Latin America's next challenges

[bemildred]

Economic inequality is declining, but the poverty-prosperity gap is still wide, threatening stability.

Latin America has had a good decade. Over the last 10 years, economic growth averaged 4.2%, and 70 million people escaped poverty. Macroeconomic stability, open-trade policies and pro-business investment climates have supported and will continue to support strong growth in the years to come.

Crucially, economic gains are being broadly shared. A recent World Bank report found that the middle class in Latin America grew by 50 million people between 2003 and 2009, an increase of 50%. For a region long riven by wealth inequality, this is a remarkable achievement.

As I travel around Latin America this week, I see a region that has come a long way from the "lost decade" of the 1980s and is emerging as a driver of global growth. But we have much more to do to ensure that all of Latin America's people share in their region's growing prosperity.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-kim-latin-america-20130701,0,984194.story

Largely babble, but not belligerent babble.

[Socialistlemur]

1. Can't read the article

It comes up with an add trying to recruit me for the CIA

[bemildred]

2. See, they know who you are? nt

[Peace Patriot]

3. LOL! nt

[Peace Patriot]

4. Venezuela is now "THE most equal country in Latin America," according to UNECLAC

(UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean).

This article by the PRESIDENT OF THE WORLD BANK, Jim Yong Kim, omits that fact, and that is belligerent, in my opinion. Gaping "black holes" where information should be, like this one, committed by people who damn well know the truth--reporters, editors, World Bank presidents--are not innocent; they are contrived to DISINFORM.

Venezuela, pioneer of the Bolivarian Revolution--Latin America's "New Deal"--helped drive the World Bank and its ruinous policies out of the region. That is WHY the President of the World Bank fails to mention the most successful poverty reduction in the region--Venezuela's.

The hypocrisy of the following paragraph is staggering:

Crucially, economic gains are being broadly shared. A recent World Bank report found that the middle class in Latin America grew by 50 million people between 2003 and 2009, an increase of 50%. For a region long riven by wealth inequality, this is a remarkable achievement.

It is NO THANKS TO THE WORLD BANK that millions of poor Latin Americans have been bootstrapped into the middle class. The region was reeling from World Bank/IMF policies--with many economies utterly collapsing, vast poverty and injustice and the rich directly assaulting the poor with bloody repression--when Hugo Chavez got elected at the turn of the century. That--and the Venezuelan peoples' resistance to the U.S.-supported coup d'etat in 2002--were the pivotal events that turned the region around. Soon Chavez, with his SOCIALIST policies, was not only producing spectacular economic growth (10% during the 2003 to 2008 period!) and reducing poverty by half and extreme poverty by over 70%, but he also allied with Nestor Kirchner in Argentina, who was trying to wrench Argentina's economy out of the World Bank's clutches, and with Lula da Silva (Workers Party) in Brazil who backed up these leftist, anti-World Bank/IMF/Wall Street governments, in their new common philosophy of "raising all boats."

Together, in common cause, these and other leftist governments evicted the World Bank from the region! And now the World Bank (rich U.S./European investors) is trying to worm its way back in.

Kim further states that poverty reduction derives from "pro-business investment climates." This is World Bank/Wall Street cant for austerity for the poor while the rich get richer, and it is a colossal failure at producing income equality. Income equality results from the exact opposite--strong government regulation of exploitative businesses and investments, to insure not only good wages and benefits and local job development, but also that a substantial percentage of profit from local resources--such as Venezuela's oil--benefits Venezuelans in the form of social programs--an idea, by the way, that spread from Venezuela TO Brazil, resulting in Lula's commitment of oil profits from Brazil's new oil find, to social programs.

It is SOCIALISM that turned South America around, NOT "pro-business investment climates." And the reason for the recent protests of the poor in Brazil is that Brazil has not gone socialist ENOUGH. To the extent that Workers Party presidents (Lula, and now Dilma Rousseff) have favored "pro-business investment climates," they have failed to equalize income--a wrong emphasis that Rousseff is now trying to correct, with the help of the protest movement. (Brazil's rightwing has stymied Workers Party governments, in some respects.)

