Argentina Moves to Re-nationalize Lockheed Aircraft Factory

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Agence France-Presse

Argentina Moves to Re-nationalize Lockheed Aircraft Factory
If the bill is approved by congress, Argentina will pay out $64 million for a company that has annual revenues of $50 million.

By . Agence France-Presse
March 18, 2009

Argentine President Cristina Kirchner announced on March 17 she has submitted a bill to re-nationalize an aircraft manufacturer operated by Lockheed Martin. Speaking in the industrial city of Cordoba, Kirchner said she had signed off on a bill "with which we are going to transfer to the state all (Lockheed) shares," returning the factory to national ownership.

The move, the latest to reassert state control over the country's strategic industries, follows the expropriation of Aerolineas Argentinas from the Spanish company Marsans and the creation of a single state pension system that eliminated private pension funds.

If the bill is approved by congress, Argentina will pay out $64 million for a company that has annual revenues of $50 million.

~snip~
"With the nationalization of Lockheed we will recover a technologically advanced aeronautics industry," said Oscar Cuattormo, the defense ministry's planning chief.

Peronist president Carlos Menem initiated a wave of privatizations in the 1990s, but many utilities were brought back under state control under president Nestor Kirchner, the current president's husband and predecessor. The mail system, the water company and railroad lines were among those utilities that were privatized, but they have since swung back to the state. President Cristina Kirchner portrayed the re-nationalization of the Lockheed Martin operation as an effort to make industrial development the leading edge of the Argentine economy. She said her liberal predecessors tried to convert Argentina into a service economy.

Read more: http://www.industryweek.com/articles/argentina_moves_to_re-nationalize_lockheed_aircraft_factory_18736.aspx

[TheCoxwain]

1. Good

[pattmarty]

2. It's about time we start the process here. Nationalize some of...........

..........these industries (banks/brokerage houses for a start) that keep fucking up and where the top management keeps getting bonuses.

[bgr1938]

3. maybe lessons to learn

I would like to say GO CHRISTINA GO,GO GIRL GO. what an exciting time for south america with chavez, morales ,correa, kirchner, and perhaps lugo.

[Vidar]

4. Viva Christina! Too bad the US won't follow suit against it's robber barons.

[amandabeech]

5. So long as she does not sell or give advanced technology to those

who would do harm, and not only those who would do harm to us here in the U.S.

[EFerrari]

6. We seem to have the corner on that market.

:)

[amandabeech]

7. If we do have the corner, and I think that the Russians still have some good stuff,

then that means that others will want it.

Perhaps you recall a Japanese and a Norwegian company selling ultra secret information to the Russians concerning milling submarine propeller blades so as to reduce the amount of noise that they made.

Of course, our friends the Israelis have been caught selling ultra secret aerospace technology to the Chinese and the Israelis have been accused by reasonable people of giving it to the Russians.

I'm well aware of the bad stuff that the U.S. government has done over the years, but I still trust us more than Russia or China. We have much more influence over our government, than the people there have over theirs.

[EFerrari]

8. Then you are much more sanguine than I am

and that makes me a little jealous. :)

[amandabeech]

9. I've been around longer than you, that's all. n/t