Friday, January 12, 2018

Matias Vernengo — The Latin American Crisis


Matias Verengo sums up the Latin American crises, present and past. Manufactured.

Naked Keynesianism
The Latin American Crisis
Matias Vernengo | Associate Professor of Economics, Bucknell University

14 comments:

Kaivey said...

I want to say, "surely the Western bankers are rich enough". But that's how they made their money, by robbing the third world.

Excerpt-

At any rate, why the new downgrading, you ask. The reason is to force the Brazilian government to push once again for pension reform. The whole point is that the crisis was caused to create the conditions for the dismantling of the old remnants of the very incomplete welfare state, if one can speak of one in Brazil, that survived the neoliberal onslaught of the 1990s under Fernando Henrique Cardoso. One should not minimize the importance of the soft power of US institutions, including the credit rating agencies, and how they can be used to promote certain political agendas.

Matt Franko said...

They are all shitholes....

Matt Franko said...

"there is no doubt that the collapse of commodity prices has played a significant role in the downturn in the region, but it is also true that a lot of the problems are political in nature, and the resurgence of neoliberalism (with the support of the US, btw) has played a significant role too. In my view, the latter is far more relevant."

This is absurd.

if you went to these people and said 'what do you want'

1. things as they are today

or

2 oil back at $125 and North American production back down by 8M bpd

There is NO WAY IN HELL they would take door 1 ... no way...

More paranoid conspiracy theory here from the left...

John said...

Matt: "They are all shitholes..."

Yeah, how dare poor countries be poor or even exist. And if anyone has the audacity to be poor we should all sneer and denigrate them. All the poor should be ashamed themselves for even existing, the pieces of shit, rather than taking the honourable way out by committing collective suicide. Even though some countries can never possibly ever become rich, due to geography and lack of resources and other factors, they pain the sensibilities of the more refined, and are therefore doubly cruel to themselves and the more cultured part of the species, if they are even part of the same species.

No doubt many feel the same way about Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky and all those other "shithole" southern, and indeed many northern, US states that are closer to third world status than, oh say, Norway. Why doesn't Arkansas or West Virginia just simply pull themselves out of poverty, ignorance and their general condition of shitholeness? "Oh", I hear you say, "there's a structural problem with the US federal system and..." Well, what is is true for the poorer US states is true a thousand-fold for the poorest countries in the world: poor geography, intentionally badly drawn colonial borders, lack of resources (energy, food etc), lack of access to markets unless they are in the richer countries favour etc etc.

For someone who likes quoting the New Testament as much as you do, you seem to have missed the central message of the loving man was was crucified.

By the way, Brazil is a whole lot better off now than it was when it was a US puppet state, controlled as it was by a white elite. Hence the fanatical vilification of it and others like Venezuela. Just like all the countries that have been under foreign rule or or influence, India was left a total disaster after two centuries of British rule. A country that once accounted for 27% of global GDP was left in utter poverty and backwardness. Now, it is a rising superpower while the UK, or what will soon be left of it, will revert to what it always was, a small, cold island (or parts of it), which may or may not stay relatively prosperous.

Tom Hickey said...

No doubt many feel the same way about Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky and all those other "shithole" southern,

Being a born and bred Yankee, I can attest to that.

A lot of people in the North wonder why the Civil War was fought to keep the South in the Union.

The historical answer is that the North was afraid that the South would fail, Britain would take it over and mount a land war against the North.

:o

Matt Franko said...

"For someone who likes quoting the New Testament"

yo there is nothing glorious about throwing out your trash properly...

Material systems competence is not something glorious... sanitary systems? What do you think we should go back to create temples out of our sewage treatment plants? Offer ritual divine service to idol images formed in the likeness of Thomas Crapper?

We have been given a permanent surplus for crying out loud we throw out HALF of our f-ing food...

Charity is nothing but a slippery slope into self-justification and boasting by out of control pastoral Christians and atheists who also have been given a conscience....

Paul didnt go all around Greece and Rome opening up soup kitchens... he didnt have to ...

this is all a material distraction...

They are material shitholes so what????

Competent people could go in there and straighten them out in a short time.... it would not even be hard...

Look who you are with on this, you are riding with Paul Ryan here who wants to see the world as one big soup kitchen you can get a photo op at ... noooo thanks!

John said...

