CHAFLANESCUS

Ana Matilde Gomez: The Indictment


By: Felipe Argote

This area of analysis and theorizing opinion can not be a mere spectator when is in danger democratic stability. I remember when I was a young child the confrontation between Max del Valle and Marco Aurelio Robles. They walk by in the streets outside the legislative palace in the chest wearing a tricolor ribbon that they said credited as the presidents of the Republic. One recognized by the National Guard and the other by an assembly of deputies from which a couple of political parties of the ruling coalition defected to the opposition and deposed the president to put the vice president. The Panamanian citizenship, with its Caribbean soul that always gets from his misfortune a piece of jocularity, saw in the street a third president. He was the popular Chaflán, a urban clown always with his young buddy, the child Roberto Duran who after many years would be the word champion “Mano de Piedra Durán”, developing comedy acts in the middle of the streets. Their jokes and dancing occurrences were paid by the people with a lot of applause and a few coins. Well at that time Chaflán also walked with a tricolor ribbon in the chest in the tumult of the troubled city, and the crowd roared with laughter.

Forty years since presidential crisis and the political class has learned nothing. Now the president puts his chips on the Supreme Court against the grain of the views of civil society. Then he used them to separate the nation's Attorney General, Ana Matilde Gomez. But what were the reasons claimed by them to separate the general attorney of the nation?

Well. In 2005 a man named Miguel Zambrano resident of La Chorrera, asked Archimedes Saez, the district attorney, not to move his daughter from prison of Chorrera to the women's prison in the city, since she had a newborn daughter. The prosecutor requested and obtained from Zambrano $600 for the favor. He then asked for two thousand U.S. dollars in exchange for get her freedom. Mr. Zambrano in a very brave filed a complaint against the prosecutor Sáez.

Attorney Luis Martinez, who received the complaint, communicated Zambrano with the intermediary of Saez and puts the speaker on his phone. This mechanism then confirmed that the prosecutor Sáez asked for the two thousand. Then it is mounted a cover operation with marked bills and proved that the attorney actually received the money.

Sáez subsequently caught in fragrant with the marked money charged The General Attorney Ana Matilde because he said they intervene illegally his phone conversation. This complaint is what the Supreme Court use as a reason to dismiss the Attorney General's Ana Matilde Gómez.

We could say that this is a clear message that no one dares to pursue the corrupt because you can afford very expensive damages, but this is more serious. It is obvious that the reason for the dismissal of Matilde Gomez is farfetched and that the new judges have acted with unusual speed, it shows that the objective is to control all institutions of the state at any price, with independence of public opinion and disrespect for the intelligence of the citizens.

The separation was decided on Thursday, while Martinelli and his vice president to whom the former Varella not left her side, perhaps because he already knows the story of Max Del Valle and Marcos Robles, were both on travel. Although both are out of the country, a statement released by the Cabinet Council appointed Giuseppe Bonissi as new General Attorney. Or they knew the outcome of the decision of the court before the judges voted or the Cabinet Council meets on a virtual zone or as someone said by blackberry.

Today, the country wakes up with three General Attorneys: Ana Matilde Gomez, Giuseppe Bonissi and Luis Martinez, appointed as deputy attorney by Ana Matilde Gomez.

Too bad Chaflán is not with us anymore; although the situation is so serious that it might not even lead to such occurrences I will say… chaflanescus.

DANCING WITH BILLION

By: Felipe Argote

The seventies of last century was a time of great events, changes and especially of political crisis. The defeat of the U.S. Army in Vietnam, the large amount of military government in Latin-America, the elimination of the gold dollar standard and the oil crisis. But it was also the decade of the so-called dance of the millions. How it started and which was the corollary of this situation is what we will try to convey.

In the early sixties there were seven oil companies that operated as a cartel that controlled the oil market by imposing the sales price as much as the price paid to the oil countries. In 1960 the cartel known as the "Seven Sisters" decided to reduce oil prices that were paid to producer countries. It was the U.S. Esso, the Shell of the Netherlands, the English British Petroleum, Exxon Mobil from U.S., Chevron from the U.S. Gulf and Texaco of the United States.

In order to have greater bargaining power and seek to raise the prices they received for their oil, a group of these countries form the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). The founders were Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait and Venezuela.

Thirteen years later, On October 6 1973, Syria, Egypt, Jordan and Iraq attacked Israel's positions. This conflict ended with the occupation by Israel of much of the territories of the attacking countries. This is called the Yum Kippur War.

As part of its strategy, the Arab countries declared an oil embargo on countries that collaborated with Israel in the war. Suspended the sale to the U.S. and Holland, South Africa and Rhodesia. Then decide to cut production to reduce supply and raise the price of crude. This rise the barrel from $ 3 to $ 3.65. This embargo as may be gathered includes six of the Seven Sisters oil cartel with the sole exception of the British Petroleum as England was impartial in the conflict. England and France and decided to stop selling weapons to both sides of the conflict.

It was a period of great tension. United States was losing the war in Vietnam but also faced the greatest mobilization of domestic sectors against the war and its economy was deteriorating rapidly. Richard Nixon had unilaterally suspended the Bretton Woods agreement that established the relationship since 1944 as an international standard gold dollar. U.S. refused to exchange dollars from European countries for gold. There was not the best time to put the country into a new armed conflict despite the weakness of the Arab army against the United States. After various negotiations, the embargo is lifted on 17 March 1974. Oil prices had quadrupled reaching $ 12 a barrel.

