outright corruption. In sum, for many Latin American citizens, pro-market reforms became tainted words.

At the turn of the century, not many (centre) right-winged governments had survived, which prompted many observers to talk of Latin America’s “left turn”. These newly elected government can be divided in three large groups. First, we have the “renovated” left of a more pragmatist calibre, comparable to the doctrines of the European Third Way. This means that the market is accepted as an essentially benign and useful force, but which must be kept on a relatively short leash. The nagging question is to determine where the State ends and where the market begins, and how to make them work together in stead of against each other. Examples would include the administrations of Michelle Bachelet in Chile and Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva in Brazil.

Second, we have the (often but not always left-wing) populist governments, in the sense of economic populism coined by Dornbusch and Edwards, which promise to solve the people’s “real” problems, listen to them, and acknowledge the same common enemy, the uncontrolled market, and sometimes bluntly “the” market. State interventionism is a necessity, the problem is that they are more often than not riddled with corruption and technical inconsistencies. Examples would include Nestor Kirchner, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in Argentina, and Alan Garc(í)a in Peru.

Third, we have the “romantic” or dogmatic left, which returns to the Marxist discourse, vehemently anti-capitalist, of the 1960s. Words like “imperialism”, “subjugation”, and “exploitation” are back on the agenda, which is now called “Bolivarian”. The market should not only be subdued, but, according to some, even wholly replaced by central planning, allocation and distribution. In sum, it ultimately seeks the replacement of capitalism. Examples of these policies include Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, and Evo Morales in Bolivia.

This “left turn” is not circumscribed to the ideological left, since the right-wing parties have picked up, at least in their discourse, many of their issues. For example, no self-loving candidate, with any hope to win the elections, would dare to defend the market as blindly as in the nineties. No candidate would consider disregarding the social dimensions of economic policy. This heightened social sensibility, across the political spectrum, is a result of a certain social learrning-process which arguably began in the 1980s with the debt crisis.

The Latin American Way

But are these differences a problem? Beyond any personal appreciation one could have in favour or against one position or another, differences are normally considered an opportunity for learning. Common sense dictates that social phenomenons are so complex that in this post-modern world not many would dare to claim to possess the “final” truth in terms of public policy and development strategies. Alas, this is precisely what defines and summarizes the Latin American (economic) way.

Since Independence, the pendulum has moved continuously between two extremes: suffocating State intervention versus uncontrolled market deregulation, and exaggerated optimism versus exaggerated pessimism in market forces and world markets. Means are confounded with ends, and enjoy an unreasonably long, and unaltered, lifespan because of a vehement and unchanging belief in its truth. This is true for the belle epoque of economic liberalism in 1870-1929, for the ISI period of 1930-1980, for the “pure” Washington Consensus period 1980-2000, and is probably true for the current period, too.

The problem of this dogmatic approach is that the opportunity for learning is not seized. It is impossible to predict the future or outcomes with exact precision. Plans, i.e. the means employed to obtain certain goals, should be corrected according to its performance. As long as the goals are being obtained, there is nothing wrong with changing the means. On the contrary, by continuously monitoring and adjusting the means, the grasp on the existing causal relationships is improved, not matter how little. In the end, at least that is what we hope, convergence is obtained between the goals and the obtained results.

If means are unreasonably defended, crisis (which are inevitable) will have disproportionately disruptive effects, since small adjustments are delayed until small adjustments don’t longer suffice. At that moment, all hope is lost, and major, often hastily devised, profound reforms are put in place, and back goes the pendulum. And our experience with the causal relationships will be reduced to nil, and all our economic, social and sometimes even political advances and improvements will have melted away. Back to square one.

Peru’s uncertain economic future

Without a doubt, Peru has taken yet another left turn with elected President Ollanta Humala. To what extent is far from clear. His political record suggests one thing, his recent campaign another. Judging by his ideological affinities, one would be tempted to include him with Chavez, Correa and Morales. The difference is that Peru’s economy has faired more than well during the last years. Economic growth is fairly stable, exports are growing steadily, and its competitiveness is improving rapidly. “Never change a winning team,” the saying goes. But this team has lost few matches, or at least had to put up with some counter goals. These lie in the social realm, since the social indicators show less colourful results, and this is probably what contributed to Humala’s victory.

The question is therefore: to what extent is the newly elected President willing to change Peru’s economic model? If history teaches us anything, odds are that he will be tempted to follow the sadly known Latin American way of radical change, disregarding the lessons learned and the accumulated knowledge. The Peruvian markets share this fear: when the election results were announced, Lima’s stock market plummeted various points. On the other hand, his recent travels through the region emphasized moderation, political and economical, more than anything. This means that the jury is still out.

Our only hope is that Humala will break with the Latin American (economic) way and will introduce ajdustments rather than radical change in an effort to continue to build upon the successes and improving the failures, rather than impose a new, all-explaining world vision which would force all actors to begin from scratch.

