Negative inflation in Chile.

[bemildred]

The Chilean Consumers Price Index contracted 0,1% last February and accumulates minus 0,4% in the first two months of 2005, reports the country’s Statistics Department. However the last twelve months index reached 2,2%.

During February prices increased for Health 1,2%; Transport 0,5%; and house equipments 0,1%, and decreased for Housing -1,2%; Clothing -0,4%; Education and Leisure -0,2%. Food and Other items remained unchanged.

As to the main items with greater incidence in the Consumer Index, Electricity dropped 13,8%; bus fares 2,8%. Financial costs also dropped 11%.

On the other end those items with greater upward impact include petrol 5,9%; social security 1,9%; domestic service 0,8%; eating out 0,4%; liquid gas 0,4%; hospital room service 0,3% and rent 0,1%.

MercoPress

[On the Road]

1. Now, What Does This Deflation Mean?

That Chile has gone into a depresssion? That the depression may spread internationally? Or just that the US dollar has depreciated against the peso?

Thanks for the link. That's an interesting news source. Do you know anything about its background or point of view? Are they particularly good on certain issues?

[bemildred]

2. Could be currency appreciation, I don't know.

Their economy is so-so IIRC. But it's interesting.
"Negative inflation" is the definition of deflation, I think.

[bemildred]

3. They seem to be Argentine or Falklands related.

They are one of the better English sources of news on
South America that I know of, though not especially comprehensive,
and they seem to be relatively unbiased (except were issues of
Argentina vis-a-vis the Falklands are concerned.)

[On the Road]

4. Their FAQ

placed them in Uruguay, I think. And they used the term "Falklands-Malvinas," which would surprise me if they were British. But you've obviously been reading them for awhile.

[bemildred]

5. Oh, I didn't mean they are British, just English Language.

But they are fairly gingerly with the issue, and respectful
of the current Falklands adminstration from what I can see.
But for instance, they reported Kirchners comments on never
giving up on the Falklands, too. And it is the only site I
know of that will give you local Falklands news.

I have never read the FAQ. :spank:

They are on the other hand on my regular daily reading list.
:party:

[Say_What]

6. MercosurPress is in Montevideo, Uruguay

Here's a clip from their website:


MERCOPRESS is a news agency concentrating in Mercosur countries which operates from Montevideo, Uruguay, and includes in its area of influence the South Atlantic and insular territories.

Mercopress has been working now for ten years and is the result of the initiative of several independant journalists of the region interested in taking advantage of favourable circumstances and in joining in the integration effort.

http://www.falkland-malvinas.com/about.asp?TEMA=mercopress&IDIOMA=Ingles

[applegrove]

7. They predict that they can keep deflation to -2% at the very most

which is really not that different from 2% or so. So not massive, crazy unemployed. Just wages slowly lowering, etc.

They claim to have tools to stop the deflation cold at no more than -2%. I am wondering what that tool is and if it is perhaps AKA as simply WAR.

Personally, I liked Keynes/Roosevelt's idea of spending on people and infrastructure when the economy contracts.

I am curious. Will anyone tell me what the tools are?

[bemildred]

8. Yeah, I always wonder about secret plans.

But what you want to do is "increase demand", so it would
be something along those lines, get loose change into the
pockets of the idle poor.

[applegrove]

9. Yeah - because with deflation treasury bonds will not be bought & sold

so they loose monetary control over interest rates. Increasing demand could mean some fantastic schooling! I hazard to guess that is not what they have in mind...rather another war (that will also psychologically coerce the enemies of neorepuke economic policies the world over).

[bemildred]

10. Oh, you are talking about the USA.

Yeah, they seem to be considering it, it worked great in the
past after all, but full wartime mobilization of the population
has consequences. But it does allow one to reach right in there
and fix things just the way you like for a while.

[applegrove]

11. I cannot take you and Nial Ferguson at the same time (I am reading him)

Only one at a time.

