Posted on 11/22/2006 4:45:03 AM PST by Brilliant
The populist political tide that seemed to be sweeping through Latin America earlier this year is sputtering.
Although disappointment with free-market reforms still runs deep through the region, voters have been choosing presidential candidates who tap into a more powerful force: economic stability. Across Latin America, inflation has been on a steady decline for the past decade, and has dropped to the low single digits for the first time in decades... Economic growth, while far from spectacular, has been solid for the past five years.
With that stability, more working-class voters have been able to buy homes, take out loans and obtain their first credit cards. As voters get a stake in the economic system, they become wary of risking it all on populist nostrums -- debt repudiation, deficit spending, state ownership of industries -- that in the past produced economic disasters...
This dynamic has played out in election after election across the volatile region this year, despite high-profile efforts by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez to fuel anti-U.S. sentiment. In February, Nobel Prize winner Oscar Arias won the presidency of Costa Rica against a candidate who wanted to scuttle a free-trade deal with the U.S. In June, onetime populist Alan García regained the presidency in Peru by embracing free trade and open markets -- and by playing off voter fears of Mr. Chávez's growing influence. In Mexico a month later, the populist former Mexico City mayor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, lost after failing to find support among the working classes of fast-growing central and northern cities.
And while longtime socialist politicians won in Brazil and Chile, they did so by championing market-friendly policies. This month in Nicaragua, former Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega won the presidency, but even he positioned himself as a candidate of stability and reconciliation...
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
The former Captive Nations come to mind, Estonia in particular. The goose cannot be killed.
Latin American nations have had little in the way of real free market property rights. Look at Mexico where one man owns all the television properties, telephone systems. Competition in certain industries is not allowed.
I am merely pointing out that, regardless of the degree of economic/state authoritarianism, the desire of people to conduct their affairs without governmental interference is inextinguishable.
That's a popular myth. Carlos Slim is the "prestenombre" for those companies. It's a different business structure, and he's just the head of a very, very, very larger partnership. The difference in Mexican and U.S. law is that a real, live breathing person is responsible for the actions of the business. In the U.S. a corporation is a "person" under the law, but if that "person" commits an egregious act, the only punishment "he" can receive is monetary... where in Mexico, the live, breathing person can go to the slammer.
The Slim family is no myth. Try to introduce a new broadcast station or telephone system in Mexico and see how far you get.
Now if it would just lose appeal here in the US.
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