For millennials, Sanders is a grandpa who gets them

Bernie Sanders' poll numbers high among millennials -- not surprising, as his platform addresses their concerns
She says Hillary Clinton can come off as inauthentic, conventional; Sanders as a grandpa so uncool he's cool


Bernie Sanders is no one's idea of a camera-ready presidential candidate. He's a "democratic socialist" running against an icon of the Democratic establishment. (And as satisfying as anti-establishment sentiment may feel for some right now -- the establishment is still pretty damn important.)

His white hair is kind of wild, he's awkward, doesn't smile much, he hunches over and waves his arms when he speaks. He campaigns in rolled-up shirtsleeves and has pens in his shirt pocket.

When it comes down to it, his radical policy positions and general cranky-grandpa vibe don't exactly scream "President of the United States."

And yet -- his surging popularity and recent poll numbers from Iowa and New Hampshire have surprised many and sent the media into a frenzy.



Dasha Burns

People are especially stunned by the power this old man has with young voters, building a clear lead over Clinton in this demographic in key states, according to a USA Today/Rock the Vote poll.

Some find this reminiscent of the Obama campaign, fueled in large part by the young people its "change" message managed to engage. But this wasn't so surprising with a fresh-faced young black senator. What's shocking and setting the media ablaze today is that many millennials seem even more invigorated by a 74-year-old white man from Vermont calling for revolution.

Just about everything that the Sanders campaign espouses hits home for the millennial generation -- even more so than Obama's run in 2008.

Socially liberal, saddled with mountains of student debt, disillusioned with the status quo and eager to break with traditional models -- it's no wonder millennials respond to Sanders' Uncle Sam-style finger-pointing. Next to this disheveled firebrand, the well-oiled "Clinton machine" can at times come off as too measured, inauthentic and conventional.



Hillary Clinton disputes Bernie Sanders' lead in Iowa 01:29

Anyone who is surprised by this hasn't been paying attention to the social and economic trends confronting young people. It's inspirational ideologue versus sober pragmatist. Now think: How many 20-somethings you know would eagerly opt for a sober pragmatist?

Many young people don't pay attention to politics because they grew up watching their parents quarrel and come undone over finances while the government bailed out big banks. Morale really hit a low as we were figuring out how to pay (or repay) for college while realizing the promised exchange of higher education for good job was a myth from generations past.

Millennials have watched as the government shut down and gridlock stalled progress, and many have lost faith that the government can accomplish anything, let alone something that might actually benefit them. They see their representatives as too entrenched in gamesmanship to take a stand on what matters to constituents.





The Bernie Sanders surge

Then suddenly -- in from left field-- comes a candidate touting income inequality as his primary platform. He's calling for things most politicians would never be bold enough to demand. And he's doing so loudly, unconventionally, and with a wonky, crotchety nerdiness so uncool it's become completely cool.

Where his opponents call for affordable college education, he demands free college education. When Clinton was asked, "Should corporate America love Hillary Clinton?" she responded, "Everybody should." When asked the same question, without a flinch Sanders admitted, "No I think they won't. ... Wall Street will like me even less."

Not only has he embraced the tenuous title of "socialist," but he's unafraid to condemn capitalism. He is outwardly angry at the influence of big money in politics, advocating for aggressive change. And his is the only "people-powered campaign" in the race, not dependent on super PACs or billionaire donors.





Imagine a 'President Bernie Sanders'

He's not playing what has become, in the uncivil present day, "traditional politics." Rather than sling mud at his opponents, he sticks hard to the issues at hand. He admits at debates when he agrees with opponents; he even apologized, and explained, to Clinton after his aides breached her campaign's proprietary voter lists. And he refused to answer one interviewer's frivolous questions about Clinton's hair.

All of this makes him feel genuine and refreshing -- especially because he's held steadfastly to his beliefs since long before his hair turned white. He's giving us the comfort of stability along with the excitement of radicalism.

So it makes sense that younger people have rallied behind this idealistic anti-establishment attitude -- we've historically loved sticking it to the man. Especially with the challenges facing most millennials, it's taken someone far from the norm to wake those sedated by lethargy, dejection and skepticism.

It's doubtful (despite the media hype) that this will translate into a nomination, and even less likely a win. But in any case, Sanders has pushed us all, including Clinton, to embrace a youthful sense of aspiration while reinvigorating a demographic that threatened to turn away.

Francia: a un año de las elecciones, Hollande declaró la emergencia económica

François Hollande

El presidente francés François Hollande declaró el estado de emergencia económica y dictó un plan de urgencia en favor del empleo por un monto de "más de 2.000 millones de euros", financiados por recortes presupuestarios y sin aumento de impuestos.

"Esos 2.000 millones de euros serán financiados sin tasas suplementarias de ningún tipo, es decir que serán financiados por economías", dijo Hollande al presentar una serie de medidas para luchar contra el desempleo, que afecta a más de tres millones y medio de personas en Francia, es decir más del 10% de la población activa.

En un discurso de año nuevo ante los sectores económicos del país, el presidente recordó que un millón de desempleados no tienen el secundario y anunció un plan para formar a medio millón de personas, al que se destinarán mil millones de euros.

Acusado por la oposición de querer hacer bajar artificialmente las cifras del desempleo cuando falta un año para la elección presidencial, Hollande sostuvo que su plan no es un "artificio estadístico".

Anunció asimismo el otorgamiento a las empresas de menos de 250 empleados de un subsidio de 2.000 euros anuales por cada contratación de empleados pagados hasta 1,3 veces el salario mínimo.

En momentos en que se prepara una reforma del código laboral, Hollande indicó que las empresas podrán "modular más" el tiempo de trabajo "en interés del empleo".

Desde la CTA aseguran que la inflación será del 40%

"Esa inflación del 25 por ciento no se la cree nadie... "

El secretario general de la Central de Trabajadores Argentinos (CTA), Hugo Yasky, aseguró que "la inflación proyectada es del 40 por ciento", y advirtió que las organizaciones sindicales no pueden aceptar "que se condicione la paritaria".



"Esa inflación del 25 por ciento no se la cree nadie, ni el propio ministro (de Economía, Alfonso Prat Gay). Las consultoras privadas, incluso algunas cuyos dueños están en el Gobierno, dan un 40 por ciento de inflación proyectada", expresó.


En declaraciones a radio Rock&Pop, el sindicalista reclamó "defender el salario" y que "la rueda de la economía la mueva el mercado interno".


"Hay que defender el salario, que la rueda de la economía se mueva con el mercado interno. Todos los espejitos de colores, de la entrada de dólares, las inversiones y todo ese verso que están haciendo por ahora no llegan. La realidad muestra otra cosa", apuntó.


En ese sentido, acusó al Gobierno de "generar desocupación deliberadamente" para limitar la discusión salarial.


"Es una política dirigida a generar desocupación deliberadamente, sobre todo en el sector público, y con eso intentar que el chantaje que expresó el ministro de Economía (Alfonso Prat Gay), que dijo que había que pensar en defender los puestos de trabajo antes del salario, pueda tener un escenario en el que se pueda cumplir", expresó.


Por eso, Yasky advirtió que "la pelea de las organizaciones sindicales pasa justamente por defender el empleo pero también defender el salario", y dijo que "de ninguna manera se puede aceptar que se condicione la paritaria, que tienen que ser libres, y que el Gobierno las tiene que convocar ya para empezar a discutir lo que se perdió de los salarios.

How much development data is enough?

Rapid advances in technology have dramatically lowered the cost of gathering data. Sensors in space, the sky, the lab, and the field, along with newfound opportunities for crowdsourcing and widespread adoption of the Internet and mobile telephones, are making large amounts of information available to those for whom it was previously out of reach. A small-scale farmer in rural Africa, for example, can now access weather forecasts and market prices at the tap of a screen.



Source: ‘Big Data, Big Impact’ World Economic Forum report.

This data revolution offers enormous potential for improving decision-making at every level – from the local farmer to world-spanning development organizations. But gathering data is not enough. The information must also be managed and evaluated – and doing this properly can be far more complicated and expensive than the effort to collect it. If the decisions to be improved are not first properly identified and analyzed, there is a high risk that much of the collection effort could be wasted or misdirected.