This high increase in oil prices led to an influx of cash into the oil countries, underdeveloped countries in general. These countries did not have the financial or economic structure capable of handling large flows they received. They did not have banks that may put these savings in loans to the productive sectors, so that the flow bounces largely to banks in developed countries. These banks were so full of petrodollars then at one point has no one to lend. The American CITIBANK saw the exit to the liquidity crisis on these lapidary words: states do not go bankrupt.

This begins the dance of the millions. Millions of dollars of credit to third world countries, without control, without discretion and without the hope of being paid the agreed deadline. Only one way to put the money that exceeded the possibilities of large banks. So that money helps to feed the corrupt civilian governments first and then a military dictatorships that saw the chance to manage these credits by their own. Thus nourished most Latin American dictatorships of the left-right and populist. He fell to the easy money green like a green field scrum vegetables. Vortex which then began soliciting loans and loans to pay interest, then pay the interest on loans for more capital. Billions of dollars squandered on:

• Weapons

• Consumption

• Corruption

• Adventures of private financial

Type financial institutions were created where the state COFINA a shareholding. So an investor sought and obtained funding from the state financial institution for a project. The state became a partner of the investor as if the business was good dividends earned status but was wrong and broke the state lost their investment because more was a shareholder in the project. Many failed and its failure led the state capital.

Part of investors and to the high volatility of dictatorships and countries plagued by both political and social instability but preferred funding request to divert more stable countries, ie developed countries, which bounced back petrodollars to countries the first world.

As the Ponzi pyramid, this dance of the millions ended when Mexico informed the financial institutions could not pay their overdue balances. This happened in 1982. From the moment you close the period of the dance of the millions and opens the debt crisis, the so-called lost decade.

Now, after nearly sixty years after the birth of OPEC, the Financial Times, the prestigious international business newspaper, has submitted the list of new seven sisters, these are the seven most powerful state oil companies from countries not members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), better known as the club of rich countries. These state companies are: Arampco Saudi Gazrom Russia, CNPC of China, NIOC of Iran, PDSA of Venezuela, Brazil's Petrobras and Petronas of Malaysia.

FINANCIAL FRAUD


By: Felipe Argote

Every time I read about efficient markets, this theory based on the Austrian school of economics which assumes that people generally make wright decisions, I don’t have to see Chris Rock to laugh.

A few months ago, at the time David Murcia was take prisoner for their fraud pyramid, I was chatting with some friends. In the middle of the night two of them knowing my training, not asked me for advice but advised me to join them in an adventure that was infallible. Invest a few dollars and get the double in less than six months. A friend had invited them to a meeting where a financial expert will explain and then sold participation certificates. In trying to persuade them that there was not currently a financial transaction with that profit unless they surrendered both drug trafficking, challenged me with an innocent smile that investments were not made in Panama, that the cash were delivered to New York where they quickly reproduced as safe investments by the stock market buying and selling shares. There was no danger and that in United States there were many checks against fraud. A little more impatient assured that this was indeed a fraud and there were no guarantees that were true. They presented the example of a very serious friend who had entered the business with five thousand dollars a month ago and had received a thousand dollars of interest on his hands. In seeking to renew its approach as naive as his aide received 20% of his own money but the remaining 80% was in other hands, they bothered with mea if I were responsible for trying to kill their dream. Seeing them again a few months after they never returned to the subject, so I concluded that they were actually cheated and sorry to say ... you were right.

Not only is the case of Murcia, nor is it as many think the scams are run ignorant low academic profile. On the contrary, this fraud is repeated since the famous case of Charles Ponzi, an Italian immigrant who is granted the creation of so-called pyramids in 1919 in New York. Charles Ponzi was receiving money from investors and paid a 50% interest in 45 days. This led to almost nothing, as Charles had no wealth at the beginning, came less than a month to accumulate $ 5,000 for small investors to those who actually paid 50% interest in the term agreed, everything from new investors attracted excited by the pioneer investors. Only in May he had half a million and in July went to $ 9 million. In August, the business collapsed with heavy losses of new investors and those who have reinvested their profits. Surely not the first time applied the system; the same Ponzi confessed that he had already practiced in Canada ten years earlier.

I think people generally make decisions based on the options they have in front and in order to maximize their utility be persuaded that all is well because they wanted it that way. If not, how it is understood that after all the atrocities that made the Catholic church during the Inquisition and the colonization yet most people in this area of the planet to remain member of the catholic church.

Bernard Madoff, nearly 90 years later, developed the same pattern, only instead of promising 50% in 45 days, he paid 15% annually which is only twice the market average. So his pyramid does not last months, but last almost forty years in collapse. Because the scheme is very simple, you just have to ensure the entry of new investors to pay as much money as necessary to cover the earnings of those who came before. It's like the partnership scheme of social insurance. The new contributors pay the retirement of those who came before with the difference that those who enter are paying a portion and retirees that the pyramid and other insurance should be extended to new employees in a growing economy. Madoff was one of the most respected financial analysts to the point he was director of NASDAQ, which was one of its drivers.

But is not unlikely that a fraud of fifty billion dollars including as victims Steven Spielberg, the heiress L'Oreal, the team New York Mets, Santander Bank, BBVA and HSBC can last forty years? Well it did until it Madoff called to his luxury apartment in New York two of its senior managers of Madoff Investment Advisory Company to confess that he could not pay investors a commitment to some 7,000 million dollars. He said that figures for the investment company was a fraud and that his pyramid scheme had not entered enough new investors. That it was all a fraud. The managers called the police. Their names: Andrew and Mark Madoff, his own sons. This was in December 2008.

