Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

November 8, 2016 By Fausta

En español: Esta noche en GDS Radio

Esta noche a las 9:15pm Eastern estoy en GDS Radio hablando sobre las elecciones con Eneas Biglione de HACER. No se lo pierdan.

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Filed Under: elections, HACER, politics Tagged With: Fausta's blog

February 8, 2016 By Fausta

The Superbowl weekend Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean

LatinAmerARGENTINA
Argentina in $6.5bn offer to debt holdouts after its 2001 default on $100bn.

Great to be back in Buenos Aires. Had a lovely walk in the park today. See you all at the show on Sunday! pic.twitter.com/V4Ws2bueRf

— Mick Jagger (@MickJagger) February 6, 2016

BOLIVIA
Gabriela Zapata vive en una lujosa vivienda que pertenecía al político Guillermo Fortún

Bolivia’s Morales reveals that in 2007 he had a child that died

BRAZIL
Brazil Health Researchers Say Zika Virus Is Active in Saliva, Urine. Pregnant women advised to take precautions to avoid coming in contact with others’ saliva; other researchers suggest such fears are overblown

Palestinian Authority opens embassy in Brasilia

CHILE
Privatization success: Chilean Pension Funds Grow 4.1% Year-on-Year in January

COLOMBIA
Colombia is preparing for peace. So are its drug traffickers. If FARC guerrillas accept a peace deal, the fight over the country’s cocaine business may escalate.

Islamist Militants Join Latin American Drug Lords in Explosive Duo. Hezbollah Seeks Closer Links with Drug Cartels Due to Iran’s Falling Oil Revenues

This week, the DEA announced the arrests of Hezbollah operatives with connections to ‘La Oficina de Envigado,’ a major Colombian Drug Trafficking organization responsible for a large share of the cocaine shipped to US and European markets. The presence in Latin America of Hezbollah, the Lebanese-based and Iran-backed Shi’a Islamic terror group is hardly news.

The group has been active in money laundering and other illicit activities in the region for decades, predominantly in the lawless tri-border region between Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina. Most notably, Hezbollah bombed a Jewish center in Buenos Aires in 1994, killing 85 and wounding hundreds. However, the recent increase in cooperation with drug traffickers, as evidenced by these high-profile arrests, represents an alarming trend and a dangerous prospect for the future of hemispheric security.

Falling oil prices are affecting Iran’s economy, and Hezbollah must diversify and pursue other revenue streams. The lucrative Latin American drug trade is a natural choice.

White House seeks to boost aid to Colombia to $450 million

President Barack Obama promised to throw the White House’s full support behind the Colombian government’s efforts to sign a historic peace agreement with leftist rebels, including a pledge of $450 million in aid annually to help demobilize rebels who’ve been fighting an insurgency for 51 years.

The ELN in action, Colombian Policeman Killed in Rebel Attack

Comunicado- Plan Colombia https://t.co/tNdMkaYWMS

— Álvaro Uribe Vélez (@AlvaroUribeVel) February 5, 2016

COSTA RICA
2nd Group of Cuban Migrants Stuck in Costa Rica Flown Out

CUBA
Pope Che’s going back to Cuba: In Historic Move, Pope to Meet With Leader of Russian Orthodox Church

ECUADOR
Ecuador protests to Turkey over Erdogan speech scuffle

Ecuador has protested to Turkey over an incident in which demonstrators were violently ejected during a speech by visiting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the capital, Quito.

Video:

EL SALVADOR
El Salvador detains ex-soldiers for 1989 Jesuit priest killings

HAITI
Crisis in Haiti turns deadly as power vacuum looms

Protesters in Haiti have beaten a man to death in a clash with ex-soldiers, as political uncertainty continues.
Witnesses say the crowd in the capital Port-au-Prince attacked the man, thinking that he was from the country’s disbanded military.

JAMAICA
Jamaica Ready to Celebrate 71st Anniversary of Birth of Bob Marley

LATIN AMERICA
A Channel 2 Action News investigation discovered a leaked secret document showing a spike in people from terrorist nations illegally crossing our country’s Southern border.

Congratulations to Eneas Biglione: HACER entre los 75 centros de estudios más influyentes de EEUU

MEXICO
“La reina del sur” in hot water: Mexican Judge Grants Del Castillo Protection against Arrest

The runaway cops visit the burnt-out unit,

PANAMA
Panama expected to follow Brazil’s lead and release genetically modified mosquitoes whose offspring die as larvae in a bid to stop the spread of the terrifying Zika virus

PERU
Peru may bar presidential hopeful from April elections

PUERTO RICO
State of emergency declared in Puerto-Rico as Zika cases climb to 22

VENEZUELA
Venezuela Is Socialist, Senator Sanders. Any Questions?