This conclusion is itself based on empirical analysis. The evidence is weak, for example, that monitoring initiatives in agriculture or environmental management have had a positive impact. Quantitative analysis of decisions across many domains, including environmental policy, business investments, and cyber security, has shown that people tend to overestimate the amount of data needed to make a good decision or misunderstand what type of data are needed.

Furthermore, grave errors can occur when large data sets are mined using machine algorithms without having first having properly examined the decision that needs to be made. There are many examples of cases in which data mining has led to the wrong conclusion – including in medical diagnoses or legal cases – because experts in the field were not consulted and critical information was left out of the analysis.

Decision science, which combines understanding of behavior with universal principles of coherent decision-making, limits these risks by pairing empirical data with expert knowledge. If the data revolution is to be harnessed in the service of sustainable development, the best practices of this field must be incorporated into the effort.

The first step is to identify and frame frequently recurring decisions. In the field of development, these include large-scale decisions such as spending priorities – and thus budget allocations – by governments and international organizations. But it also includes choices made on a much smaller scale: farmers pondering which crops to plant, how much fertilizer to apply, and when and where to sell their produce.

The second step is to build a quantitative model of the uncertainties in such decisions, including the various triggers, consequences, controls, and mitigants, as well as the different costs, benefits, and risks involved. Incorporating – rather than ignoring – difficult-to-measure, highly uncertain factors leads to the best decisions.

When put in the service of sustainable development, such a model will often involve projecting the impact of interventions on livelihoods and the environment over several decades. This process is most successful when stakeholders as well as experts are recruited to identify the relevant variables and their relationships. These participants must be trained to provide quantitative estimates of their uncertainty for the different variables. For example, experts might estimate with 90% confidence, based on available data and their own experience, that farmers’ average maize yields in a given region are 0.5-2 tons per hectare.

The third step is to compute the value of obtaining additional information – something that is possible only if the uncertainties in all of the variables have been quantified. The value of information is the amount a rational decision-maker would be willing to pay for it. So we need to know where additional data will have value for improving a decision and how much we should spend to get it. In some cases, no further information may be needed to make a sound decision; in others, acquiring further data could be worth millions of dollars.

This process is repeated until there is no further value in acquiring data and a sound decision – a logical conclusion, based on the information, values, and preferences of the decision-makers or decision-making body – is reached. It provides decision-makers and stakeholders insights into how to improve policies to maximize positive outcomes and reduce risks, such as the possibility of low rates of adoption or limited institutional capacity for effective implementation.

It is not enough simply to assume that the data revolution will benefit sustainable development. Ensuring that it does will require recognizing the importance of rigorous analysis in every data-collection effort and the formation of a new generation of decision scientists to work alongside policymakers. .

Poverty: the past, present and future

With the new Global Goals agreed this autumn (UN 2015), the issue of poverty is at the top of global agenda. In a new book, The Economics of Poverty: History, Measurement and Policy, I review past and present debates on poverty, in rich and poor countries.1

The book strives to provide an accessible synthesis of economic thinking on key questions:
How is poverty measured?
How much poverty is there?
Why does poverty exist?
What can be done to reduce and even eliminate it?

The main lessons that emerge from the book on the challenges in thinking and action about poverty going forward are:

A transition in thinking

In reviewing the history of thought on poverty, I was struck by how much mainstream thinking has changed over the last 200 years. We see a transition in the literature and policy debates between two radically different views of poverty. Early on, there was little reason to think that poor people had the potential to be anything other than poor; poverty would inevitably persist. Prominent thinkers even argued that poverty was necessary for economic advancement, since without it, who would farm the land, work the factories and staff the armies? Avoiding hunger was the necessary incentive for doing work.



This way of thinking still left a role for policy in providing a degree of protection from shocks, which helped assure social stability in the wake of crises. The protection motive for antipoverty policy goes back well over 2,000 years in both Western and Eastern thought. While the need for social protection was well understood in principle among the elites, their support tended to fade in normal times, and often needed to be re-established in new crises. However, mass poverty was largely taken for granted. Beyond short-term palliatives to address shocks, there was little or no perceived scope for public effort to permanently reduce poverty. Promotional anti-poverty policies made little sense to those in power.

In the second, modern view, not only is poverty seen as a social ill that can be avoided through public action, but doing so is seen as perfectly consistent with a robust growing economy. Indeed, the right anti-poverty policies are expected to contribute to that growth by removing material constraints on the freedom of individuals to pursue their own economic interests. Poverty was no longer seen as some inevitable, even natural, condition, but as something that could and should be eliminated.

The state came to be given a prominent role in helping to assure that all individuals have access to the essential material conditions for their own personal fulfilment—arguably the most important requirement for equity, but also the key to breaking out of poverty traps. Anti-poverty policy came to be seen as a matter of both promotion and protection. Along with rising real wages and (hence) savings by poor people, public education systems, sound health systems and reasonably well-functioning financial markets were deemed to be crucial elements for the next generation to escape poverty, for good.

This transition in thinking came with much struggle. Many people came to protest, join community or religious groups, labour and civil-rights movements, or political coalitions of one sort or another to lobby for governmental action to help fight chronic poverty in multiple dimensions. The resistance to their efforts was often strong, and a great many brave people sacrificed their liberty and even their lives in those struggles over centuries.

Successful promotion policies took time to evolve, and were invariably mediated by politics. However, in due course, a self-reinforcing cycle emerged in the successful countries to help assure a sustained and (over time) more rapid escape from absolute poverty. Success in implementing partial antipoverty policies often fostered success in securing broader coverage and implementing new initiatives.

Progress has been slow in some periods and the cycle has been broken at times, with many setbacks. The history of thinking and action on poverty provides ample illustrations of the fragility of the progress that has been seen. Each major step forward was followed by a backlash in thinking and policymaking. We still see this today, with poor people being blamed for their poverty and even criminalised. But, as we strive to support efforts against poverty going forward, it is important to acknowledge the progress that has been made.

Progress against poverty

The new millennium still has roughly one billion people in the world living in poverty (by the standards of what “poverty” typically means in the poorest countries). While the data are far from ideal, as best can be determined, there were also about one billion people in the world living in such poverty 200 years ago. The difference is that then they accounted for about four out of five people in the world, while today they account for one in five.

Since 2000 the developing world has been reducing the extreme poverty rate at about one percentage point per year—over three times the long-term annual rate for the world as a whole over the last 200 years. If this progress can be maintained, then the developing world will eliminate at least the most extreme forms of absolute poverty in a much shorter timespan than did today’s rich world. We should not, however, presume that the developing world’s new pace of progress against poverty will automatically be sustained. That will require good policies, and a measure of good luck.

Challenges to eliminating extreme poverty

There are two distinct paths going forward. The low-case, ‘pessimistic’ trajectory entails that the developing world outside China regresses back to the relatively slow progress of the 1980s and 1990s. On this path, it would take another 50 years or more to lift one billion people out of poverty. This would surely be judged a poor performance. By contrast, an ‘optimistic path’ would be to maintain the higher growth rate for the developing world as a whole seen since 2000 without a rise in overall inequality. If that could be achieved then we can be reasonably confident of lifting that one billion people out of extreme poverty by sometime around 2030 (Ravallion 2013).

What are the principle challenges in assuring that the second path is followed? Among the list of threats one can identify to attaining that goal, inequality stands out as a major concern today. Rising inequality can mean that growth largely by-passes poor people. This has been happening in some countries of the rich world, including the US. Experience among developing countries has been varied. Inequality falls about as often as it rises in growing developing countries, although absolute poverty measures tend to fall with growth. High-inequality countries have a harder time reducing poverty in that they typically need higher growth rates than low-inequality countries to attain the same pace of progress against poverty, and their high inequality often makes that growth even harder to attain.

In thinking about the implications for policy it is important to un-pack inequality—to identify the specific dimensions most relevant to progress against poverty. Inequalities in access to good quality schooling and health care stand out in many developing countries today. In many rural economies, inequalities in access to land (including insecurity of rights over land) also remain an impediment to pro-poor growth. Gender inequalities stand out everywhere, though not just in terms of command over material goods.