A few months later, in February 2009 Sir Allen Stanford, a Texan knighted by the Queen of England three years earlier, was charged with fraud. Stanford was the owner of the Stanford International Bank based in Antigua. Its advisory council was formed by Luis Gusti, former president of Petroleos de Venezuela, Peter Romero, former U.S. ambassador to Ecuador, Adolf Ogi, former Swiss President, Jorge Castaneda, former foreign minister of Mexico, Alfredo Arizaga, former Ecuador's finance minister and Lee Brown, former mayor of Houston. The pattern was the same as Fonzi, Madoff and Murcia, new investors get their money to pay the profits above 10% which yielded his investment company. According to Forbes magazine, Stanford was on number 205 among the richest in the world.

David Murcia, a cameraman living in a fourth category hotel, paying $ 7 per night in exchange for advertising on a Catholic radio in less than five years becomes a billionaire, taking the massive savings of people in Colombia , Ecuador, Venezuela and Panama. Paid between 70 and 150 percent interest in six months. He had survive longer if the authorities did not charges him of illegal money collector, just because she lacked the necessary permits to recover investment as if it were the respected Madoff and Stanford.

We know how to apply the system and survives whenever you count on new depositors with enough savings to cover the interest of the first, but as Madoff and Stanford developed a classic collection of money Murcia, in my opinion was more creative and had the complicity of many other businesses, but their high interest rates would last much less and would cause even greater disasters caused because unlike Madoff and Stanford to swipe some of the capital to millionaires and billionaires, Murcia is the mostly plucked to low and middle income people. When the Colombian government closed DMG, tens of thousands of people took to demand the return of their savings. Murcia, unlike Madoff and Stanford gave them capital in exchange for a card they could use to buy in any store or Pharmacy or any other businesses that had agreed with the scammer to accept their cards. After six months the buyer of the card, many of whom had spent their own money by using pre-paid card, received from 70% to 150% of their initial investment. Of course if you buy a hundred dollar card and you are of low income you will spent all the card in days after selling your land, your house, your car and borrow at lower interest and you have many cards you can not spend it and decide later use, but the pyramid fell before spending it and nobody will accept the cards anymore.

When officials investigated the company that supposedly verified accounting Madoff Investment, a company of fifty billion dollars, it was found that only three people, one of which was seventy years old and one was his secretary. When the researchers who analyzed the investment sought Stanford International, found he alone had access Stanford and his high school friend James Davis.

It is likely that if not stopped the operation of Murcia have happened as the greatest tragedy in Albania in 1996 and 1997. In this country, located in southeast Europe, in 1996 two companies Xapheri and Populli capture two million depositors in a country of 3 million and half people. The government did not get into the issue, the whole dumb sold or slaughtered their livestock, liquidating real estate, cars, and savings and invested in the pyramids. When the scheme collapses this level of rioting was the tens of thousands who had lost everything, then left the army to control the situation which resulted in more than two thousand dead, the fall of President Berisha and the country depleted and plunged into the deepest misery. There were savings in the pyramids for an amount almost half the GDP of Albania.

HAITI: FROM THIRD WORLD TO FIFTH HELL

By: Felipe Argote

The Arawaks, the Tahini and some other Indian groups moved free at the island called La Española when Christopher Columbus arrived from Puerto Palos in 1942. He thought he had reach some island close to India where he intended to buy spices in such demand in Europe that were worth the journey of discovery forn the Spanish crown. Very soon these aboriginal groups had disappeared product of the exploitation of the Spanish who enslaved them for gold and then in the sugar plantations by the large number of diseases that Europeans led to what the natives did not have antibodies.

Then it began the forced immigration into slavery of thousands of black people from Africa. A hundred years after Columbus arrived; France takes over the western part of the island and filled it with slaves. There where a ratio of 20 slaves to one white. Forced them to work to produce sugar in large plantations where the slaves had an average life of five years from the time of entering into plantations by the brutal working conditions.

In 1801 Mackandall, a slave who was maimed by a sugar mill in a plantation started the uprising of black slaves. After many victories he was arrested and taken to the square to be burned alive in the presence of thousands of slaves taken there on purpose to serve as a warning. But shortly before burning Mackandall, as claimed in mind the thousands of slaves, he become a butterfly. Even today many butterflies are Mackandall in Haiti and that he, despite his death, was in all the successive uprisings of slaves. Then Boukman, a Jamaican, met a group of runaway slaves who escaped from the thousands of plantations is declared leader of the revolt against slavery after the voodoo ceremony of Bois Caiman, and finally beheaded by the frenchs. It was then followed in leadership by one of the generals, Francois Toussaint Louverture, the grandson of a slave brought from what is now the little known Republic of Benin in West Africa, born on a plantation and he learned to read and write and knew a lot of medicinal plants. In 1793 he proclaimed the fight against slavery that had been abolished by the French revolution but not in its colonies. His proclamation read:

Brothers and friends: I Toussaint Louverture, perhaps the knowledge of my name have come to you. I started the revenge of my race. I want the freedom and equality prevails in Santo Domingo. Work there. Unite, brothers, and fight with me for the same cause. I uproot the tree of slavery.

Your humble and obedient servant, Toussaint Louverture, General of the armies of the king, for the public good.

