"The corporation cannot be ethical. its only responsibility is to make a profit." - Milton Friedman
The results of deregulation were apparent 20 years ago with the looting of the nation's S&Ls by the CIA and Mafia. But drugged, fat, entitled, willfully ignorant, self-adoring Good Americans have no time to recognize the obvious. It took the collapse of the entire economic system to wrench them away from obsessions with more important things, like belly-button pop music, Starbucks, sports and Viagra (a diet of poisoned meat destroys the prostate gland, and the middle-aged American male can't even "get it up" without a drug). "Deregulation" is more than a "conservative principle" - whatever that means, an oxymoron - it's the very definition of fascism. - AC
Researcher Brian Hunter, whose primary political interest is Latin America, writes:
Economic Catastrophe
http://www.commonprejudice.com/latin_america/index.htmlDecember 13, 2006
(Repost)
With the death of Milton Friedman a couple of weeks ago and the overdue death of Augusto Pinochet somewhat appropriately on International Human Rights Day last Sunday, the debate over Friedman's and Pinochet's economic policies in Chile during the 1970s and 1980s has been a prominent topic this week.
While I have already made a couple of comments, given the confusion over the issue I feel I should expound a little bit, utilizing a couple of valuable articles on the subject. I was especially inspired to do this after reading the egregious editorial (apparently by Fred Hiatt) in the Washington Post yesterday. This editorial is the very worst example of journalism, clearly illustrating the vapid state of American media and is just one more of the countless examples disproving the dimwitted claims of liberal bias (See here, here and here for comments on the article). Here are some of the appalling, illogical and nonsensical claims:
...It's hard not to notice, however, that the evil dictator leaves behind the most successful country in Latin America. In the past 15 years, Chile's economy has grown at twice the regional average, and its poverty rate has been halved. It's leaving behind the developing world, where all of its neighbors remain mired...
...Like it or not, Mr. Pinochet had something to do with this success. To the dismay of every economic minister in Latin America, he introduced the free-market policies that produced the Chilean economic miracle -- and that not even Allende's socialist successors have dared reverse...
...In "Dictatorships and Double Standards," a work that caught the eye of President Ronald Reagan, Ms.
Kirkpatrick argued that right-wing dictators such as Mr. Pinochet were ultimately less malign than communist rulers, in part because their regimes were more likely to pave the way for liberal democracies. She, too, was vilified by the left. Yet by now it should be obvious: She was right.
What is perhaps most outrageous is how the editorial makes claims about the "past fifteen years" when Pinochet has been out of office for 16 years. Additionally the offensive claptrap about right wing brutal murderers leading somehow to liberal democracies - as opposed to left wing dictatorships - is remarkably ahistorical. Many Eastern European dictatorships are now functioning democracies while the editorial fails to note that before Pinochet's military coup Chile had one of the longest functioning democracies in Latin America and the president that Pinochet overthrew, Salvador Allende, had been part of electoral politics since the beginning of his career.
But what I really want to go into here is the claim of an economic miracle in Chile in the late 1970's brought on by Pinochet and the "Chicago Boys" implementation of an extremely rigid and doctrinal version of neo-liberalism.
(Much of this post relies on information from the outstanding article (PDF) "The Uses of Chile: How Politics Trumped Truth in the Neo-Liberal Revision of Development," by Public Citizen, along with Greg Palast's article, "Tinker Bell, Pinochet and The Fairy Tale Miracle of Chile" and Steve Kangas's piece, "Chile: The Laboratory Test")
To term whatever economic success Chile has had post-Allende (1973) as proof of the success of neo-liberalism can only be termed generously as a wild mischaracterization. Let's look at some figures.
From the 2005 UN Developmental Report we see that Chile finishes very near the bottom in terms of income inequality at 113th place just a few places above Nambia (Interestingly the United States is also near the bottom in 92nd place). Real wages fell consistently during Pinochet's rule while still today there are periods of high unemployment due to the seasonal nature of its export orientated primary product economy. From 1970 to 1989 labour's share of the national income fell from 52.3% to 30.7% while real wages declined by 40% under military rule.
In the typical manner of right wing ideologues who never have to worry about where their next paycheque will come from, the Chicago Boys purposely followed policies that kept unemployment high so as wages would stagnate, profits would remain high and there always would be a healthy (irony intended) supply of underpaid workers willing to work for whatever they could get. Unemployment averaged 15.7% during the Pinochet period, the worst in all of Latin America.
Continued>>>
http://aconstantineblacklist.blogspot.com/2008/09/deregulation-is-nazi-policy-as-ive.html
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