This article is far from innocent; is in fact Wall Street-ish propaganda; and borders on "belligerent" throughout, in its failure to acknowledge the REAL causes of improved income equality--the leftist democracy revolution that started in Venezuela at the turn of the century, resulted in Venezuela becoming "THE most equal country in Latin America" on income distribution and then spread throughout South America and into Central America, where the U.S. tried to stop it in Honduras with a rightwing/military coup d'etat.

In fact, one of the U.S. trained/funded coup generals in Honduras stated that their coup in 2009 was intended "to prevent communism from Venezuela reaching the United States." To this coup general, communism = free education through college for the poor, free medical care for the poor, good wages/benefits, high employment rates, strong regulation/taxation of big business and transglobal corporations and forcing social responsibility on the likes of Exxon Mobil.

Socialism! The U.S. wants to prevent socialism from Venezuela "reaching the United States" as it has reached so far and wide in Latin America since Venezuela's "New Deal"-like revolution.

Jim Yong Kim speaks for the billionaires and transglobal corporations--the 1%-ers of the world--in promising to help "ensure that opportunity and prosperity extend to all of Latin America's people." They lie! They've been lying for decades, while they bled the poor of Latin America, privatized everything, destroyed social programs and stole their resources. Their goal is PRIVATIZATION. And Kim's one example, Peru, a country saddled with a U.S. "free trade for the rich" agreement...

...we are working with the Peruvian Ministry of Social Development to develop a public expenditure framework that targets government resources to areas where research and experience show they can have the biggest impact in lifting people out of poverty.

...needs to be watched closely for its "public expenditure framework" "targeting" the PUBLIC'S MONEY for the enrichment of private contractors, consultants and transglobal corporations. "Research and experience" clearly show that, whatever country the World Bank gets its talons into, the poor suffer, sometimes horribly, and--worst of all--are DISEMPOWERED, whether by union busting and worse (rightwing death squad assassinations, for instance), political disenfranchisement (the backing of rich elites in power), land theft and bloody repression, not to mention items like U.S. Ag dumping cheap produce on local markets to destroy local farmers, U.S., Canadian and other mining corporations destroying the environment, the DEA running rampant in the corrupt, failed, murderous U.S. "war on drugs" and the Pentagon establishing "forward operating locations."

This is what World Bank policies really mean--control of the country by OUTSIDE forces, including 1%-ers of every kind--billionaire investors, transglobal corporations--backed by U.S. police/military forces "training" and infiltrating local police/military forces and gaining access for its drone wars and other operations.

Peru is being primed as base of operations for DESTROYING the highly successful leftist movement in South America. The World Bank is the lead agency for that destruction (of the overt agencies involved). Beware, beware of this "wolf in sheep's clothing" type of article, promising "poverty reduction." It is not "babble." It is carefully framed LIES. And, believe me, it is belligerent in its "black hole" omissions.

[bemildred]

5. Well, OK.

I found it interesting that he admitted that LA had had a good decade, and that he managed to avoid savaging the usual suspects with the usual propaganda and slurs. I took that to mean that he wants to curry favor.

On the other hand he conflates a growing middle class with improved economic equality, which is just wrong. Economic equality depends on the gap between the rich and the poor, and on the distribution of the nations wealth, all of it, not on whether the middle class (the bourgeoisie, as they used to call it) is growing or shrinking.

And I thought that THAT, the notion that economic inequality is declining, was the payload of the piece, and a desire to restore some credibility to the bank in Latin America, perhaps.

And I expect he is nervous about Brazil.

[Peace Patriot]

6. Comment on the WB's title: "Latin America's next challenges"

And on their subtitle: "Economic inequality is declining, but the poverty-prosperity gap is still wide, threatening stability."

Among Latin America's TRUE next challenges are

a) to consolidate the significant economic gains made by the poor by their elected governments driving the World Bank and the IMF from the region.