This occurs in a time of confrontation of different social groups: The grand blanc, the petit blanc, the mulattos, the blacks slaves and the maroons. The day of the proclamation of Toussaint, Commissioner of the French Republic to Haiti Sonthonax declared free the slaves and called them to face the white landowners who wanted to proclaim the independence of the island with the support of England. Six months later the French Constituent Assembly ratified the abolition of slavery. But with the arrival of Napoleon Bonaparte years after he tried to reinsert the slave system on the island so he sent in 1801 25,000 soldiers who were repelled by an army of 51,000 of Louverture for two years. With the ruse of wanting to negotiate an agreement the French held captive to Louverture and is sent to a cell in northern France where he died of starvation. But Napoleon could not recover the island. One of the closest general of Louverture, Jean Jack Desalines not only defeats militarily the French at the Battle of Vertieres in 1804 but also declared the independence of the island of Santo Domingo and resumes its original name, Haiti. It is the first and only case in history where a slave revolt triumphed after Spartacus in Rome 100 years before Christ; although the latter was finally defeated in contrast to Haiti that became the second nation to achieve independence in America and the first in the world that slaves built a country.

However, as a country governed and populated by blacks at 95% the country was not recognized as fast as it was the United States. Moreover, France recognizes Haitian independence in 1826, 22 years later, in exchange for recognition of compensation of 150 million gold francs. According to the great Uruguayan writer Eduardo Hughes Galeano, it is equivalent today of $ 21.700 million. They complete payment in 1938. According to the World Bank the GDP income per capita in Haiti is $500 per year or less than $42 per month.

The new rulers could not be worse than those who enslaved them but were not much better than the rulers of the other American countries. Most of the post-independence rulers proclaimed themselves emperors and kings. Desalines proclaimed himself emperor after independence. One of his successors after his death declared himself King Henri Christophe and invented a court of 4 princes, 8 dukes, 22 counts, 37 barons and 14 gentlemen. At the end of his mandate he killed himself and his son was was murdered by the mob that lynched him to eliminate the throne. Then the self-declared king Faustino I ruled for twelve years. In 1915 Haiti was occupied by the United States only as part of their military strategy. They left the country just as impoverished as they found it almost 20 years later. In 1957 the power is given to Francois Duvalier, known as Papa Doc, the son of immigrants from Martinique, supported by the weapons given by the U.S. Army under the complacent gaze of the outside world. Four years after Duvalier develops an election where the electoral court declared Duvalier took a total of 1,320,000 votes in favor and not a single dissenting vote. Then he was declared president for life and appointed his son Jean Claude as his successor at the approach of death. Jean Claude Duvalier called Baby Doc took the government. He governs at the age of 19 years, from 1971 to 1986, until it is overthrown and accomplished exile under French protection it receives in its territory with all the guarantees of a ruler.

Then military coups happen until a Catholic priest named Jean-Bertrand Aristide is Haiti's democratically elected president in 1990 only to be ousted a year later and then reinstated in the presidential chair by a U.S. invasion shortly before the expiry of his term. Again in a very low voting turnout (less than 10% of the population eligible to vote) is re-elected Aristide. It felt different than his first rule. At this moment he wanted to become the populist leader who expected much of the population that elected him the first time and that at least they were confused to see that Aristide was placed on the presidential chair for a U.S. invasion, those who had sustained the hated Duvalier and their paramilitary gangs called Tonton Macoutes, the Haitian term bogeyman with which to frighten children. Aristide left turn and got very close to Chavez and Cuba so it is deposed by a military coup backed by France and the United States and sent to South Africa. Haiti is currently governed by Rene Preval who was elected president in 2006. Preval was mate Bernard Aristide but turned away from him after the last campaign.

New elections should be in February this year but by conditions on which the country is after the largest earthquake in the Caribbean in the last 200 years is possible to be postponed. You can see that to move from third world to fifth hell took many centuries.

THE SUBWAY

By: Felipe Argote

Like most Panamanians I am an expert in common sense. Also on the subject of transport, without detracting from the engineer Robert Roy and all those who are better educated in this discipline. In my view the center of gravity of the problem of transportation in Panama is the method of piecework. This method means that bus drivers must complete an amount of money to be paid on the owner of the bus and then cover their own costs for gasoline, bus washing and salary of the secretary or other expenses then what remains is his profit of the day. This makes they drive like crazy hornbills for the passengers with danger of dead for passengers by and passengers. In addition to these, drivers suffer extreme exploitation because they don’t have social security, vacations or retirement.

The elimination of this system transforming drivers to employees is clearly desirable. Having said the above I say that not so any change will solve the problem of thousands of workers who must get up at 4 o´clock in the morning to catch a bus beyond the city periphery to arrive on time for their job and then have to travel like sardines to departure time to get home no earlier than 8 at night.

Both the previous and the current government response were creating a new bus system. The government of Martin Torrijos was pushing for the purchase of new buses by the government to put up for tender the administration of these buses. Additionally set the replacement of current Red Devils by paying $ 25,000 each bus owner to remove the system unit. The new government is proposing something very similar but unlike the previous government, buses are owned by the concessionaire, not the state.

On the other side there is the subway, a massive mobilization of passengers who would be the backbone of the new proposal. The metro bus is a ready solution while the new metro system Martinelli's government during his election campaign promised to have in operation in just three years.