More pro-poor policies call for better quality public institutions and services that are inclusive of the needs of poor people. With the required political will there is much that can be done to improve health and education services in poor places and in making legal systems more inclusive. These are high priorities for antipoverty policy everywhere. While the “heavy-lifting” against poverty will probably continue to come from pro-poor growth processes, there is also an important supportive role for redistribution and insurance using state-contingent transfers, ideally financed primarily by domestic taxation. And that role is unlikely to be temporary; all countries need a permanent safety net. In thinking about the (many) options, policymakers in developing countries should be more open to the idea of only broadly targeted and largely unconditional transfers (as distinct from finely targeted conditional transfers). Improving tax systems in poor countries to expand the revenue for domestic antipoverty policies must also be a high priority.

External development assistance should continue to play a role. This is ethically compelling in its own right but also as compensation for the costs rich countries impose on poor ones (such as through past contributions to the stock of greenhouse gases and the past injustices of colonial exploitation and trade restrictions). Aid has two important roles. First there will be emergency aid—short-term assistance to deal with crises. There will be concerns about moral hazard, which have to be taken seriously, but wealthier countries should be called upon to help poor countries deal with agro-climatic and other shocks. Second, development assistance should help foster the conditions for sustainable poverty reduction in the longer-term, including institutional development and building better public administrations (such as for domestic resource mobilisation).

It must be acknowledged, however, that the record of development aid has been uneven, and not always well-considered in the light of what we have learned about the economics of poverty. For example, a common view among aid donors is that they need to incentivise better policies—to use a carrot and stick approach, rewarding good efforts and punishing bad ones. This is a risky strategy and may well push fragile states into a poor-institutions trap (Ravallion 2016, Chapter 9).

Market failures are an important reason why inequality matters to progress against poverty. Credit market failures have been a prominent concern. The policy responses entail some combination of efforts to make markets and institutions work better for poor people and efforts to compensate for market failures through other means, including redistribution. Inequality can also undermine the potential for making such policies happen. Those who benefit from their ability to capture new opportunities will often resist reforms that try to assure broader access to those opportunities, also given that poor people on their own have little current capacity to compensate the non-poor losers from pro-poor reforms. History is full of examples. English industrialists in the 19th century lobbied against compulsory schooling and against bans on child labour, and helped stall those reforms for a long period. Indian industrialists in the post-Independence decades lobbied for trade protection that diminished the scope for poverty reduction through labour absorbing export-led manufacturing growth. Powerful landholders in both these countries (and elsewhere) effectively undermined the potential for land reforms and other redistributive policies. And in many countries, insiders in urban formal-sector labour markets (on both sides of the market) act to effectively restrict competition from outsiders.

‘Inequality’ is not a single idea, but takes many forms, and can be seen very differently by different people. This fact creates much debate—though sometimes this seems like a debate between ships passing in the dead of night, not seeing or understanding each other’s perspective. The differences in how inequality is perceived can also stall pro-poor economic policies. A good example is the reaction that some people (understandably) have to rising absolute inequality. The once widely-held ‘stylised fact’ of development that higher relative inequality is the unavoidable ‘price’ for growth and (hence) poverty reduction has been overturned in the light of new theories and evidence. Poor growing economies can and have avoided rising relative inequality, but they will have a much harder time avoiding rising absolute inequality—a rising absolute gap between the rich and the poor. And many citizens view inequality in absolute rather than relative terms. They are justified in taking that view; the concept of (relative) inequality held by most economists derives from an axiom that need not be accepted, and (indeed) appears to be rejected by many people. Those who view inequality as absolute and value it independently of poverty will see a trade-off between poverty and inequality. Ameliorating concerns about rising absolute inequality will almost certainly entail less progress against poverty.

Urban poverty is another challenge. The urbanisation of poverty—whereby poverty rates fall more slowly in urban areas than in rural areas—is to be expected in almost any developing country that is successful in reducing poverty overall. Urban economies create new opportunities that poor people in rural areas have often sought out to improve their lives. Distorted urban labour markets can readily create excessive urbanisation, as can the lack of effective public efforts to promote agriculture and rural development; indeed, many developing countries have gone even further in (explicitly or otherwise) taxing the rural economy to support the urban economy. Removing long-standing policy biases in both taxation and public spending remains a high priority for pro-poor growth. No less misguided are restrictions on migration and urban policies that under-supply services to poor urban residents, including rural migrants. Poor people are often trapped as the victims of policies that simultaneously repress agriculture while making life difficult for rural migrants. Development policymaking needs to be more neutral to these two sectors of economic activity. That will probably still entail an urbanisation of poverty, but that should not be a cause for alarm as long as poverty is falling overall.

The sustainability of poverty-reduction efforts poses a further set of challenges in assuring that we can reach the optimistic path. We do not want to reach the poverty-reduction target only to fall back in subsequent years. On an encouraging note, research has suggested that lower initial levels of absolute poverty at a given mean consumption foster higher subsequent rates of growth in average living standards in developing countries and help to ensure that economic growth itself is poverty reducing (Ravallion 2012). Thus, a ‘virtuous cycle’ can be anticipated that would help to ensure the sustainability of the reduction in poverty.

Relative poverty

The other side of the coin to falling absolute poverty is rising relative poverty. Economic growth has generally meant lower absolute poverty rates, but over time relative considerations have become more important. Such relative poverty is still poverty. Welfare concerns about relative deprivation and costs of social inclusion demand higher real poverty lines as average incomes grow (though it makes little sense for this to be a constant proportion of average income in developing countries). But progress against relative poverty will be slower. Even the optimistic path will leave another one billion or so people in the world who live above the frugal poverty lines typical of the poorest countries but are still poor by the standards of the countries they live in. This type of poverty can also be eliminated, but it will almost certainly require much stronger redistributive efforts than we have seen to date in most countries.

The policies are available. The bigger challenges ahead are in assuring the political will and administrative capabilities to implement and enforce sound anti-poverty policies, and in adapting them to differing circumstances and evolving knowledge about their efficacy.

El CELS advirtió por la "gravísima" detención de Sala: "Criminaliza la protesta"

El organismo consideró que “la detención es producto de una causa armada”. “Se le imputan vaguedades”, recalcó.

“Criminalizar las prácticas relacionadas con el ejercicio del derecho a la protesta conduce a una restricción de las libertades ​democráticas y a una aplicación ilegítima del derecho penal.”, apuntó el CELS. | Foto: CEDOC.

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El Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS), presidido por Horacio Verbitsky, emitió hoy un comunicado en el cual calificó como “gravísimo” el precedente de la protesta social luego de que detuvieran en Jujuy a la dirigente de la Tupac Amaru, Milagro Sala.

“Hoy la dirigente del movimiento Tupac Amaru Milagro Sala fue detenida en una causa en la que se la acusa de instigar a cometer delitos y de sedición. Estos hechos se le imputan porque, según el acta del Poder Judicial de la provincia de Jujuy, Sala dio indicaciones a otras personas para que ocuparan una plaza y otros lugares públicos"mediante arengas, señalamientos, ademanes y gestos​"​, indican desde el CELS.

“Según las autoridades judiciales esta actividad de persuasión tuvo por objeto que​​ ​un grupo de ​personas​ ocupe ​lugares públicos​ restringiendo la circulación de vehículos​, lo que configuraría un delito. El segundo delito que se le imputa, el de sedición, acusa a Sala se haberse ​alzado públicamente junto con los ​demás ​acampantes contra la decisión ​del gobierno de la provincia de Jujuy ​de ejecutar el Plan de Regularización y transparencia de cooperativas. Según el acta​, ​este diagnóstico surge de un informe del gobernador ​Gerardo Morales que afirma que hay personas que se niegan a aportar datos y por lo tanto obstaculizan la ejecución de​l Programa.”; agregan en el texto.

Milagro Sala continúa detenida y tiene una fuerte custodia policial

“Por lo que se conoce hasta el momento y surge del acta, la detención es producto de una causa penal que está armada de un modo similar a muchas que han pretendido criminalizar la protesta. A Sala se le imputan vaguedades y se le suman delitos para justificar una pena en expectativa que habilite su detención. En este caso, vemos no solo la decisión de criminalizar la protesta haciendo una interpretación formalista del delito de corte de calle sino también una formulación general de la instigación al corte de una vía pública. Y además, se agrega el delito de sedición con una imputación peligrosa, vaga y arbitraria”; detallan en el texto.