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Idiotic Bias: Fox Attacks Obama ‘Vacation’ in Brazil, Refuses To Air Speech

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MediaMatters: The right-wing media have continuously attacked President Obama for proceeding with his long-planned trip to Latin America in the wake of the crises in Japan and Libya, often mocking his trip as a “vacation.” In fact, the President’s trip will be “focused on economic opportunities for the United States and the trade relationship” with Latin American nations. [ READ MORE ]

Bolling Still Falsely Labeling Obama Economic Growth Trip To Latin America A “Vacation

Fox Attacks Obama’s Brazil Trip As A “Vacation” Then Refuses To Air His Speech: President Obama spoke in Brazil, highlighting that country’s rising economic power, growing middle class, and transition from military dictatorship to thriving democracy. The speech capped off a visit meant to promote the United States’ economic relationship with Brazil and the entire South American region, with the stated purpose of encouraging job growth. The speech drove home the very points Obama made in his March 18 USA Today op-ed in which he said: “That’s one of the reasons I will travel to Latin America this week — to strengthen our economic relationship with neighbors who are playing a growing role in our economic future.” [ READ MORE ]

More About The ACORN Hoax

Brit Hume: “To This President, The Presence And The Sight Of American Leadership…Is A Stigma”

Meet the Press Panelists Dismiss Criticism Over Obama’s Latin American Economic Growth Trip

Reference: Juggling With Skill; Obama’s Smart Crisis Management.

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Other Fox Thuggery on Obama
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Beck Upset Obama Didn’t Act On Libya — Then, 20 Seconds Later, Upset That He Did [ MORE ]

Ralph Peters: Obama’s Response To Libya Has Gadhafi Believing He Can “Wait The Gringos Out

Was It Something Out Of “Red China” When Fox Celebrated Kids At A Tea Party? [ READ MORE ]

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The Big Picture: March 18, 2011 — Fox, Beck, Limbaugh Engaged in The Usual Garbage Spewing + A Dose of Childish Obama Bashing
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Republican Congressmen Dan Burton (R-IN) and Louie Gohmert (R-TX) Help Spread Glenn Beck’s LIES in Congress

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On Monday on Fox News, Beck claimed that President Obama gave $2 billion to the Brazilian state-run oil company PetroBras “just days” after conservative boogeyman George Soros strengthened his investment in the company.

The very next evening, the two Republican congressmen repeated Beck’s baseless charge on the House floor. While criticizing the moratorium on offshore drilling brought on by the Gulf oil spill, Rep. Burton said that “we just sent $2 billion to Brazil so they can do offshore drilling.” Moments later, Burton parroted Beck’s fantasy version of events: “We don’t need to be sending Mr. Soros money in Brazil so he can make more money by doing offshore drilling with our taxpayers’ money.” [ READ MORE ]

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) Compares Barack Obama To Adolf Hitler

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Harry Reid’s ‘Negro Dialect’: The ‘One Drop’ Law Trumps ‘Harvard Law’

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The one-drop rule was a tactic in the U.S. South that codified and strengthened segregation and the disfranchisement of most blacks and many poor whites from 1890-1910. After Supreme Court decisions in Plessy v. Ferguson and related matters, White-dominated legislatures felt free to enact Jim Crow laws segregating Blacks in public places and accommodations, and passed other restrictive legislation. Legislatures sought to prevent interracial relationships to keep the white race “pure” long after slaveholders and overseers took advantage of enslaved women and produced the many mixed-race children.

   [By: Eugene Robinson]
Eugene RobinsonSkin color among African Americans is not to be discussed in polite company, so Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s newly disclosed remark about President Obama — that voters are more comfortable with him because he’s light-skinned — offended decorum. But it was surely true.

Color bias has always existed in this country. We don’t talk about it because we think of color as subordinate to racial identification. There are African Americans with skin so light-hued that only contextual clues speak to the question of race. I remember once looking up some distant cousins on my father’s side. They were so fair of hair and ruddy of cheek that I thought I’d gone to the wrong house, until one of them greeted me in what I guess Reid would call “Negro dialect.

Forgive me if I am neither shocked nor outraged. A few years ago I wrote a book about color and race called “Coal to Cream,” and the issue no longer has third-rail status for me. What I would find stunning is evidence that Reid’s assessment — made during the 2008 campaign and reported in a new book by journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin — was anything but accurate.

Advertising is a reliable window into the American psyche, so look at the images we’re presented on television and in glossy magazines. The black models tend to be caramel-skinned or lighter, with hair that’s not really kinky — which is how I’d describe mine — but wavy, even flowing. A few models whose skin is chocolate-hued or darker have reached superstar status, such as Alek Wek and Tyson Beckford, but they are rare exceptions.

