IBERO-AMERICAN NEWS DIGEST
Argentine Daily Covers Italian Resolution for New Financial System
Under the headline, "Unanimous Resolution of the Parliament. Strong Italian Support for Argentina," the Argentine daily Clarin Sept. 26 reported on the Italian Parliament resolution calling upon the Berlusconi government "to use all possible instruments to aid Argentina" (see INDEPTH "Italian Government Votes for New World Financial System"). The resolution brought about "one of those rare moments of political unity between the government and the opposition," Clarin) stated. The difference between that and the "red hot" and "furious debate" over Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's support for Bush's war which preceded the discussion of the Argentine initiative, clearly impressed Clarin's correspondent, who emphasizes that every parliamentary group signed the initiative, and that it was motivated by Vice Foreign Minister Mario Baccini.
The one important part of the resolution which Clarin notably did not mention, was the first paragraph asserting the systemic nature of the crisis. Perhaps, Clarin's editors feared that would have made the "LaRouche hand" in this too obvious to its Argentinian readers. Nor did it dare mention that Lyndon LaRouche had been cited in the debate. It did, however, report that "one of the Parliament's decisions is the call for Italian initiatives in the international bodies, to propose a financial architecture to sustain the real economy and avoid 'speculative bubbles' and financial crashes' of nations such as Argentina" (emphasis in original).
Baccini, Clarin recalls, visited Buenos Aires last May, and signed two loans for $91 million, the first international credit which Argentina had received "in the most dramatic moments of the crisis which Argentina is suffering." He will return in the last week of October, on a trip that also takes him to Chile and Uruguay.
U.S. Treasury Secretary O'Neill Calls Meeting of Finance Ministers
U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill called a meeting of the Finance Ministers of the Americas (minus Cuba) for the morning of Sept. 27, in order to have "a frank and open discussion of economic issues affecting the hemisphere," a Treasury Department statement announced. The meeting will take place before the opening of the annual International Monetary Fund-World Bank meeting in Washington, D.C. "Recent economic developments" and "improving financial stability" are on the agenda, the statement admits, the closest it gets to even hinting at the crisis which led them to call the meeting.
Colombia's Uribe Falls into IMF Trap
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has fallen into the IMF's trap of demanding greater austerity, in the form of deep budget cuts and more taxes on the population, in exchange for U.S. and other financial aid to expand his country's war on narcoterrorism. As the LaRouche movement in Colombia has repeatedly insisted, no war on narcoterror can succeed without an emergency economic reconstruction program as its underpinning.
On the eve of a trip to the U.S. to meet with President Bush, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and the IMF, Uribe called on the population to "endure." "We will all make this effort: the business sector and citizens contributing with taxes; workers and retirees delaying pension increases to guarantee future monthly payments." Uribe also said that although Colombia "will continue to comply with debt payments," he called on the financial system to "understand that we must pay the social debt to a nation suffering much misery," and that therefore the nation needed "long-term international credits, at reasonable interest rates." He then flew off to Washington, where he immediately met with top utopian Wolfowitz, who afterwards told the press that the Bush Administration was committed to working with Congress to give Colombia full support in its "fight for democracy." Uribe also met with Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and Secretary of State Colin Powell, before going on to confer with IMF and World Bank officials.
'Lula' da Silva Leads in Latest Brazil Polls
With only a week to go until Brazil's national elections Oct. 6, Jacobin "Lula" da Silva's lead in the polls is growing, so much so that it is possible he will be elected President in the first round. The latest polls show Lula running around 44%, while the government's candidate, Jose Serra, is polling 19-20% not surprising, given that this former Health Minister is running on the IMF's program. Wild card Ciro Gomes a former Finance Minister who has been part of a continental political project run by Harvard sociologist Roberto Mangabeira Ungar (along with Mexico's Carlos Salinas and Jorge Castaneda), but who has won the support of some nationalists is polling around 15%. Running last, at around 12%, is Anthony Garotinho, a leftist and former Governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro.
To win on the first round, a candidate has to receive one vote more than 50% of the valid votes cast, which generally means a candidate has to receive around 44% of the vote, once spoiled and invalid ballots are subtracted. If no candidate wins that much, a second round runoff between the two top vote-getters will be held Oct. 27.
Polls are just polls, however, and much could happen between now and Oct. 6, given world realities, including the way the Brazilian currency, the real, is plunging.