La detención de Milagro Sala y la perpetuación de la grieta

Si se siguiera el razonamiento del juez Raúl Eduardo Gutierrez, con las pruebas que se indican, cualquier liderazgo de una protesta social que se oponga a la implementación de una norma o de una resolución de gobierno podría implicar el delito de "alzarse públicamente para impedir la ejecución de una ley o resolución nacional o provincial". El fiscal de Estado Mariano Miranda también sostuvo en declaraciones públicas que la detención tuvo que ver con que Sala "se alzara en contra de las decisiones gubernamentales", indican.

“Criminalizar las prácticas relacionadas con el ejercicio del derecho a la protesta conduce a una restricción de las libertades ​democráticas y a una aplicación ilegítima del derecho penal.”, concluye el CELS en el escrito.

How will blockchain technology transform financial services?

It doesn’t feel like a revolutionary moment. A member of a small team from the Swiss bank UBS, holed up on the 42nd floor of London’s Canary Wharf, taps a screen and a bond is sold by a company called ABC to an investor called XYZ.

It is the type of transaction executed millions of times a day by banks globally but this dummy transfer is different. It was completed via an internal blockchain, the shared database technology that gained notoriety as the platform for the crypto currency bitcoin. Banks are now racing to harness the power of the blockchain technology, in a belief that it could cut up to $20bn off costs and transform the way the industry works.

UBS is not alone. Its skyscraper laboratory is part of a huge experiment taking place across several industries that is most pronounced in the finance world. Banks, insurers and companies ranging from IBM to PwC are trying to work out how they can adapt the technology that, in its simplest form, allows consumers and suppliers to connect directly and form online networks, removing the need for middlemen.

For the financial services sector it offers the opportunity to overhaul existing banking infrastructure, speed settlements and streamline stock exchanges, although regulators will want to be assured that it can be done securely. The developments potentially combine two of the most dynamic industries: the computing hub of Silicon Valley and the money management of Wall Street and the City of London.

“We could go the way that file transfer technology changed music, allowing new businesses like iTunes to emerge,” says Michael Harte, chief operations and technology officer at Barclays. “That is why there is such feverish activity at the moment.”

No central authority

Blockchain has been hailed by admirers as holding the revolutionary promise that the internet did two decades ago. Business figures from Microsoft’s Bill Gates to Richard Branson, the founder of the Virgin Group, have extolled its potential; on a trade mission to Asia in August, David Cameron, the UK prime minister, included a blockchain expert among his entourage.


Evangelists say the possibilities are limitless. Applications range from storing client identities to handling cross-border payments, clearing and settling bond or equity trades to smart contracts that are self-executing, such as a credit derivative that pays out automatically if a company goes bust or a bond that regularly pays interest to the holder.

Some go as far as to suggest that the technology even offers the potential to disrupt companies that have forged reputations as “disrupters”, such as Uber and Airbnb.

At its core, blockchain is a network of computers, all of which must approve a transaction has taken place before it is recorded, in a “chain” of computer code. As with bitcoin — the first application of the technology, applied to money — cryptography is used to keep transactions secure and costs are shared among those in the network. The details of the transfer are recorded on a public ledger that anyone on the network can see.

In the present system a central ledger is likely to act as the custodian of that information. But on a blockchain the information is transparently held in a shared database, without a single body acting as middleman. Advocates argue that trust is increased among the parties, as there is no possibility for abuse by someone in a dominant position.

The lack of a central authority is the very feature of bitcoin that provoked consternation among traditional financial institutions, most of whom gave it a wide berth. The wisdom of that seemed to be borne out when the crypto currency became bogged down in scandals ranging from its links to drugs money in the now-defunct black market website Silk Road to the disappearance of client assets at the collapsed bitcoin exchange Mt Gox.

Yet almost every big financial services institution has now overcome that initial suspicion. And the technology has swung from being a weapon wielded against the banks to being heralded as their ultimate back-office makeover, a bitter blow to the libertarians who conceived the idea of the blockchain to circumvent the global banking system.

“Suits are replacing hoodies and ripped jeans at blockchain conferences,” says Mark Buitenhek, head of transaction services at Dutch bank ING, which has hired a team of specialists to examine ways of using the technology to increase speed and cut costs in payments and trade finance.

Experiments, initially conducted in secret, have begun in earnest over the past year.

The desire to make a success of the technology, also described as a “distributed ledger”, is huge. It offers major rewards: cutting out inefficient banking intermediaries could save billions for consumers and the financial services industry, enthusiasts claim.


The technology could cut banks’ infrastructure costs for cross-border payments, securities trading and regulatory compliance by $15bn-$20bn a year from 2022, according to a recent report by Spanish bank Santander, management consultancy Oliver Wyman and venture capital investor Anthemis.

“In lots of areas it looks like the blockchain will work and it is easy to see how it could revolutionise finance,” says Rhomaios Ram, head of product management at Deutsche Bank’s global transaction banking division. “T he speed of execution is so much faster for securities settlement. [And] you can see how it could reduce the capital, that banks have to hold, against each trade.”

For big banks, scrambling to modernise their often outdated IT systems in the face of pressure from regulators, digital challengers and cyber criminals, blockchain represents an opportunity to rethink much of what they do.

The ability of the technology to provide an unforgeable record of identity, including the history of an individual’s transactions, is one area being eagerly explored. Intermeshing records could prove highly useful, insurers believe, in cross-checking an individual’s actions.
“If you have a secure distributed ledger it could be used to store validated ‘know your customer’ data on individuals or companies,” says David Grace, global financial crime leader at PwC, the professional services firm. “It’s a potentially global application that could provide more security over identity data and where that data are stored.”

Governments are also investigating its potential: Honduras is using blockchain to handle land titles while the Isle of Man has begun testing the technology with a registry of companies on the island. Longer term, a tamper-proof ledger could be used to hold medical records or develop transparent electoral voting systems.

Banking on the future

While they understand its potential, many financial institutions are still trying to work out whether blockchain technology offers a cost-cutting opportunity or represents a margin-eroding threat that could put them out of business. Banks are taking a variety of approaches in their search for answers.

Some have developed in-house models, such as Citigroup’s creation of Citicoin, a digital currency being tested in the bank’s laboratory. Others have chosen to invest in a specialist: Goldman Sachs led a $50m funding round for Circle Internet Financial, which aims to use bitcoin to handle consumer payments.

A third route has been to find a partner. Commonwealth Bank of Australia has teamed up with open source software provider Ripple to build a blockchain system for payments between its subsidiaries. Some banks, like Barclays and UBS, are working with blockchain start-ups through a technology incubator or accelerator programme.

UBS has a team of eight working in London’s Canary Wharf alongside start-ups in what it calls its Level 39 incubator — they graduated to the 42nd floor as the project grew. The collaboration, to investigate bond trading and the creation of its own currency, exposes a major problem that financial institutions are grappling with: whether membership of a distributed ledger network should be invitation only, and therefore more controlled, or not.

Bitcoin’s open source blockchain, described as a “permissionless” system, means it is decentralised and open to anyone. UBS and Microsoft are both working with blockchain start-up Ethereum, which runs a similar open source technology, and allows for the smart contracts that can execute trades automatically.

But many in banking, wary of losing their grip over operations or of upsetting regulators, see the future in closed, or permissioned-only, networks.

Almost two dozen of the world’s largest banks, including JPMorgan, UBS and Barclays, have thrown their weight behind R3 CEV, a start-up venture, to set up a private blockchain open only to invited participants who between them maintain and run the network. It forms part of an effort to build an industry-wide platform to standardise use of the technology.

“This isn’t going to happen with everyone working on their own: it’s got to be collaborative,” argues Hyder Jaffrey, head of the blockchain team at UBS.

There are about 300 technology start-ups, mostly in the US and UK, developing ideas for how to make blockchain work for financial services, according to PwC. Many of them are run by former senior executives at big banks, for example Blythe Masters, formerly from JPMorgan and now leading the blockchain start-up Digital Asset Holdings.