Skin color could hardly be a more conspicuous attribute, but we don’t talk about it in this country. That’s been a good thing.

I became interested in perceptions of color and race when I was The Post’s correspondent in South America. On reporting trips to Brazil, a country with a history of slavery much like ours, I kept running across people with skin as dark as mine, or a bit darker, who didn’t consider themselves “black.” I learned that at the time — roughly 20 years ago — fewer than 10 percent of Brazilians self-identified as black. Yet at least half the population, I estimated, would have been considered black in the United States.

The One-Drop Rule

This was because American society enforced the “one-drop” rule: If you had any African blood at all, you were black. In Brazil, by contrast, you could be mulatto, you could be light-skinned, you could be “Moorish” brown, all the way to “blue-black” — more than a dozen informal classifications in all. Color superseded racial identification. In Salvador da Bahia, I met a couple who considered themselves black but whose children were lighter-skinned. The children’s birth certificates classified them as branco, or white.

The Brazilian system minimized racial friction on an interpersonal level. The American system fostered such friction, through formal and informal codes that enforced racial segregation. But our “one-drop” paradigm also created great racial solidarity among African Americans, while maximizing our numbers. We fought, marched, sat in, struggled and eventually made tremendous strides toward equality. The most recent, of course, was Obama’s election, which is difficult to imagine happening in Brazil — or, for that matter, in any other country where there is a large, historically oppressed minority group.

Brazil has now begun addressing long-standing racial disparities through affirmative action initiatives. But the upper reaches of that society — the financial district in Sao Paulo, say, or the government ministries in Brasilia — are still so exclusively white that they look like bits and pieces of Portugal that somehow ended up on the wrong side of the ocean.

American society’s focus on race instead of color explains why what Harry Reid said was so rude. But I don’t think it can be a coincidence that so many pioneers — Edward Brooke, the first black senator since Reconstruction; Thurgood Marshall, the first black Supreme Court justice; Colin Powell, the first black secretary of state — have been lighter-skinned. Reid’s analysis was probably good sociology, even if it was bad politics.

Much worse, as far as I’m concerned, was the quote the new book “Game Change” attributes to Bill Clinton. In an attempt to persuade Ted Kennedy not to support Obama, Clinton is supposed to have said that “a few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee.

I guess the one-drop rule can still trump Harvard Law.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

   [Enlarge]
Eugene RobinsonAbout The Author: Eugene Robinson — is an Associate Editor and twice-weekly columnist for The Washington Post. His column appears on Tuesdays and Fridays.

In a 25-year career at The Post, Robinson has been city hall reporter, city editor, foreign correspondent in Buenos Aires and London, foreign editor, and assistant managing editor in charge of the paper?s award-winning Style section. In 2005, he started writing a column for the Op-Ed page. He is the author of “Coal to Cream: A Black Man?s Journey Beyond Color to an Affirmation of Race” (1999) and “Last Dance in Havana” (2004).

Robinson is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists and has received numerous journalism awards.

More Articles By Mr. Robinson: | Part 1 | Part 2 |

Coal to Cream: A Black Man's Journey Beyond Color to an Affirmation of Race

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Fifa World Cup Draw (Cape Town, Friday 4 Dec.) — Can An African Team Win The 2010 World Cup?

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Not so long ago the mere suggestion that an African team might win a World Cup would have been dismissed out of hand – all of a sudden, the idea no longer seems far-fetched. Could this be Africa’s time? Unperturbed by his 1977 prediction that an African side would triumph by the end of the 20th century, Brazil legend Pele genuinely believes it can occur next year.

BBC: Close your eyes and try to imagine the scenes of jubilation across Africa if a team from the continent were to win the 2010 World Cup.

A celebration like no other, one billion people reveling in one of the greatest sporting and cultural achievements.

For the first time in its 80-year history, football’s blue riband competition is coming to the world’s poorest and most underdeveloped land.

How better to mark the occasion than with a first African champion?

“Winning the World Cup would be one of the proudest moments in the history of that country and our continent as a whole,” former South Africa striker Shaun Bartlett told BBC Sport.

“Every African nation has its internal problems but football can do wonders for people and nations, which is a huge incentive.”

Nobody is saying it is going to happen but the groundswell of opinion suggests South Africa 2010 is the best opportunity yet. [ READ MORE ]

The Genius of Pele

The 2010 Draw:

Group A: South Africa, Mexico, Uruguay, France

Group B: Argentina, Nigeria, Korea Republic, Greece

Group C: England, USA, Algeria, Slovenia

Group D: Germany, Australia, Serbia, Ghana

Group E: Netherlands, Denmark, Japan, Cameroon

Group F: Italy, Paraguay, New Zealand, Slovakia

Group G: Brazil, Korea DPR, Côte d’Ivoire, Portugal

Group H: Spain, Switzerland, Honduras, Chile

[ READ MORE ]

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