The Costa Rica-Nicaragua tension

Authors:
Luis Alberto López Rafaschieri and José Alberto López Rafaschieri
www.morochos.net

Beyond the cartographic considerations that gave rise to the boundary problem between Nicaragua and Costa Rica, it calls our attention the aggressiveness of the current Nicaraguan president to discuss the matter.

Daniel Ortega has made the difference in the current dispute, because although this conflict comes from long ago, previous Nicaraguan governments had addressed it in a more diplomatic way, obtaining very good results with this attitude. In fact, in 2009, the International Court of Justice recognized that the sovereignty of that territory rightfully belongs to Nicaragua.

There was no need to threaten war against a country that does not even have an army. In addition, the mobilization of troops by a government drowned in a terrible budget deficit, and with a very low risk of aggression, is an act extremely difficult to justify.

Everything seems to be more of what we are used to seeing on the extremists in the region: Correa responded with military threats to his problems with Uribe, Chavez has also warned to start a war against the Neogranadine country several times, Ortega himself wanted to restore Manuel Zelaya to power by way of force, and now shows his fists to Costa Rica. It is as if those who direct the diplomacy of the ALBA countries need to maintain external tensions to distract their countrymen from the serious problems that, internally, the revolutionary governments have not solved.

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U.S. legislative elections, Chomsky and Stiglitz

Authors:
José Alberto López Rafaschieri and Luis Alberto López Rafaschieri
www.morochos.net

In the November 2 elections, Americans voted to choose members of Congress, among other authorities. Contrary to what has been happening since 2006, this time the Republicans were favored by the electorate, taking control of the legislature from Democrats and simultaneously marking the relaunching of the neo-conservative politics in this country.

But, why is important the strengthening of the U.S. rightist faction in the last election? Well, among the many interpretations that this vote could have, we would not want to miss that, because of the 2008-2010 financial crisis, social scientists of the likes of Noam Chomsky and Joseph Stiglitz warned the end of the influence of the traditional political-economic ideologies to begin an era where the more progressive doctrines would dominate the electoral environment, including in the United States.

And that's where the Nov. 2 election appears on the scene, refuting the hypothesis of such thinkers, in the sense that when American voters decide to give the majority of the legislature to the Republicans, the last thing that is happening is that the American political system is becoming an archetype of the international left because of the global recession. Ie, after the financial crisis of 2008-2010, the American people chose to transfer the Congress from the moderate right of the Democratic Party to the purist right of the Republican Party. Indeed there was an ideological shift, but toward neoconservatism, very different from that anticipated by Chomsky and Stiglitz.

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Shock measures a la Cubana

Authors:
Luis Alberto López Rafaschieri and José Alberto López Rafaschieri
www.morochos.net

When Fernando de la Rua in Argentina proposed an agenda of fiscal discipline and privatizations that copied the IMF's recipe, several leftist sympathizers in Latin America had to be hospitalized due to sudden heart diseases. Ironically, neither in the Domingo Cavallo's Argentina, nor in the current indebted Greece, the IMF technocrats came up with an economic program as ruthless as the one that the Cuban government has been pursuing.

With words similar to that of Milton Friedman, the Cuban regime is now talking about the need to eliminate "unreasonable expenses", but prefers an economic policy that would embarrass even the father of neoliberalism. 10% of the Cuban labor force was fired from its state employment as a saving measure and thrown into the streets to survive at its own, without social security, fixed income or solid legal guarantees to start its own business. 500 thousand human beings who are also only allowed to open small hair salons or mobile food sales, which means that a whole mass of people will start, at the same time, identical businesses to compete savagely in an archaic market with very little money movement.

To make matters worse, as these people have been working during years for a Marxist bureaucracy, they do not have the preparation or experience needed to succeed in private businesses.

As if it was not enough, these new local micro entrepreneurs must cope with the giants that come from outside the country, because Cuba is also privatizing several sectors of its economy into the hands of international private capital, with the hope to generate the development that the communist government was never able to materialize.

And like most governments looking for help of the International Monetary Fund, Cuba is forced to practice emergency measures once it is in the brink of a more extreme economic disaster, resulting in traumatic adjustments.

We can add the words humanism, socialism or global warming, which combine better with a Leninist propaganda, but economically, what Castro is doing is a grip so cruel that we do not remember having seen something similar in any of the IMF's bailouts.

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Venezuela: Estimate of 2010-III GDP growth

Authors:
José Alberto López Rafaschieri and Luis Alberto López Rafaschieri
www.morochos.net

The Venezuelan economy would have grown -1.4% during the third quarter of 2010, compared to the same period last year.