“You should be taking this technology as seriously as you should have been taking the development of the Internet in the early 1990s,” she told a recent audience. “It’s analogous to email for money.”

Venture capital has poured into the sector according to Coindesk, a bitcoin trade publication, with an estimated $462m committed between January and September this year, double the amount raised in the same period of 2014.

A question of security

Amid the fervour there is a recognition that it will be between two and five years before real-world, practical applications emerge. The technology will have to overcome serious hurdles to prove itself to be robust and secure and will need to win regulatory backing.

“The question in the end is how safe is all of this and would you put your life savings on the blockchain?” says ING’s Mr Buitenhek. “What do regulators and central banks do about it and can banks and regulators guarantee it?”

Vitaly Kamluk, principal security researcher at Kaspersky Lab, which advises clients on digital security, argues that the decentralised nature of distributed ledger technology has still to be reconciled with how such databases can be maintained cleanly and securely.

“The problem with malicious actors can be quite easily solved when it’s a centralised technology,” he says. “[But] this is yet to be solved in cases of decentralised architectures where each participant has equal rights and cannot enforce a sole decision.”

In June, the US Securities and Exchange Commission agreed a $20,000 settlement with California’s Sand Hill Exchange for offering trading in derivatives linked to private Silicon Valley companies, using the blockchain for settlement. The SEC ruled that Sand Hill was “illegally offering complex derivative products to retail investors”.

Other reactions have been warmer: the Bank of England is studying the technology and said in a recent paper that “it may be possible in the future — in theory, at least — for the existing infrastructure of the financial system to be gradually replaced by a variety of distributed systems”.

The technology is already handling a brisk business. On an average day more than 120,000 transactions are added to bitcoin’s blockchain, representing about $75m exchanged, according to blockchain.info. There are now 380,000 blocks; the ledger weighs in at nearly 45 gigabytes.

But it still has a long way to go before it can prove itself in the world of finance. For instance, it is not yet clear that the technology can be scaled up in an efficient enough way to meet the challenge.

“There was some hype six to nine months ago when you had to be talking about the blockchain,” says Didier Valet, head of corporate and investment banking at France’s Société Générale, which recently signed up to the R3 CEV venture. “[But] the jury is still out as to whether it will be revolutionary or not.”

#SiGanaMacri

Del jolgorio en redes sociales a la realidad del gobierno de derecha. Un ministro de Hacienda y Finanzas, minga de economía política. Metas de inflación, falacias y objetivo único. El despido de Víctor Hugo, congruente con el contexto. La Ceocracia chilena, una referencia. Política en Buenos Aires y la interna del PJ.

 Por Mario Wainfeld

#SiGanaMacri habrá despidos a granel y el gobierno amenazará con echar más gente.

Ja, ja, ja. Qué disparate. #CampañaDelMiedo.

Parte del debate público era así de berreta y falaz hace poco más de dos meses. Nada había que temer ni recelar si Mauricio Macri llegaba a la presidencia. Las redes sociales habilitan muchas variantes expresivas: el simplismo lapidario es de las más asiduas.

A despecho de consignas y chicanas veloces en el mundo virtual hay despidos, caramba. Algunos se retractan, forzados por las reacciones de los damnificados. Son minoría, dentro del conjunto.

Desde 1983 hubo acciones más devastadoras que la política económica ¡del primer mes! del macrismo. Pero las palabras las envolvieron o camuflaron de otro modo. Nadie fue tan virulento y extorsivo contra los trabajadores y los sindicatos como Alfonso Prat-Gay. Hasta Domingo Cavallo, su antecedente más cercano, apeló a la hipocresía, ese homenaje del vicio a la virtud.

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Por algo se llama así: No todo es mentira o chantaje en el discurso macrista: alguna verdad sobrevive como un islote en un océano. Por ejemplo, Prat-Gay no es “ministro de Economía” sino de Hacienda y Finanzas. Nada más certero. La “economía real”, la producción, el trabajo siempre han estado fuera del radar del otrora joven prodigio del glorioso JP (Morgan). Abundan en la historia ejemplos de ministros y de académicos capaces de conocer las enrevesadas y conflictivas “cadenas de valor”. Esas nimiedades jamás llamaron la atención del ex broker y banquero central.

Algo determinante lo diferencia de Marcelo Diamand, Axel Kicillof, Roberto Lavagna o Miguel Peirano (por citar protagonistas de distintos palos, en democrático orden alfabético), “Alfonso” sería incapaz de describir cómo se forma el precio de un Serenito o una lata de dulce de membrillo. Qué sectores, productivos o de servicios, se eslabonan y contienden en la elaboración del bien terminado, su ubicación geográfica, sus conflictos a lo largo del tiempo, cuáles son hegemónicos y cuáles subalternos. Ni hablar de cuál es mano de obra intensivo, cuál abona salarios pasables o de hambre, cuál evade impuestos. La economía política es un mundo ancho y ajeno para el ex apoderado de Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat.

De ahí que nadie deba sorprenderse (y muchos espantarse) si las sucesivas conferencias de prensa del ministro versan sobre las divisas o las metas de inflación.

Con mala fe, que ni siquiera convalidan sus diarios aliados ni la consultora del ministro Rogelio Frigerio, fija el tope inflacionario para 2015 en veinte o veinticinco por ciento. La mentira, burda, quedará probada en seis meses, como mucho. Claro que el gobierno no espera convencer sino amedrentar. La #EstrategiaDelMiedo ha llegado.

El mensaje apunta a bajar el techo de las paritarias, bajo el encantador slogan “cada cuál sabrá donde le aprieta el zapato”.

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La resonancia de lo callado: En el relato macrista, como en cualquier otro, lo silenciado es tan expresivo como lo dicho. O más. Prat-Gay jamás menciona indicadores sociales como metas o así más no fuera como referencias. Sabemos qué porcentaje de inflación falsea para 2016, cual fantasea para 2019. Cero alusiones acerca del índice de desempleo, del de trabajo informal, del achicamiento del PBI, del coeficiente de Gini que mide la desigualdad social. Son variables cuantificables que están fuera del menú de Cambiemos.

El gobierno empieza a reconocer que el corriente será un año flojito. En 2017, vaticina Prat-Gay, se liberarán las fuerzas de la economía y llegará el paraíso. Al paso que vamos, esas fuerzas deberán diseminarse para ir a buscar a domicilio a decenas de miles de personas hoy ocupadas porque estarán sin laburo. ¿Con qué nivel de empleo “cierra” el edén del libre mercado? Son preguntas incómodas que comienzan a hacerse urgentes.

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Concentrar es cerrar: #SiGanaMacri lo despedirán a Víctor Hugo Morales.

Ja, ja. Mirá que ridiculez paranoik #CampañadelMiedo.

Y lo echaron, caramba. Los hechos, por ahí, son más rotundos que las interpretaciones. Está filmado. Le cerraron el paso, literalmente. Quisieron impedirle hablar. Eso es diferente a una ruptura de contrato “entre privados”: es un mensaje ecuménico. Si se animan a plantarle agentes de seguridad a Víctor Hugo ¿qué puede esperar un modesto comunicador de provincias?

Una empresa grande invoca incumplimientos contractuales, no detalla uno. Y jamás lo intimó a cumplir con sus deberes. Tales conductas nada tienen que ver con la libertad de empresa y mucho contra la libertad de expresión. Armonizan con la derogación ilícita de la ley de Servicios de Comunicación Audiovisual. Se promueve la concentración económica, el sistema de medios hace juego con el conjunto.

Sin la medida pro monopólica dictada días anteriores el despido de Víctor Hugo podría interpretarse de cien maneras... con ella todo es más sencillo.

Hace más de treinta años que Víctor Hugo embellece al aire con su verba. Confronta no sólo política sino culturalmente. Hoy día una fracción importante de sus colegas maneja un vocabulario de cuatrocientas palabras, muchas de ellas son verbos mal conjugados. Conductores gangosos o chillones que manejan con dificultad el castellano aborrecen a un autodidacta cultivado que levanta el nivel de quienes lo escuchan. No todo es política en la vida: el síndrome Salieri también existe. Se podrá replicar: no se lo quita del medio porque su retórica sea armoniosa y hasta bella sino por cómo piensa. Guau.