And reaching in a 'fixing something' is a little different when you broke it. I was big oil that encouraged the USA to encourage strongmen, who encouraged an Islamist resistance to grow and made it all possible with vast amounts of money not going to schools and infrastructure. So what is the agenda now of big oil? And will it lead us somewhere kind?

I can hear Powell's words right now:" you break it - you own it". Except a neocon like Bushes, Cheney & Rumsfield, etc. would hear it quite different : "we owned the middle east in the last 40 years and we have to now fix it " (which was the message they had heard from neocons for a decade). So off to war they went.

Dammit to **** with people and their perceptions so vastly different that you cannot speak a phrase without imparting the antithesis of what you meant! Dammit to **** with the sociopaths and eggheads using the tools of sociopaths. Like I said before... at some point a headline will read: Richard Perle meant gnome's not norms... it has all been a big mistake!! (well okay - well that will never happen). But if ever there was a danger of war and annihilation it would be when people's realities have been so co opted that mankind can no longer tell what is good for them. The examples of mass hysteria a numerous in history. And I still see a 'big ole pile of snakes ****ing' at the top of the heap with multiple leads and multiple realities who just assume they will control what they have unleashed in the USA forever. That is highly unlikely. You want the bullshit to follow the assholes when they leave office. But War unleashes permanent realities like no other thing. We all hope for democracy in the world and economic tools that do not destroy us or others. I hope the neocons - have learnt their lesson because the alternative would be that they get drunker with their own power... tis the lifecycle of the sociopath they emulate so much... and that always ends badly.


So here is to hoping that the tool they have in mind for alleviating really bad deflation is not war.

[bemildred]

12. Well ...

Oil is just a means to an end, and the end is power. And
it goes back to the post-civil war period in this country, we
are just in the endgame now because the system is breaking down,
the old arrangements no longer get the job done.

The public political discourse is 100% bullshit, a dog-and-pony
show intended to keep the public mesmerized sort of like Barney
the dinosaur does with a five-year-old kid. Well, maybe 95%.

With regard to your last paragraph, I'm not optimistic. I've been
reluctant to think the Bushites would be allowed to do that, but
I'm starting the think the ruling elites have become too disfunctional
and insulated from reality, and that they are not up the job now.
They don't seem to understand that the USA of 2005 is not the USA of
1938, or they don't want to understand.

[applegrove]

13. I think the pendulum will swing back. And corporations will have to

morph. This Bush White House has brought up all sorts of issues we didn't know about. There will be a-thinking.

[bemildred]

14. The corporation is the modern version to the medieval fiefdom,

and it won't be given up without a fight.

[applegrove]

15. But it exists on paper. And they are not so powerful in all the other

countries in the World. Look at Yukos. Yukos got jiggy with the market and the whole thing got taken away from the owners. And people who want markets to expand around the world see the coming conflict and are trying to do things to self-regulate. And we will help them.

We have to come up with ideas to make corporations inherently less sociopathic. I like the idea of another pontoon - the corporate shadow, the reflective soul of said corporation.. of which Bill Gates gives a great example with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. And the creativity of coming up with solutions to the problems around one helps the corporation in the end.

All we have to do is institute the law that says - oh you are a corporation? You have to have a parallel organization that devotes a portion of your energy to making the world a better place. And that 'other self' will have to compete with all the other charities out there and write up reports every year on how it has done and what it innovated and how it made the world a better place. And if it is way at the bottom, you loose your charter and the paper goes into the shredder and the big business side of the corporation (perhaps 98% - I do not know) gets killed along with your failed charity.

That is what sociopaths do - they try and have a human around who can reflect their humanity back at them to try and keep on the humanoid like path that will keep them from prison. Only it will be much easier for all countries to just say - hey - 5 years in a row your corporate other has done nothing, accomplished nothing so you will be paying big taxes.

I do not know exactly. But some systematic thing needs to be added to what we have now. That much is obvious. I just know that something has to be done and that is obvious by the state of the United States.