This quarter was boosted by a bit lower inflation and the electoral spending of the parliamentary elections, but the weakening of the Venezuelan middle class -as consumer and merchant- continues to be reflected in the general state of the economy.

If our figures are correct, this would represent the sixth consecutive quarter of economic contraction in Venezuela, i.e., 18 uninterrupted months of revolutionary recession. Which also means that Venezuela is only two additional quarters of decline from an economic depression. Reality should not surprise anyone, given the socialist policies Chavez has implemented despite the lessons of history.

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Polls for Lima's mayoral election

Authors:
Luis Alberto López Rafaschieri and José Alberto López Rafaschieri
www.morochos.net

On October 3, Lima residents will vote to choose a new mayor. According to Ipsos-Apoyo, voting intentions are Susana Villaran 42% and Lourdes Flores 28%. Other candidates appear with little chance of winning in this study.

Villaran is from the left, from the Fuerza Social party, but she says not to share the ideas of radical leftism on the grounds that the modern left is represented by Bachelet, Lula and Mujica.

For her part, Flores is from the Unidad Nacional party, centrist, representatives of Christian democracy in Peru.

Whoever wins will replace the current mayor, Luis Castañeda Lossio, from the Solidaridad Nacional party, also centrist.

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The Fidel Castro we didn't know

Authors:
José Alberto López Rafaschieri and Luis Alberto López Rafaschieri
www.morochos.net

In 1962, Fidel Castro threatened the U.S. with nuclear missiles, however, in the XXI century, the former Cuban dictator seems to prefer to launch rockets against other targets, this time directed at Latin American leftist ideology, of which himself was a notorious representative.

"The Cuban model doesn't even work", echoed last week across the international press. Normally someone would hear this phrase and would think it is from a speech by Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, but no, not even are words from a neo-conservative Republican, they belong to the commander of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, no more and no less.

For less counter-revolutionary phrases than this, Castro sent to jail dozens of people, many were shot and several others were beaten, tortured, or lynched. Notwithstanding, Castro now says something similar and his words receive the respect of all the spokesmen of the revolution, and there is no one who dares to imprison him. A fact that, paradoxically, is in agreement with the sentence Fidel said about the Cuban model, since it is also an example of the double standard of Castro's socialism.

Amazingly, Castro spoke these words when the world is just emerging from the financial crisis that many believed would destroy capitalism, and less than 20 days before the parliamentary elections in Venezuela, where his main wannabe, Hugo Chavez, will face a tough fight for the control of the legislature.

This year, Fidel has made several controversial comments. Initially, he said that socialism and communism are the same, then admitted that he made a mistake by brutally persecuting homosexuals (they were imprisoned and made to work in concentration camps), then he called for respect for the Israeli people, and now claims that the Cuban political-economic model, that that the Latin American left presented as an unparalleled wonder, is not adequate to generate social welfare even in Cuba, which debunks some of the ideological tenets of radical leftism both in and outside Latin America.

They said the poverty in Cuba was the product of the U.S. trade embargo, but Fidel's words show he's aware that the real culprit is the socialist model that he copied from the Soviet Union.

Years ago, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, in his article "The Fidel Castro I know," spoke about the same legendary leader who was promoted by the Cuban Revolution's propaganda. But the current is a more real character, the Fidel Castro we didn't know.

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Venezuela: A less rigid exchange rate regime?

Authors:
Luis Alberto López Rafaschieri and José Alberto López Rafaschieri
www.morochos.net

Since chavistas removed, in May, the way to buy dollars through stock brokers, we've heard rumors that Chavez would relax currency controls due to the upcoming election and the shortages of certain food items. But given the realities described below, we are inclined to think the government has in mind something different.

The exchange rate controls are for chavismo a domination mechanism, perfect to reward allies and punish enemies. Plus, it's wonderfully useful to weaken the big companies that have not been socialized.

Moreover, Chavez don't has the same amount of international reserves than before, which, among other things, prevent the government from burning dollars, as in the past years, through ridiculous semiannual bond issues -purchased with bolivares but sold for foreign currencies-.

We must also take into account the relationship between some chavista businessmen and the subsidized dollars, of which there is no need to say much...

Additionally, it's necessary to talk about the Cubans in Venezuela. We should recall that the free exchange of foreign currency does not exist in Cuba, the country that supply the chavismo's most important advisors and Hugo Chavez's ideological inspiration. On the island of Castro, the control over the currency is used as a method of subjection and economic decisions are based in primitive socialist notions, according to which, if paralyzing controls are imposed on the private sector, the fullness of economic anomalies are corrected. Ideas that have found influential fans in Venezuela.

All of which leads us to conclude that it is quite difficult that Chavez will soften his exchange rate policy in the near future. In fact, this scenario seems unlikely before, after the September election, or even in the next two years.

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