I find it totally misconceived the extent of the metro bus. I think buses should not only be owned by the state but also its operation, as in most modern cities. For this to be effective as well and include in the solution the problem of mobilizing students who should get home at 10:00 at night because they pay half fares so they are now restricted from entering the bus until they business is the hornbills, or when they have mobilized most of the people who pay full fare. This system to be effective it must be subsidized by the state for elementary student’s free travel and high school pay half fares. If the operation is private, the state must grant to the owner of the concession which is expensive because not only subsidizes the cost but also the profit of the of the operator. In addition to the new bus plan will be owned by the concessionaire, giving great weight not only economic but political. If there is any dispute the operator is able to paralyze the country more effectively than the SUNTRACS and educators and doctors all together.

On the other hand the national government has announced that the metro is not longer the metro, it is now only the first step of the origtinal, and no longer comes from Tocumen and Mañanitas, where is most clear the problem of mobilizing thousands of workers that not enjoy quality of life because spend half of his day time riding a bus, because only the metro will only come from the area of The Andes to the city center.

This means that in addition to the great discomfort that will determine the construction of this system, the vast majority of residents on the outskirts which hopeful who dreamed of a mass transit system, would now know they are not in the project anymore because they will only travel inside the city Subway metro. I am not saying it's wrong that Metro gets to the Gran Terminal de Albrook, just seems to me that the government and its experts should think again. They should consider that the first phase of construction should begin from Chilibre or Mañanitas and leave people in minutes on the edge of town, perhaps in the Andes or the entrance to San Miguelito, where there could be a bus terminal that disperses people to different parts of downtown. The second stage would then be the best looking for publicity building in the downtown. This, in my point of view, would be the smartest decision, except for a better criterion.

NEOLIBERALISM II

THE WASHINGTON´S CONCENSUS

By: Felipe Argote

The Keynesian model came as a lifeline to the Great Depression of 1929. But neoliberalism, in contrast, had its entrance on the scene to organize what in fact had already been implemented by international financial and political organizations.

Very few would argue that the beginning of the implementation of the neoliberal model was in England with the coming of Margaret Thatcher called the Iron Lady and the English Conservative Party government in 1979, although since 1974 Milton Friedman had seeped through dictatorship Augusto Pinochet in Chile to influence the way the economy of this country was ruled. It was very useful to Pinochet and his followers because and the economic interests that had been left alone in the arena before the physical disappearance of the dictatorial regime critics.

Margaret Thatcher has a deeply conservative formation. During his first participation in an important position in 1971 during the Conservative government of Edward Health and acting as Secretary of State for Education and Science she eliminated the delivery of free milk to schoolchildren and pressed for a significant reduction in the education budget. In 1979 it became the first woman prime minister of England with a right-wing campaign. Its decision to implement a neoliberal model was subsequently named more political than economic. He was deeply opposed to any state social policy. That's why she eliminated taxes on big companies but raised the consumption tax taking it dramatically to 15%. The debt crisis of 1982 found her in political power and the deep crisis of the Keynesian model that had already been initiated since the late sixties but had deepened in the seventies like a glove. It is worth adding that the nickname of the Iron Lady was created by Red Star, a journal published by the ministry of defense of the Soviet Union, after a deeply anti-Soviet speech in which Thatcher complained that the Russians put their weapons before the butter while they, the British, put anything but the irons. But the term "Iron Lady" was very well received by the Thatcher, contrary to the intentions of the Russian government.

The debt crisis began in 1982 when Mexico reported that can not pay the balances due from foreign debt service. Given this, international financial institutions, especially the World Bank and International Monetary Fund begin to have a starring role in the crisis. It is feared that if Mexico is copied by a plural number of indebted countries, after they were flooded by uncontrolled lending by corrupt military dictatorships that has spent much of the carousing loans, embezzlement millionaires and disproportionate military budgets.

Margaret Thatcher joins their cause to the brand new U.S. president Ronald Reagan, a former actor in westerns movies and former governor of California. Reagan, like Thatcher, implements a policy of reducing taxes on corporations but, unlike Thatcher, Reagan developed an economic policy of higher government spending. In fact, the U.S. fiscal deficit doubled during his administration and public debt increased from 40% of GDP to 70% of GDP.

International financial institutions take the initiative for economic policy. These are limited to develop the attitude of the speculator in order to recover the huge debt of underdeveloped countries. Additionally due to the financial crisis that started in 1982 interest rates rise like fireworks.

International financial institutions (IFIs) that then cause the so-called structural adjustment plans. These plans aim to ensure that debtor countries can pay their overdue balances to it must first sell their fixed assets all companies starting with the disposal of the state.

Keep in mind that the world came from an economic model where the state had a high turnout. In Panama, for example, not only were state-owned enterprises as electricity and telephone, the state owned hotels like the Taboga, Cement Factory (Bayano), Air Panama, Chiriqui Citrus, large sugar mills, other entity. The same happened in other countries. Financial institutions "proposed" governments to sell enterprises to pay their debts. This of course will be accompanied by other measures such as reducing state payroll, tax increases and others, all with the primary objective of the debt. In exchange, financial institutions will deliver before the completion of each step of the agreement, a candy called fresh money. This is further debt, this time at high interest rates, so that governments do not fail and do not create new political crisis. These agreements called structural adjustment programs had as a format called letters of intent.