Printing Error. Venezuela is now importing 100 bolivar bills by the planeload: more banknotes, actually, than the whole of the European Union needs.



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Filed Under: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Carnival of Latin America, Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean, Catholic Church, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, HACER, Haiti, Jamaica, Latin America, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Pope Francis I, Puerto Rico, Venezuela Tagged With: Bob Marley, ELN, Fausta' blog, Gabriela Zapata, Hezbollah, Kate del Castillo, Paco Almaraz, Zika virus

February 20, 2014 By Fausta

En español: Libro Desarrollo económico y pobreza en América Latina: El rol de los Planes Sociales”

Mis amigos de HACER nos invitan,

Descargue gratuitamente de aquí el libro en PDF “Desarrollo económico y pobreza en América Latina: El rol de los Planes Sociales” publicado por Atlas Economic Research Foundation y la Asociación de Iberoamericanos por la Libertad (AIL) en el que se incluye la investigación “Transferencias condicionadas de dinero: El caso Colombia y su Programa Familias en Acción” llevada a cabo por el equipo de investigacion de la Fundacion HACER en Bogotá, Colombia.

Lo recomiendo.

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Filed Under: books, HACER, Latin America Tagged With: Desarrollo económico y pobreza en América Latina: El rol de los Planes Sociales, Fausta's blog

September 5, 2012 By Fausta

Book: “Inteventionism and Misery: 1929-2008″

My friends at HACER announce,

The Hispanic American Center for Economic Research (HACER) and the Fundación para el Progreso “Jean Gustave Courcelle-Seneuil” of Chile, joined efforts to publish and promote “Interventionism and Misery: 1929-2008″ a book devoted to understand the nature of past and future economic crises around the world. With a perspective of Austrian economics, Axel Kaiser explains the causes of the Great Depression in 1929, the crisis that started in 2008,  the role of statism in the road to ruin and the key importance of the gold standard and capitalism for a prosper future.

Ralph J. Benko says in the prologue: “Interventionism and Misery: 1929-2008 by Axel Kaiser is an important book. Economics has become, in Kaiser’s apt word, an astrology. The more miserable grow our economies the more pretentious grow professional economists. […] Statism is based on faith, not reason. The Black Stone – the primordial artifact – of the Kaaba of canonical economics today is the claim that the free market somehow caused, and failed to cure, the Great Depression. Axel Kaiser directly and capably critiques this, the very foundational myth upon which statism, that most modern of religions, is built. He capably strips away much of the veneer of theoretical legitimacy upon which statism depends.”

Video,

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Filed Under: books, economics, Economist, HACER Tagged With: Fausta's blog

July 31, 2012 By Fausta

Milton Friedman centenary

The Man Who Saved Capitalism
Milton Friedman, who would have turned 100 on Tuesday, helped to make free markets popular again in the 20th century. His ideas are even more important today.

In the early 1990s, Friedman visited poverty-stricken Mexico City for a Cato Institute forum. I remember the swirling controversy ginned up by the media and Mexico’s intelligentsia: How dare this apostle of free-market economics be given a public forum to speak to Mexican citizens about his “outdated” ideas? Yet when Milton arrived in Mexico he received a hero’s welcome as thousands of business owners, students and citizen activists hungry for his message encircled him everywhere he went, much like crowds for a modern rock star.
…
Well over 200 million were liberated from poverty thanks to the rediscovery of the free market.

The folks at HACER are celebrating 100 years of Milton Friedman’s ideas with 10 events in 8 countries of the Americas

Thanks to the generous support of the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, HACER’s allies in Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, the United States and Venezuela will join efforts to celebrate Friedman’s life and legacy for freedom around the world.

Steven Hayward remembers Milton Friedman

My all time favorite Milton story involves the time he was motoring in Europe, and noticed a large group of men digging in a field with shovels. Milton asked someone why they didn’t use a steam shovel or earth mover, and was told that digging with shovels was an employment measure, and if they used an earth mover it would put people out of work. To which Milton naturally followed up: “Then why don’t you give them spoons?”

Thomas Sowell:

No one converted Milton Friedman, either in economics or in his views on social policy. His own research, analysis and experience converted him.

As a professor, he did not attempt to convert students to his political views. I made no secret of the fact that I was a Marxist when I was a student in Professor Friedman’s course, but he made no effort to change my views. He once said that anybody who was easily converted was not worth converting.

I was still a Marxist after taking Professor Friedman’s class. Working as an economist in the government converted me.

What Milton Friedman is best known for as an economist was his opposition to Keynesian economics, which had largely swept the economics profession on both sides of the Atlantic, with the notable exception of the University of Chicago, where Friedman was both trained as a student and later taught.