EIR Campaign Against 'Green Mafia' in Brazil Expands
EIR's explosive Portuguese-language book, Green Mafia: Environmentalism at the Service of World Government, has just been reprinted for the fourth time in Brazil this September, bringing the total printed so far to 10,000 copies since it first rolled off the press in March 2001.
This is the book which Prince Phillip's Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) Brazilian branch has done everything in its power to stop from circulating. The book has circulated widely in policy-making circles across the country, and it became the center of national debate in May 2001, when a Parliamentary Investigative Commission (CPI) set up by the Senate to investigate the Non-Governmental Organizations, held hearings and invited Lorenzo Carrasco, EIR's correspondent in Brazil, to testify at its opening session. The official Senate daily published a summary of Carrasco's remarks, as did various other Brazilian media, all of which identified him as the author of Green Mafia.
On July 25, 2001, the WWF-Brazil filed suit against EIR, requesting the courts order the seizure of all copies of Green Mafia, on the ludicrous grounds that EIR was violating a Temporary Restraining Order which prohibited a separate entity the Ibero-American Solidarity Movement (MSIA), a Brazilian political movement founded by co-thinkers of Lyndon LaRouche from campaigning against the WWF, or even from publishing any truthful statements about their genocidal intentions and actions. The WWF attempted to argue that EIR is no more than a front for the MSIA, and therefore its book should be seized.
The courts threw out WWF-Brazil's bogus suit against EIR, but its equally-bogus slander suit against the MSIA is still proceeding through the courts.
Regional Banker: Argentina Needs State Banks To Foster Economic Growth
Writing in the Argentine daily Clarin Sept. 13, former Banco de la Provinica president Rodolfo Frigeri argues that Argentina needs its state-sector banks, in order to foster economic development. This is the sentiment of most Argentines, who oppose the Duhalde government's agreement to sell to private interests, 10% of the stock of the state-owned Banco de la Nacion (BNA), and the provincial Banco de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, to comply with International Monetary Fund (IMF) demands for these banks' eventual privatization. There have already been angry public protests against this, and Banco de la Provincia's current president, Ricardo Gutierrez, told El Cronista that "to talk about privatizing state banks, with all the problems the economy has today, is being out of touch with reality. There is no agreement to do that."
Frigeri zeroes in on the real reason for the IMF's demand. Look at the opposing goals of private and state-run banks, he proposes. Private banks, which in Argentina are largely foreign-owned, seek to maximize their profits. But the operations of public banks "have a lot to do with the development plans encouraged by the nation, the province, the region or municipalities. Their efficiency doesn't lie in demanding immediate payment from the farmer whose [farm] has been flooded, or the producer in crisis, but to do everything possible to aid their recovery, even at the cost of rescheduling their debts." This is what the IMF calls "inefficiency."
The IMF experts who propose the banks' privatization "don't feel obligated to understand the human dimension of economic development," Frigeri says. And, he adds, whatever happened to their commitment to free enterprise why do they fear letting private banks compete with state banks? Everyone knows that, were there no public banks, "interest rates, as well as the list of productive sectors deserving of credit, and the decision to finance them, would be made many kilometers from Argentina [on Wall Street], and that large sectors of the country, today serviced exclusively by public banks, could remain marginalized."
Paraguay Faces 'Worst Economic Crisis in 20 Years'
"If we don't get an IMF loan for $200 million, we will barely survive," said Paraguay's Finance Minister James Spaulding in desperation, Sept. 19. Spaulding added that his country is suffering "the worst economic crisis in the last 20 years." The Finance Minister's warning, made to Radio Cardinal, come in the midst of growing social upheaval, sparked by the IMF's demands for Congressional approval of new austerity measures, which this impoverished nation cannot tolerate.
On Sept. 23, some 60 business, trade union, and social organizations are striking nationwide to protest the very "fiscal adjustment" law the IMF demands which, among other things, calls for increasing the value-added tax (VAT) from 10% to 11%. At the last minute, the government tried to prevent the strike by offering to lower a proposed gasoline-price increase, but this was rejected. Farmers in five southern provinces were scheduled to be out on the roads, in their tractors, and vowed to caravan all the way to the national capital, Asuncion, "if necessary," to force the government to withdraw the austerity legislation.
Spaulding, meanwhile, reported that he had received a letter from the IMF, expressing concern that the austerity legislation hadn't yet been approved by the entire Congress.
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