But much of the agreements with international financial institutions had the sin of illegality because no executive could commit to pass a law to transfer public enterprises to private enterprise. This is because a law would be necessary and this is unique to the legislature. Then they used the mechanism of the letters of intent. This was for the country's economy minister sent a letter corresponding to the World Bank or International Monetary Fund lists their intentions. This was enough for the IFIs, as long as there is a timetable and that this is fulfilled for every step of implementation was monitored and disbursed a sum of money into a loan. As can be seen as international banking co-administered states with successive governments. Despite this, or should say because of this, the debt of Latin American countries increased from 300 billions dollars in 1982 to 600 billions in 1997. The asset sale was not the only requirement. The opening of the market by removing restrictions on foreign investment and lower fees as well as raising other taxes was the requirements for obtaining fresh money. These measures were copied as a recipe from one country to another to the point that the Nobel Prize in Economics and World Bank Vice President Joseph Stiglitz wrote later that the World Bank only changed the name of the country in drafting the recommendations without sitting down to analyze the differences between each of them.

This process of structural adjustment began in 1982 but it was not until 1989 that these measures are systematized in the so-called Washington Consensus. This is what gives internal coherence to the new-old economic model whose roots are located in the Austrian Carl Menger shortly after the Austro-Hungarian Empire was defeated by the Prussian army at the Battle of Sadowa in 1866.

CAROLINA

By Felipe Argote

Before the arrival of Europeans North Carolina was populated by thousands of indigenous groups divided into the Cherokee tribe, the Tuscarora, the Cheraw, the Pamlico, the guardianship, the Waccamaw, the Catawba and other smaller groups.

Then came Spanish Lucas Vasquez de Villon trying to locate a passage to northern Mexico to reach the Spice Islands. Of course he had no idea that there existed a vast territory to the west, an area wider than mainland Europe to reach from the route of the Atlantic Ocean. In either case he settled in what is now North Carolina's the first European colonial settlement in what is now America, not counting for sure the earlier incursions of the Vikings before the arrival of Christopher Columbus. Vaquez Lucas established a settlement he called San Miguel de Guadalupe with short-lived as it was destroyed by indigenous groups.

Years later the Spanish captain Juan Pardo began an expedition to the land trying to add it to the colony of Florida. It lasted a year in the expedition in which were built six forts in the journey. A year after, the six forts were attacked by the warlike natives of the area to defend their territory killing all occupants except a small group including Juan Pardo who had already returned to Florida. Never again the Spanish tried to get again to what is now North Carolina.

In 1580 began the colonization by the British expedition led by Sir Walter Raleigh which established two colonies on the coast. Subsequently those colonies swept by the genuine owners of the tier, the Cherokees. However the attempt won him the territory was named Raleigh. In those moments Raleigh was still part of the province of Virginia, named on behalf of Virginia Dare, the first person born of English parents in America. Years after Sir Raleigh was beheaded in England on charges of treason to King Jacob I.

Carolina was named as such in memory of Charles I of England by his son Charles II. The province, now state, was originally populated by migrants from the northern Virginia seeking new land, but in 1710 was divided into North Carolina and South Carolina by political differences among the colonists. While this region was mainly populated by English and Scottish settlers in the east, in the west was mostly occupied by Irish and German. These different roots affected its political, economic and social status since the eighteenth century to the twentieth century. The east of the state was settled largely by immigrants from England and the Scottish Highlanders. The west was settled largely by Irish and German Protestants. This was decisive in their situation during the War of Independence of the United States because there were sporadic clashes between the English population more attached to England and the rest that didn’t want to remain as colony any more. In any case this was one of the first of the thirteen colonies that voted for independence from Britain in the Continental Congress that approved American independence.

During the civil war, the state of North Carolina joined the Confederate army for being essentially a slave  state. One-third of its inhabitants were slaves. No less than 125,000 joined the Confederate army soldiers including more than forty thousand died during the war.

It is a state where is more evident than in many other the variations on the political leanings of its members. We have said that the state is divided into distinct positions between east and west. While the independence war in the eastern sector of British descent were to be more conservative as they were to remain a colony of the West, descendants of Irish and Germans sided with the separatists. But during the Civil War the West more closely tied to agriculture and whose interests were tied to slavery were placed on the part of the Confederate army. In oposition of  what many people think, the Democratic Party represented the people who wanted slavery to stay, while Republicans were about to end slavery, they were the abolitionists. In fact once the United States Army left the state after the civil war Democrats regain political control. Then they lost to a coalition of the Republican Party with the populist party in 1894. The Democratic Party back to retrieve the state government in 1898 through a racist campaign whose slogan was by the "white supremacy". Was the time of the "solidly Democratic south" when this party represented the southern slavist rancid oligarchy. Democrats represented what the Republicans represent today: the most conservative and reactionary wing of American society. Who would have thought that this racist party brought to the presidency of the United States the first Afro-American more than a century later as the state has moved toward the Republican Party because they represent conservative mind today.

North Carolina also reflects the deep contradictions between sectors of American society today. While in the counties of Clay, Graham, Mitchell and Yancey sale of alcoholic beverages is prohibited and the offender can go with their bones to jail for a beer, at the same time this is one of the 12 states in the United States, where consumption of marijuana is permitted and possession of a cigarette of the drug and even smoke it is totally legal.