Matt,

Do you honestly think a country like Haiti, with its unimaginably awful history, which includes slavery, wars against the three most powerful empires (French, Spanish, British), US-backed Papa Doc and Baby Doc Duvalier who robbed the country dry, numerous US interventions to overthrow the democratically elected government, and a thousand and one other awful things, is a country ripe for success? Haiti has serious economic and political issues that no amount of material systems competence is going to fix. If Washington keeps overthrowing its democratically elected leaders and installing criminal psychopaths who will then loot the country and run the country into the ground, material systems competence isn't an issue, least of all because they will have fled.

That damn fool Trump forgets, if he ever knew, that Norway was the poorest and most backward country in Europe a mere hundred years ago because it had nothing, and if any Norwegians tried to emigrate to the US they wouldn't have been welcomed in warmly. Benjamin Franklin couldn't even be bothered to name Norwegians on his list of undesirable Europeans, which included "swarthy Germans and Swedes".

Like Ireland, Noway had enough potatoes to just about keep the population alive. But miracle of miracles it stumbles upon absolutely enormous oil fields, and now they're the richest country by GDP per capita in Europe. Up until then, they were considered Scandinavian hillbillies, worse even than the "swarthy Swedes", although I must say I've never seen a "swarthy Swede", so I don't know what Franklin was smoking. Even now, most people would be hard put to name three famous Norwegians, yet there are very few countries as economically successful as Norway.

John said...

Tom,

That's an interesting geopolitical angle. The British had been kicked out less than a hundred years ago, and so were hoping for a way back into the US mainland. Any references on that?

Another nail in the coffin of the civil war being solely a war about the morality of slavery. I don't doubt that slavery was a complementary factor but it was just one of many, and perhaps the least important of all.

Tom Hickey said...

Competent people could go in there and straighten them out in a short time.... it would not even be hard...

But, but, but — who is going to "pay for" it? :o

Tom Hickey said...

That's an interesting geopolitical angle. The British had been kicked out less than a hundred years ago, and so were hoping for a way back into the US mainland. Any references on that?

Not original with me. I have seen several references to it in the past, but I don't have any in my file.

Here is something I dredged up quickly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_and_the_American_Civil_War

Matt Franko said...

John, well yes right but Trump is yugely materialistic... so his eyeballs are going to be attracted to a Norway today as an example of 'winning!' "great!', etc... rather than the shithole Haiti... he is repulsed by the sight of a Haiti or any of the other current shitholes... its just the way it is..

If you look up 'materialistic' in the dictionary, Trump's picture is there... this should not be news to anybody...

What the left has to realize if they want to get what material results they want out of Trump is they should start to point out US failing in material terms and then challenge Trump to get it fixed.. but they should not put themselves up to replace him as the left is manifestly incompetent in material systems...

Those guys will then do anything short of killing themselves to get the material results... take it back some may actually end up killing themselves...

to get to Trump you dont say "you have golf courses and meanwhile people are starving in the shitholes!" or "saying Haiti is a shithole is mean!" some other womanish lefty BS, you point out to Trump that his golf courses have fungus on the greens and cigarette butts laying on the ground all around the clubhouse, spilled sticky soft drink residue on the seats of the golf carts, etc... he will lose his f-ing mind and sacrifice his 3rd marriage if he has to in order to see it all fixed...

bottom line as I read it, is that it seems we are going to have to really master these material systems before we can get to the more glorious matters... so we need better people in these material systems positions... we are improperly getting unqualified untrained incompetent morons instead for various reasons...

so this is frustrating to watch..

but that said, as Paul wrote: "the day of the Lord is as a thief in the night -- thus is it coming!
3 Now whenever they may be saying "Peace and security," then extermination is standing by them unawares" 1 Thess

imo the road to mankind being able to attest to this eventual condition of "peace and security" runs thru mastery of our material systems as base or earthly as it may appear... we may wish we could just fast forward over this step but I'm afraid its not going to happen...

there is actually a group of economists calling themselves "Economists for Peace and Security" or something like that so you can see us at least trying to get there.... probably all material idiots so they get nowhere...

so we have to get there eventually... i think we (the few of us) have been given some key knowledge of a big part of how to accomplish these material outcomes (at least faster) where there would be a general attest to "peace and security" but we have been given no authority...

so this is again frustrating... and then these "coins" or blockchain type things are starting to look interesting at the same time too... there is no authority behind any of those things either...

Noah Way said...

They can NEVER be rich enough. At least financially, which is apparently their only measure.

Tom Hickey said...

In their minds, everything is a zero-sum game.

If I don't take it, someone else will.

Matt Franko said...

"which is apparently their only measure."

There is a quality aspect to it also.. its quantity and quality...

'shithole' metaphor for low quality....