In the heyday of Keynesian economics, many economists believed that inflationary government policies could reduce unemployment, and early empirical data seemed to support that view. The inference was that the government could make careful trade-offs between inflation and unemployment, and thus “fine tune” the economy.

Milton Friedman challenged this view with both facts and analysis. He showed that the relationship between inflation and unemployment held only in the short run, when the inflation was unexpected. But, after everyone got used to inflation, unemployment could be just as high with high inflation as it had been with low inflation.

When both unemployment and inflation rose at the same time in the 1970s — “stagflation,” as it was called — the idea of the government “fine tuning” the economy faded away. There are still some die-hard Keynesians today who keep insisting that the government’s “stimulus” spending would have worked, if only it was bigger and lasted longer.

This is one of those heads-I-win-and-tails-you-lose arguments. Even if the government spends itself into bankruptcy and the economy still does not recover, Keynesians can always say that it would have worked if only the government had spent more.

Although Milton Friedman became someone regarded as a conservative icon, he considered himself a liberal in the original sense of the word — someone who believes in the liberty of the individual, free of government intrusions. Far from trying to conserve things as they are, he wrote a book titled “Tyranny of the Status Quo.”

Milton Friedman proposed radical changes in policies and institution ranging from the public schools to the Federal Reserve. It is liberals who want to conserve and expand the welfare state.

As a student of Professor Friedman back in 1960, I was struck by two things — his tough grading standards and the fact that he had a black secretary. This was years before affirmative action. People on the left exhibit blacks as mascots. But I never heard Milton Friedman say that he had a black secretary, though she was with him for decades. Both his grading standards and his refusal to try to be politically correct increased my respect for him.

My favorite Friedman clip: when he pops Donahue’s balloon,


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Filed Under: business, economics, HACER Tagged With: Fausta's blog, Milton Friedman

April 14, 2012 By Fausta

HACER’s workshop

My friends at the Hispanic American Center for Economic Research held their VII International Workshop: Leadership, Virtue & Citizen Participation in Washington, DC,

• Analyze and discuss the most current public policy issues in the Americas.

• Learn about the main challenges of the region’s relations with the United States and the world.

• Visit the main ally think tanks in Washington DC, to meet their representatives, learn about their main programs and the different ways that we contribute to the cause of freedom and democracy around the world.

HACER is steadfast in promoting leadership in our hemisphere, and this workshop is an excellent example.

If you are interested in future workshops, you may contact them here.

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Filed Under: HACER, Latin America Tagged With: Fausta's blog

June 30, 2011 By Fausta

HACER: The must-read on Latin America

Anyone looking for reliable information on news and politics on our hemisphere should read every day HACER Weekly News Report USA and HACER Latin American News.

HACER,

The Hispanic American Center for Economic Research (HACER) is a 501(c)(3) organization that is supported entirely through gifts from individuals, philanthropic foundations, and corporations.

HACER is devoted to promote the study of issues pertinent to the countries of Hispanic America as well as Hispanic Americans living in the United States, especially as they relate to the values of personal and economic liberty, limited government under the rule of law, and individual responsibility.

HACER Latin American News is a particularly valuable resource. The compendium of articles in Spanish and English, collected from media reports from two dozen Latin American countries, is thorough, informative, and up-to-the minute. It is an invaluable resource, on which I rely for my everyday blogging.

Add their feed to your feedreader, bookmark them, and read them every day.

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Filed Under: HACER, Latin America Tagged With: Fausta's blog

November 14, 2010 By Fausta

Uribe awarded HACER prize

Good news from HACER,

Last Friday the Hispanic American Center for Economic Research (HACER) awarded Álvaro Uribe, the former President of Colombia, their Simón Bolívar Prize for his work on promoting liberty, security and democracy in Colombia and the Americas.

Uribe, who left office after completing his term with a 75% approval raiting, led the country during its most effective struggle against the FARC. During his tenure, murders dropped by 45 percent from 2002-2009, and kidnappings decreased by 90 percent. At the start of his administration nearly two-thirds of the country’s land was under the control of the FARC, which now has retreated to the more isolated regions of the country. The country’s economy also improved, as its poverty rate dropped from 54% to 46%.

During the award reception, Uribe spoke about what had been achieved in Colombia and about Latin America’s challenges. Among the attendees was Oscar Morales, founder of Un Millón de Voces contra las FARC (A Million Voices Against FARC). Ambassadors Otto Reich and Robert Noriega, and Congressman David Rivera (R-Fl) were also in the audience.

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Filed Under: Alvaro Uribe, Colombia, HACER Tagged With: Fausta's blog

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