NEOLIBERALISM

By: Felipe Argote

To begin the description of the neoliberal model I must reiterate that there are so many number of economic trends that is very difficult to establish the boundaries that divide each one. By contrast, many economists are distanced in some subjects and then like asymptotes approach as either passed directly to the same ground in certain topics. It is therefore very likely that some neoliberal be offended by being called as such while others, being neoliberal not even have noticed what they are. Other claim themselves as liberals just because they don’t feel conservatives, while others are liberals by the opposite, because they considered being fairly conservative in their outlook. Everything is a range of colors and flavors. Thus depends on the perspective. It's like the news perspective. I know that in America most consider to CNN as a leftist because FOX is conservative. In Latin America in change most would say that CNN presents the perspective of the empire and therefore their news must pass through the sieve of doubt and is not always objective in their offices to be conservative in view of the large Latin American audience.

It also is the economic outlook. It depends on who does the analysis. From our point of view the genesis of neo-liberalism is written in the book “Principles of Political Economy” of the Austrian Carl Menger who lived from mid-nineteenth century until the beginning of the second decade of the twentieth century. Although genetically Menger was Austrian actually he was born in Poland because Galicia his hometown at the time was part of Austria but it is now Poland. Menger was not an economist but a lawyer. Not to be surprised. In Panama lawyers talk about the economy as if they were experts in that social science with the sole difference that Carl Menger really knew what he was talking about. He graduated in law at the University of Krakow and later turned to writing as a journalist in economic news. In 1871 he published "Principles of Political Economy". His first book was ignored by the critics but the second published in 1883 under the title Investigations into the Method of the Social Sciences with Special Reference to Economics was scorned and their positions were the focus of derision in the intellectual circles of the time. In fact the term "Austrian economic school" was generated in a pejorative way after the battle of Königgrätz, where was faced the two countries of Germanic origin: Germany won against Austria. After this battle fought in what is now territory of the Czech Republic in 1866, Austrian was called a derogatory term in the triumphant Germany. So the Germans, led by Gustav von Schmoller, the founder of modern historicist school, taunted and Menger's writings attributed to him being head of the economic tendency they called "Austrian school". It would be like today call the Galician school as the plural number of jokes against Galicians, giving it a clearly exaggerated stupidity. In the debate between Menger and Schmoller is known as the "Methodenstreit" or discussion among the modern historicist and Austrian schools.

The Austrian school was later developed by the disciple of Menger Eugen Böhm-Bawerk. The main difference between classical and Austrian school is that the latter emphasize the demand rather than supply and the utility instead of production costs.

Perhaps the first to use the term neoliberalism was Ludwig von Mises in his book published in 1927 "Liberalismus" uses the term to refer to a socialist economists that their view not being sufficiently Laiz affaires pose as liberals. But that was two years before the launch of the Great Depression of the global economy and that he carried in his shot the prestige of the liberal model.

Some economists, especially the highly discredited liberal trend after the stock market crash of 1929 recovered some aspects of those proposed by Menger and add some of their own pocket for a current general criticism to Keynes, new bright star of the economic heavenly vault . After the debacle of the New York market, economists of the current against state intervention in the economy for many years it was difficult to took them back together, even just to meet as current. Such was the damage to his concept of the invisible hand that never rebuild the economy. But in 1938 is the meeting in Paris where among others met Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig Von Mises, Alexander Rüstow, Wilhelm Röpke, Detauoff, Condliffe, Polanyi, Lippman and Baudin. Here meet the so-called new liberal and coined the term neoliberalism with a new meaning. Its new meaning is more neo-classical liberalism was coined by differentiating the classical liberalism of Adam Smith and David Ricardo.

This current cannot step away from a conversation between disgraced intellectuals for a long time. After World War II gives the so-called boom of the postwar Keynesian thinking not only settled but strengthened the hand of the great growth of the global economy, the miraculous recovery of Europe and the introduction in tropical version of the Keynesian model in Latin America through the so-called import substitution model.

But neoliberals an heir of the Austrian School does not fainted. In 1947 the majority of liberal economists such as Ludwig Von Mises, Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman, along with some journalists and the philosopher Karl Popper climb all in one car and head towards Mont Pelerin in Switzerland where they gather to reminisce the old days and set a new strategy. This meeting comes as the leading Austrian Friedrich von Hayek who then published the book "The Road to Serfdom" in which she compares to Keynesianism as a route similar to that defeated Hitler's fascism, establishing equality with both Soviet communism drive interventionism state. Hayek Austrian leadership is what leads to the false belief by some that refer to the Austrian school of economics is due to this economist, born in Vienna.

After the crisis of the Keynesian model in the seventies where this is unable to respond to global recession and instead creates the new phenomenon of stagflation and at the inconsistency of the so-called Phillips curve trade-off facing unemployment vs inflation, plus the debt crisis of the eighties also called the lost decade, the logical result of the dance of the millions of the seventies alternative emerges as alternative economic model, neo-liberalism, with the help of international financial institutions. But this new version of the classic and neoclassic old liberalism was reissued without the invisible hand and with state intervention, but only as a guarantor of free supply and demand and to theoretically prevent private monopolies.

ABOUT STRANGE FISHES AND CULTURES

THE FISH WITH LEGS

By Felipe Argote

Late last November, Chiriqui Province received a strange surprise, some fishermen had found his task amidst a strange fish with legs and dog face menacing them. Like the teenagers who killed a few months ago a specimen that seemed odd, they thought it was an alien and beat him with sticks to death before he could request reinforcements. Arriving with his body to the port of Pedregal in the western province, villagers went to their homes in terror to pray.

Luckily it was a false alarm again. The odd fish was not an alien but a chimera, a close relative of the shark that lives 150 feet deep so they are rarely caught.

