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Thursday, March 26, 2009

Don Williams on the situation in Argentina

Don Williams said...

Ferfal, some info:

1) This source indicates that Argentina has one of the most inequitable distributions
of income in the world --although the USA is not all that great either:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gini_Coefficient_World_Human_Development_Report_2007-2008.png

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient#Correlation_with_per-capita_GDP

(Data is from UN statistic report)

2) This Report by the UK's Economic Intelligence Unit lists Argentina as one of the countries most prone to social unrest due to worsening economic conditions:

http://a330.g.akamai.net/7/330/25828/20090318195802/graphics.eiu.com/specialReport/manning_the_barricades.pdf

3) This report indicates that Argentina will see significantly worse conditions in the Third quarter of 2009--
and says that is why Kircher is trying to move the elections up to June from October.

http://www.rgemonitor.com/latam-monitor/256076/is_multiple_equilibria_possible_in_argentina

a) While the report is critical of past Kirchner policies, note that the US Government's bailout
of the our banks is leading to it borrowing heavily --and hence pulling capital away from other
countries.
b) Also, prices for export commodities are falling worldwide because of the bad global economy.

4) Here in the USA, tent cities have sprung up in some of the hard-hit areas like California:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aKqkjyYkFN8w&refer=worldwide


Thanks Don for ruining my day. :)

Just kidding. Yes, the situation here is bad, the volatile social situation can be seen on the streets and it's been growing for a couple years now.

We never did get over the 2001, in spite of the BS INDEC and IMF reports.

Thanks for the links.

FerFAL

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hello,

I just wanted to add a little insight to the story on the so-called tent cities in California. I have lived in Sacramento, CA for most of my life and the these camps did not just spring up overnight like the media would have you believe. There have been homeless camps for as long as I can remember. I spoke with some friends and the one camp in particular has been there since the Great Depression. Apparently, it was one of the original hobo camps in Sacramento. Today, most of the people in there are homeless bums that simply choose to live there.

There has been in substantial increase of people that have moved in due to loss of jobs and such, but it has been greatly exaggerated by the media to make the economy look worse than it really is.

I just wanted to make this distinction because I think it is important to know.

Thanks for the great blog,

-J