How the Ecuadorian Economy Grew in a Global Recession ( William K. Black )
** This is a brief interview, which is too bad. I post it regardless, since Bill Black is always worth your time.
Bio
William K. Black, author of THE BEST WAY TO ROB A BANK IS TO OWN ONE, teaches economics and law at the University of Missouri Kansas City (UMKC). He was the Executive Director of the Institute for Fraud Prevention from 2005-2007. He has taught previously at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and at Santa Clara University, where he was also the distinguished scholar in residence for insurance law and a visiting scholar at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. Black was litigation director of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, deputy director of the FSLIC, SVP and general counsel of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, and senior deputy chief counsel, Office of Thrift Supervision. He was deputy director of the National Commission on Financial Institution Reform, Recovery and Enforcement. Black developed the concept of "control fraud" frauds in which the CEO or head of state uses the entity as a "weapon." Control frauds cause greater financial losses than all other forms of property crime combined. He recently helped the World Bank develop anti-corruption initiatives and served as an expert for OFHEO in its enforcement action against Fannie Mae's former senior management.
Transcript
How the Ecuadorian Economy Grew in a Global Recession JESSICA DESVARIEUX, TRNN PRODUCER: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Jessica Desvarieux in Baltimore. And welcome to this edition of The Bill Black Report.
Now joining us is the man behind the report, Bill Black. Bill Black is the author of the book The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One. And he also teaches economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
Thanks for joining us, Bill.
BILL BLACK, ASSOC. PROF. ECONOMICS AND LAW, UMKC: Thank you.
DESVARIEUX: So, Bill, I know that you recently returned from Ecuador. Can you just paint a picture for us of what the economic situation is like there down in Quito?
BLACK: Yeah, I just got back on the red-eye about two hours ago. So if I fall asleep during the interview, I hope people will understand.
I gave a talk, primarily, at one of their major universities in Quito, called FLACSO, and it was very well attended. They filled not only the assembly area but the entire overflow area, where they had to pipe in the address.
The talk I gave was about the Ecuadorian economic miracle. And the super-short version of it is that I went back to what American conservative scholars were writing just before President Correa was elected in 2006, and they were emphasizing what a disaster Ecuador was and what a disaster it was almost certainly going to continue to be, that it had no stable government, that its elites--remember, this is an American conservative writing this--that its business elites had no real attachment to democracy, that they worked with the military behind the scenes to remove, unconstitutionally, elected governments, that the debt of Ecuador was crushing, and that there--really, everything that one could predict was that it was likely to get worse, not better.
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11636
Catherina
(35,568 posts)It's amazing what happens when you invest the money in the people, when in spite of an IMF-forced recession, you pursue policies that target poverty alleviation
And the coups? Yeah, we know all about those
DU rec
Jefferson23
(30,099 posts)further into it., but yea..what a disaster Ecuador is experiencing...no sarcasm thingie necessary.