This leads me to recall the story of the coelacanth. This strange lower lobe-finned fish that seems as it have legs live according to paleontologists 400 million years ago. It was believed extinct since 65 million years ago. The paleontologists were convinced it was some kind of link between fish and reptiles. It was believed that their lower lobes were used to scroll to the bottom of the ocean and its strange tail had evolved into reptile’s tail. But these were mere speculations.

Everything looked to be an enigma as that of the dinosaurs until a conservation scientist in charge of the South African Museum; Marjorie Courtenay Latimer saw a strange fish in the basket of a fisherman in the local market. Observing him closely could conclude that it was a specimen of coelacanth. Thus begins the race to obtain a specimen alive to confirm or reject the ideas generally accepted by the scientific community.

The coelacanth is not a small fish, measuring up to 1 meter 50 centimeters and can weigh nearly 150 pounds. But living to almost 250 meters deep where he spends all day and rises to the surface at night to feed. They were very difficult to capture their work and the absence of another copy in years; they conclude that perhaps the South African was the last specimen of the species had survived.

It was not until 1952, 14 years later, also was captured by chance the next example. This time it was near the Comoros Islands between Madagascar and Mozambique in the Indian Ocean. Then they found several more in subsequent years, provided between fishermen of this abundant fishing of the area. But there was another surprise. In 1998, just 11 years ago, Mark Verdman, a biologist at the University of California, discovered coelacanths in Manado Tua, on Sulawesi Island in Indonesia. This specimen, unlike caught in the Comoros that is brown, has a deep blue color. By using submersibles some specimens were filmed in their habitat. But in 2007 Yustinus Lahama, an Indonesian fisherman and his son, captured a rare fish in their fishing nets. By having a culture different from ours, they not only prevented the fish to die but went to their neighbors who advised him to put it on the sea at a quarantine pool. They did so without hesitation and there was the issue for 17 hours whiles the specialists came but unfortunately it died with the grief of the villagers.

However, with this capture and the with submersibles Scientifics came to the conclusion that the coelacanth is not using fins as legs, but because of their external and internal structure is no doubt that this is one of the specimens to be a ling between fish and terrestrial vertebrates 350 million years ago.

Very good that it was captured in Indonesia.

10 YEARS AFTER THE REVERSION OF THE CANAL

By Felipe Argote

31 December of 2009 marked 10 years since the reversion of the Panama Canal and the departure of all foreign troops from our territory. Eleven days earlier, the 20th anniversary of the bloody invasion of our country that killed thousands of innocent victims. Nine days later we are celebrating 46 years of patriotic deed on January nine where 21 Panamanians were killed while demanding their right to put our flag in the Canal Zone.

Everything is concatenated. The exploits of nine of January was the cusp of a generational struggle that forced the world's greatest power to negotiate its way out of our territory. The resistance to the invasion and occupation of the rest of our territory during and after December 20, convinced the U.S. that should not confuse our hatred of the Noriega dictatorship with our unwavering struggle for national sovereignty. It was all part of the actions that we reached at last achieved victory on 31 December 1999.

Ten years after this historic fact our country has demonstrated its ability to handle the Canal better than the American military administration. Since it is very likely that this celebration is to see a lot of leafleting statements, I decided to use the time to answer to this sector with myopic vision that said we do not eat sovereignty and those fought by large majorities who said that this objective was wrong. Those who today still write to us asking if we wanted the Yankees to leave, why we have dollars in our pocket and use clothes made in United States?

Well I'll tell you a story. When George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and others met in Philadelphia to declare independence from England they had no dollars in their his pocket, or sure they have ponds sterling and wore English style clothes. That was what they had. In their determination to have an independent country not discouraged that most of the troops that swelled the colonial army were born in what is now the United States. The army of the English armed swelled to thousands of Americans ready to die defending the idea of remaining a colony. Surely we would find in Panama a plural number of Panamanians also willing to die to remain as a colony. Some of these bad Americans said to the patriots that if they asked if they don’t like to be part of England why they dressed like Englishmen. Why did not dress like Indians who hated the European settlers? Why had in their pockets pounds?

But Washington, Jefferson and the others did not stop at that. Today nobody remembers those traitors, except to Benedict Arnold an American born in Connecticut that was passed to the English side in the midst of the War of Independence and served as colonial army Brig.

But Washington, Jefferson and Franklin not only reminds as patriots but their faces are now on the currency of the greatest economic power in the world.

Those with a slave mentality, they do not understand that sovereignty is a good business, that as warm as the breast is humans need to achieve self-independence, those will be forgotten by history, but those who gave their lives for this country, Panama, the best country in the world to live, wil not be forgotten:

List of those killed on 9 and 10 January 1964 with his precious blood that helped us to comply with the perfection of our sovereignty. Do not forget their names:

Maritza Avila Alabarca, Ascanio Arosemena, Luis Bonilla, Jose Del Cid Cobos, Theophilus Belisario De La Torre, Gonzalo A. France, Victor M. Garibaldo, José Enrique Gil, Ezequiel Meneses González, Victor M. Iglesias, Rosa Elena Landecho, Carlos Renato Lara, Evilio Lara, Gustavo Lara, Ricardo Murga Villamonte, Albert Nichols Constance, Estanislao Orobio W., Jacinto Palacios Cobos, Ovid L. Saldana, Rodolfo Benitez Sanchez, Alberto Oriol Tejada and Celestino Villaret.