Macri dice que no le conciernen esas cuestiones y tras cartón, en confesión involuntaria, lo acusa de “fanático”. El fanaticómetro oficial es un nuevo instrumento de medición y de exclusión. Se suma al militantómetro. Solo los kirchneristas son fanáticos o militantes. No así el historiador Luis Alberto Romero, quien en la reunión de doce intelectuales con el presidente propuso que se pusiera fin a los juicios contra los represores por el terrorismo de Estado. Ninguno de los otros invitados adhirió, ninguno consideró necesario manifestar algún disenso. Varios le comentaron informalmente a este cronista que la propuesta cayó mal y que no expresó al conjunto. Igual se pronunció y se parece como dos gotas de agua al editorial con que La Nación recibió a Macri.

Todo “hace sistema”, el todo es coherente con la suma de las partes.

#EstrategiaDeSilenciar

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No hay dos sin tres, cuatro...: Varios comunicadores “independientes” (sería más apropiado decir “con otra ideología”) deploraron que se silenciara una voz, tamaña voz. En cuestión de semanas han resonado críticas al macrismo provenientes de acerbos críticos del kirchnerismo. El penoso proceso de designación de nuevos miembros de la Corte Suprema es otro ejemplo.

La existencia de distintas posiciones confirma la vitalidad del Agora, refutando lecturas binarias de distintas procedencias. A la luz de la experiencia, el kirchnerismo más simplista debería repasar sus esquemas blanco-negro. La miopía para percibir grises impactó malamente en la segunda vuelta de las elecciones porteñas y dificultó sumar apoyos al ex gobernador Daniel Scioli en el ballottage. En la construcción de una alternativa opositora sería letal el sectarismo, que el ditirambo alimenta.

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La grasa y el Gym: Prat-Gay mencionó a “la grasa militante” y detonó toneladas de respuestas. Sin ningún afán de ahorrarle nada tal vez sea impropio suponer que el hombre conoce vericuetos de la historia nacional como la polisemia de la palabra “grasitas”. Educado en un colegio pago, recibido en una Universidad ídem, socializado en New York y London, su formación es más primitiva que lo que podría suponerse. Nada le quita mala fe a lo que dijo ni peligrosidad a sus actos, hablamos de su versación. Imposible saberlo del todo pero conociéndolo personalmente es más posible que pensara en la adiposidad del estado, ese viejo sonsonete liberal. Y que lo mezclara con la afición frívola al gimnasio (o “gym”, quién sabe) propia de una elite inculta, arrogante, cerrada, dispendiosa y hedonista.

Una imperdible nota del catedrático chileno Alberto Mayol publicada en la edición del miércoles de Página/12 compara la ya pasada experiencia chilena con “su Macri”, el ex presidente Sebastián Piñera. “¿CEOcracia? Déjà-vu Macri” www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elpais/1-290178-2016-01-13.html

Mayol reseña cómo una caterva de CEOs llevó a Chile a una debacle y a su derecha política a una dura derrota electoral al terminar su mandato. “Hoy Chile vive una crisis de la élite que no se hubiera precipitado con el dinamismo acontecido si la ritualidad política hubiese intentado, al menos, maquillar sus vínculos con el dinero. La política moderna no ha sido capaz consistentemente de domesticar la economía y ha operado con hipocresía (“debemos separar el poder político del dinero” decían, mientras hacían lo contrario). La política propuesta por Macri (y ya aplicada por Piñera) es el paso de la hipocresía al cinismo (“el poder político y el económico es lo mismo, y qué” se nos dice, transformando nuestra corrosiva sospecha en violenta certeza). Es un paso del vicio al horror y del horror a la complacencia. (...) La ausencia de profundidad desgasta ese capital que para los políticos actuales es incomprensible: la legitimidad. La compra del político por el empresario convertida en divertimento público y prostitución productivista del rentismo de un empresario ávido de caminos cortos, es un espectáculo que se desgasta con facilidad”.

La hipótesis de Mayol es razonable: gobiernos de esta prosapia son insustentables en democracia. Volvamos a la Argentina: la perspectiva de una acelerada pérdida de legitimidad de ejercicio se consolida en el día a día. De ahí a creer que ya se ha concretado, media un abismo. En el ínterin, en el largo plazo constitucional de cuatro años, la depredación pinta para ser tremenda.

Como en la era del ex presidente Carlos Menem, la frivolidad del elenco gubernamental va de la mano con la claridad de sus objetivos.

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La escalada: El discurso de Prat-Gay ecualiza con el obrar cotidiano del gobierno. Ninguna medida social interrumpe la seguidilla de decisiones que vuelcan la balanza a favor de los sectores concentrados dominantes. Solo la continuidad del Programa de Recuperación Productiva (Repro) altera el cuadro monocolor. Es una medida creada en 2002 y potenciada durante los gobiernos kirchneristas. Contracíclica, usada para evitar despidos. Habrá que ver su alcance actual. Todo modo, cero inventiva macrista pro trabajadores en el orden social y laboral. Se desbaratan derechos, se acallan voces, se reprime de modo llamativo para un gobierno validado por la mayoría.

Las palabras pueden confundir o dispersar. Es creciente la necesidad popular de oponerse o resistir o frenar. La correlación de fuerzas es adversa en parte por la gravitación de un estado poderoso que cambió de manos. En parte por carencias o contradicciones de los gobiernos anteriores. El porvenir inmediato dará la talla de dirigentes sindicales y políticos de variados pinés y trayectorias.

Al cierre de esta nota se conoce la detención de la luchadora social Milagro Sala. La represión de la protesta pega un salto cualitativo, preocupante. El tiempo y el espacio impiden más desarrollo en esta columna. Digamos, a cuenta, que el hecho divide aguas, exacerba violencias. Devela el rostro brutal del macrismo, sin ambages ni sutilezas y dejando atrás los discursos republicanos y los globos.

Estanflación PRO

Por Artemio López |



Ya hemos señalado que el régimen inflacionario esperado para este 2016 se ubica en torno al 40% anual, siguiendo el patrón de impacto que sobre precios domésticos, en especial alimentos y bebidas, tuvo la devaluación de 2014 y considerando que esta vez, inicialmente, el valor del dólar trepó 42%, bastante por sobre el nivel de 2014.
En este primer mes de gestión PRO no todo fue devaluación y existieron nuevas medidas económicas que tendrán gran impacto en el nivel de empleo. Hasta el momento de escribir esta columna, la administración PRO produjo 22 mil despidos en el sector público y paralizó la obra pública que afecta el empleo de 150 mil trabajadores.


Por otra parte, la secuencia de despidos en empresas privadas inició una saga de magnitud creciente y que ya no se detendrá, y no lo hará porque, a pesar de los mensajes de marketing primitivo que arroja el gobierno de derecha conservadora, es evidente que iniciamos un año signado por la estanflación, esto es estancamiento económico con altos niveles de inflación. Se trata de un contexto socioeconómico poco propicio para la generación de empleo genuino y muy adecuado para esperar más destrucción de puestos de trabajo, pérdida de empleo que incluso es utilizada ya como amenaza por el ministro Alfonso Prat-Gay, que advierte sobre la conveniencia de pactar salarios a la baja , so pena de agravar el desempleo.
Este panorama desbarata de raíz el eslogan PRO “Primer semestre de ajuste, segundo de expansión”, en rigor un revival menor del “Estamos mal pero vamos bien” que atravesó el menemato desde el inicio de aquella debacle neoliberal, prima hermana de esta nueva aventura que hoy propone como “gran novedad” el gobierno del PRO ( la UCR ya ha sido abolida).




Paradojas de la historia, el sombrío pronóstico de estanflación, que tantas veces augurara sin éxito Domingo Cavallo durante la década kirchnerista, finalmente se hace realidad y pega desde el inicio en la línea de flotación del gobierno PRO, formación partidaria que, el mismo pensador cordobés ha dicho, “posee los mejores equipos para gobernar la Argentina”.


Estanflación, entonces, es lo que llega y no el paraíso de inversiones y generación de empleo formal y bien pago que prometiera Mauricio Macri en el primer tramo de su campaña permanente. Pronóstico duro este de inflación con estancamiento económico y destrucción de empleo creciente, que ni siquiera proviene de las filas de las consultoras de la opo.