These entities and their Wall Street allies, banksters and transglobal corporations have ravaged the region in the past. Leftist/socialist governments have gained considerable traction against them, by their electoral victories, by individual government actions and by the solidarity among leftist leaders in the region. The U.S., the World Bank/IMF and these other entities are trying desperately to undo these gains for the poor and to re-install 1%-er friendly rich elites in power once again. Their goal is LOOTING. They don't give a crap for the poor. They've proven this time and again, in country after country, for many decades. Their local fascist allies MURDER the poor--labor leaders, teachers, community activists, peasant farmers and others--as well as robbing and disempowering them. They ally with local fascists, indebt the country with money that the poor never see, impose onerous conditions for repayment including loss of public services and transglobal corporate rape of local natural resources, and leave the country in ruins!

That is the World Bank/IMF legacy and they want to do it again--and what stands in their way are leftist/socialist governments. Their strategy is to remove that obstacle.

Quite devious tactics are being used to accomplish this--more subtle and potentially more devastating than Bush Junta tactics--including the recent U.S. refusal to recognize the results of the Venezuelan election (an election system that Jimmy Carter called "the best in the world&quot , and probable attempts to infiltrate and use the protests in Brazil to damage or bring down the Workers Party government. This is perhaps Latin America's greatest challenge in the immediate future: preserving their "New Deal"-like revolution in the face of U.S. and global banksters' hostility and savvy, and entities like the World Bank working to privatize public services and re-corporatize these countries.

b) to consolidate the significant political gains made by the poor, with honest election systems, superb grass roots organization, high levels of public participation and a new consciousness of the collective power of the majority.

CLEARLY, this is the main challenge for Latin America--to retain the democratic power that has been so wonderfully--and, at times, seemingly miraculously--achieved, in country after country.

It started in Venezuela. It has spread to Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay and Nicaragua--and to Paraguay and Honduras before the U.S.-supported rightwing coup d'etats--and will soon return to Chile with the election of socialist Michele Batchelet this year (she is way ahead in the polls). Even Peru elected a leftist government, though it is saddled with a U.S./Bush era "free trade" agreement and is suffering serious transglobal mining damage and other exploitation. (Note: Honduras may recover its leftist government by the election of Xiomara Zelaya, Mel Zelaya's wife, who is also ahead in the polls. That country, though, has such serious political structure problems and so many rightwing death squad murders that Xiomara may be prevented from winning.)

This was/is a REVOLUTION--a leftist democracy revolution along the lines of our own "New Deal" but with the added aspect of REGIONAL rebellion against U.S. interference and exploitation (a phenomenon that strengthens the revolution within each country and sometimes brings rightwing LatAm governments into alliance with leftwing LatAm governments on issues such as LatAm sovereignty and Cuba, and sometimes "south-south" trade). It is up to the people in these countries to preserve and expand their leftist democracy revolutions, and it is up to the people in U.S. client states to throw the U.S. banksters and corporate rapists and the DEA and the Pentagon and its "forward operating locations" out of their countries This is a major challenge in view of U.S. hostility to real democracy "south of the border."

About the World Bank's subtitle ("Economic inequality is declining, but the poverty-prosperity gap is still wide, threatening stability&quot :

I repeat, the decline in economic inequality is occurring in the countries with LEFTIST governments, who have successfully fought World Bank/IMF/Wall Street policies. The poor are upwardly mobile in these countries BECAUSE they have elected LEFTIST governments. That is what the statistics show--and World Bank president, Jim Yong Kim, is IGNORING these statistics in his article. Conversely, the worst inequality and poverty is occurring in U.S. and thus World Bank-friendly countries--such as Colombia, Honduras, Guatemala, Haiti and Jamaica. He also ignores this. The countries with leftist governments have had to claw their way out of U.S./World Bank domination with full-scale political revolutions--the leading issue of which was economic inequality--and other such revolutions are being SUPPRESSED in U.S. client states--bloodily suppressed in some cases.

The World Bank president would have us believe that the World Bank is going to return to the LatAm scene now and correct the vast inequality in U.S. client states and improve the equality in countries that have made huge gains in equality by defying the World Bank and brethren? Right.

This article is one long sin of omission! And its hypocrisy is off the charts.