El oscuro vaticinio no resulta una ocurrencia del silenciado Víctor Hugo, que gracias a las ocurrencias del ministro Lombardi y su rara concepción de la pluralidad de voces, transita hoy su pico de popularidad como periodista y referente político-cultural enfrentando la censura gubernamental.


Todo lo contrario a lo esperado por los referentes PRO, como se observa en el gráfico, estanflación pronostican los amigos de la muy monona consultora Bloomberg, adivinos market friendly si los hay, al tiempo que los brujos también ubican la economía argentina sexta en el ranking de las diez peores economías del año que, ¡ay!, ya se inició con la peor temporada turística de la década en la costa atlántica.

Preocupante, entonces, el panorama socioeconómico a tan poco de iniciado el gobierno PRO, y cuando aún no ha dado comienzo el ciclo de paritarias que pondrá a prueba la capacidad de los hoy poderosos aparatos gremiales de permitir o no que el salario de los trabajadores pierda poder adquisitivo, aceptando o no actualizaciones por debajo de los niveles inflacionarios existentes y esperados, que se sabe son los más altos del planeta después de los que se registran en la ¡Venezuela chavista!

Volver a endeudarse

Fue una práctica en la Ciudad, y se replica en Buenos Aires y Nación: la tendencia del macrismo a incrementar el endeudamiento.

 Por Raúl Dellatorre


Le bastó un solo mes al gobierno de Macri para mostrar, mediante los instrumentos puestos en marcha, cuál será la orientación de su política económica. Devaluación, quita de retenciones a las exportaciones y el acercamiento a los fondos buitre han marcado el quiebre con la política anterior. Pero otro aspecto crucial de esta política ya empieza a articularse a pasos acelerados: la vuelta al endeudamiento. Siguiendo el mismo rumbo que el PRO implementó en los últimos ocho años en el Gobierno de la Ciudad, y que ya aplica en el gobierno de María Eugenia Vidal, el ensanchamiento de la deuda será “la fuente de recursos” con las que se alimentará el gobierno nacional para el pago de beneficios a grupos concentrados (a través de transferencia de recursos que resigna el Estado) o para “cumplir con el fallo” del juez Thomas Griesa. Es decir, asumir el pago de una suma que podría ascender a unos 20 mil millones de dólares a los fondos buitres, holdouts y otros acreedores no declarados aún que quedaron fuera de los canjes.

Alfonso Prat Gay se refirió durante la semana a esta deuda como el producto de la “desidia” del gobierno anterior por no haber llegado a un arreglo en Nueva York. “La basura no es nuestra pero no tenemos ningún problema de empezar a limpiarla: el juicio es parte de la basura que heredamos”, dijo el ministro. Esa limpieza ya tiene decidido el método: tomar deuda nueva con la banca extranjera para cancelar la vieja y así volver a poner en marcha ascendente el contador de la deuda, como ocurrió a partir de 1976, y se realimentó con la convertibilidad hasta que provocó el estallido de diciembre de 2001.

Los fondos buitre, vale recordar, obtuvieron ese “derecho” mediante la compra espuria de títulos caídos en cesación de pagos a partir de 2002, pagando menos del 30 por ciento de su valor nominal con el simple objeto de litigar en los tribunales neoyorquinos. La especulación era que le reconocieran el derecho al cobro por el valor de origen de los títulos (más intereses y resarcitorios) y no por lo que efectivamente pagaron al comprarlo. Con Griesa, lo lograron.

Esta práctica fue condenada por las Naciones Unidas a instancias de una propuesta argentina, con apoyo de 135 países. No obstante, el ministro de Hacienda y Finanzas fue tajante esta última semana al reconocer el derecho pleno de los fondos buitre y cuestionar, en cambio, la actitud de resistencia al pago del gobierno argentino hasta el último 10 de diciembre. “El no arreglo fue caro para la Argentina –aseguró–, este es el costo de lavarse las manos durante tantos años: donde debíamos tres mil ahora debemos 9882 millones de dólares. Son seis mil millones de dólares (producto) de desidia: no crean ni por un segundo el verso de que peleándonos con los buitres estamos beneficiando a los argentinos, no es así.”

Aquella cifra está referida a las deudas presentadas ante el tribunal de Griesa (buitres y me too), pero se estima que sumando otros bonos que no fueron al canje se llega a un total, computando intereses punitorios y resarcitorios, de 18 mil a 20 mil millones de dólares. Sobre esta suma, el gobierno macrista se limita a negociar si logra una quita sobre los punitorios y a cuánto podrá estirar los plazos de pago. Por lo pronto, ya salió a buscar plata al mercado para empezar a “cumplir con el fallo”.
Pool de bancos

Con el objetivo de fortalecer reservas y tener fondos disponibles para pagos de deudas, el gobierno negoció un préstamo de corto plazo con cinco grandes bancos extranjeros (JP Morgan, HSBC, Citibank, Deutsche y Goldman Sachs), “alquilando” títulos públicos como garantía. El mecanismo significa convertir letras intransferibles del Tesoro en poder del Banco Central (una deuda intra Estado) en títulos negociables en la plaza internacional (Bonar 2022, 2025 y 2027), que serán los que recibirán los bancos extranjeros. La operación, que se pretendía por un monto de 8000 millones, no se haría por una cifra mayor a 5000 millones de dólares.
Bono importadores y ampliación del Bonar 2020

La Secretaría de Finanzas informó que licitará, este miércoles, títulos con vencimiento en 2020 por mil millones de dólares, ofreciendo una tasa del 8 por ciento anual, un punto más que el Bonar 2017. El 29 de diciembre, había colocado bonos por otros 1046,5 millones de dólares destinados a cancelar deudas con importadores, Bonar 2016, con vencimiento en diciembre próximo. Ambos instrumentos prenuncian que la política del gobierno es la utilización de la emisión de deuda para contemplar distintas necesidades, tanto para cubrir déficit público como para atender compromisos externos.
Los antecedentes del PRO

En los ocho años que lleva a cargo del Gobierno de la Ciudad, el macrismo elevó la deuda del distrito en una proporción sin precedentes. La deuda en dólares más que se triplicó, pese a sus condiciones privilegiadas en cuanto al nivel de ingresos promedio de la población, cantidad de empresas radicadas que tributan impuestos, y lo reducido de su territorio.

En la provincia de Buenos Aires, la gobernadora Vidal había solicitado autorización al congreso para endeudarse en casi 100 mil millones de pesos este año, contra un presupuesto de 354 mil millones. Le autorizaron poco más de 60 mil, que de todos modos es más del doble de la deuda que tomó Daniel Scioli en su último año de gestión.

Si la recurrente opción por la deuda de los gobiernos macristas no se ha convertido aún, a nivel de la Nación. en la bola de nieve que siempre termina resultando el crecimiento de la deuda en Argentina, es porque arranca de un nivel bajísimo de endeudamiento que le dejó la gestión anterior.

Is Europe’s financial crisis pushing voters to the far-right?

I may not be the only finance professor who, when setting essay topics for his or her students, has resorted to a question along the following lines: “In your view, was the global financial crisis caused primarily by too much government intervention in financial markets, or by too little?” When confronted with this either/or question, my most recent class split three ways.

Roughly a third, mesmerized by the meretricious appeal of the Efficient Market Hypothesis, argued that governments were the original sinners. Their ill-conceived interventions – notably the US-backed mortgage underwriters Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as well as the Community Reinvestment Act – distorted market incentives. Some even embraced the argument of the US libertarian Ron Paul, blaming the very existence of the Federal Reserve as a lender of last resort.



Another third, at the opposite end of the political spectrum, saw former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan as the villain. It was Greenspan’s notorious reluctance to intervene in financial markets, even when leverage was growing dramatically and asset prices seemed to have lost touch with reality, that created the problem. More broadly, Western governments, with their light-touch approach to regulation, allowed markets to career out of control in the early years of this century.

The remaining third tried to have it both ways, arguing that governments intervened too much in some areas, and too little in others. Avoiding the question as put is not a sound test-taking strategy; but the students may have been onto something.

Now that the crisis is seven years behind us, how have governments and voters in Europe and North America answered this important question? Have they shown, by their actions, that they think financial markets need tighter controls or that, on the contrary, the state should repudiate bailouts and leave financial firms to face the full consequences of their own mistakes?

From their rhetoric and regulatory policies, it would appear that most governments have ended up in the third, fence-sitting camp. Yes, they have implemented a plethora of detailed controls, scrutinizing banks’ books with unprecedented intensity and insisting on approving cash distributions, the appointment of key directors, and even job descriptions for board members.

But they have ruled out any future government or central-bank support for ailing financial institutions. Banks must now produce “living wills” showing how they can be wound down without the authorities’ support. The government will wash its hands of them if they run into trouble: the era of “too big to fail” is over.

Perhaps this two-track approach was inevitable, though it would be good to know the desired end-point. Is it a system in which market discipline again dominates, or will regulators sit on the shoulders of management for the foreseeable future?

But what have voters concluded? In the first wave of post-crisis elections, the message was clear in one sense, and clouded in another. Whichever government was in power when the crisis hit, whether left or right, was booted out and replaced by a government of the opposite political persuasion.

That was not universally true – see Germany’s Angela Merkel – but it certainly was true in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and elsewhere. France moved from right to left, and the UK went from left to right. But voters’ verdict on their governments was more or less identical: things went wrong on your watch, so out you go.

But now we can see a more consistent trend developing. Three German economists, Manuel Funke, Moritz Schularik, and Christoph Trebesch, have just produced a fascinating assessment based on more than 800 elections in Western countries over the last 150 years, the results of which they mapped against 100 financial crises. Their headline conclusion is stark: “politics takes a hard right turn following financial crises. On average, far-right votes increase by about a third in the five years following systemic banking distress.”

The Great Depression of the 1930s, which followed the Wall Street crash of 1929, is the most obvious and worrying example that comes to mind, but the trend can be observed even in the Scandinavian countries, following banking crises there in the early 1990s. So seeking to explain, say, the rise of the National Front in France in terms of President François Hollande’s personal and political unpopularity is not sensible. There are greater forces at work than his exotic private life and inability to connect with voters.

The second major conclusion that Funke, Schularik, and Trebesch draw is that governing becomes harder after financial crises, for two reasons. The rise of the far right lies alongside a political landscape that is typically fragmented, with more parties, and a lower share of the vote going to the governing party, whether of the left or the right. So decisive legislative action becomes more challenging.

At the same time, a surge of extra-parliamentary mobilization occurs: more and longer strikes and more and larger demonstrations. Control of the streets by government is not as secure. The average number of anti-government demonstrations triples, the frequency of violent riots doubles, and general strikes increase by at least a third. Greece has boosted those numbers recently.

The only comforting conclusion that the three economists reach is that these effects gradually peter out. The data tell us that after five years, the worst is over. That does not seem to be the way things are moving now in Europe, if we look at France’s recent election scare, not to mention Finland and Poland, where right-wing populists have now come to power. Maybe the answer is that the clock starts ticking on the five years when the crisis is fully over, which is not yet true in Europe.

So politics seems set to remain a difficult trade for some time. And the bankers and financiers who are widely blamed for the crisis will remain in the sin bin for a while yet, until voters’ expectations of economic and financial stability are more consistently satisfied.

La grasa

Por Alfredo Zaiat


Los empleados públicos ya no son los malhumorados y vagos estigmatizados en el pasado por Antonio Gasalla, en lo que fue un aporte artístico involuntario para desprestigiar el papel del Estado en la sociedad. Ahora son ñoquis que pasan a cobrar por la ventanilla el 29 de cada mes sin trabajar. En la conferencia de prensa de ayer, el ministro de Hacienda y Finanzas, Alfonso Prat-Gay, sumó otra definición despectiva para personal estatal: son grasa. Y además son “grasa militante”. El ministro que intenta con escasa habilidad ser simpático con frases de Moria Casán, puntuando comentarios de uno de los periodistas elegidos para preguntar y cayendo en una laguna en la última pregunta, que lo obligó a dar por terminada la conferencia, expresó de ese modo que los despidos de empleados públicos forman parte de la estrategia de ajuste fiscal del gobierno de Mauricio Macri. Quedó en evidencia la concepción Prat-Gay acerca de una parte del empleo público: Es grasa sobrante en el cuerpo del Estado.

El empleo, público y privado, no parece ser una cuestión central en la estrategia de gestión de la economía del ministro. Ese desinterés lo dejó expuesto cuando se refirió a empleados estatales como “grasa que sobra”, al desentenderse de los despidos en empresas privadas y al advertir acerca de la posibilidad de la pérdida de puestos si la demanda en paritarias es más elevada que la tasa de inflación que él estima para el 2016.

Para bajar el déficit fiscal de 2,3 por ciento del PIB en 2015, que lo infló con contabilidad creativa hasta alcanzar el 7,0 por ciento con el único objetivo de sobrecargar la herencia económica para habilitar el ajuste, Prat-Gay informó que el reordenamiento del gasto implicará una reducción del déficit en 0,8 puntos porcentuales. Mencionó acciones sobre licitaciones irregulares que no precisó, en cambio se extendió con los denominados ñoquis. Aquí fue más explícito. Despedir empleados públicos, o en sus propias palabras: “Eliminar la grasa de la militancia”.

Varias compañías están reduciendo personal –metalúrgicas, Cerámica San Lorenzo, autopartistas, talleres textiles– y, ante una consulta acerca de esta situación, el ministro afirmó que es por culpa de la herencia de la economía kirchnerista. Si así fuera, cuestión que es discutible, el Estado exhibió en los últimos años una estrategia activa para frenar los despidos, que hoy está ausente con el macrismo. Mediante políticas específicas se pudo defender el empleo a través del plan Recuperación Productiva (Repro) que consistía en el pago de una porción del salario por un tiempo determinado por parte del Estado. O mediante subsidios directos por un lapso hasta la recuperación del mercado. Justificó despidos en empresas privadas por la supuesta pesada herencia del kirchnerismo. Para Prat-Gay es lógico entonces dejar desamparados a trabajadores.

Otro de sus mensajes al mundo del trabajo es que no tienen que ser muy exigentes con la demanda de recuperación salarial en paritarias luego del shock inflacionario que él provocó. El ministro difundió que la tasa de inflación esperada es del 20 al 25 por ciento. “Me tienen que creer” porque si no es así la economía “ajustará por cantidad”. Es la propuesta a sindicalistas y empresarios para fijar un techo a la paritarias. Advirtió que si no lo hacen y definen un aumento salarial más elevado que esos porcentajes ambos correrán riesgos. A las empresas les dijo que “venderán menos” y a los trabajadores los amenazó con que “habrá menos empleo”.

La economía que quiere Prat-Gay es con “menos grasa” pero no sólo del sector público. El adelgazamiento general del empleo está en función del ajuste fiscal y de establecer un nuevo estadio regresivo en la distribución del ingreso.

Is technology making inequality worse?

Although labor-saving innovation has been with us for a long time, the pace has picked up. Global sales of industrial robots, for example, reached 225,000 in 2014, up 27% year on year. More transformative, however, is the rise of “labor-linking” technology: digital innovations over the last three decades now enable people to work for employers and firms in different countries, without having to migrate.

These changes are captured by a remarkable statistical trend in high- and middle-income countries. Total labor income as a percentage of GDP is declining across the board and at rates rarely witnessed. From 1975 to 2015, labor income dropped from 61% to 57% of GDP in the US; from 66% to 54% in Australia; from 61% to 55% in Canada; from 77% to 60% in Japan; and from 43% to 34% in Turkey.

For emerging economies, the challenge of labor-saving innovation is mitigated in the medium term by labor-linking technologies. Emerging economies with cheap labor that can organize themselves well enough to provide basic infrastructure and security can benefit greatly from this global structural change.

We see this in the numbers. In 1990, just 5% of the Fortune 500 corporations were from emerging economies; now 26% are.

Chinese corporations feature prominently on the list. India’s information technology sector has taken off since the 1990s, lifting the entire economy’s growth rate. With business in 35 countries, Malaysia’s Petronas, founded in 1974, is now described as one of the new “seven sisters” – energy companies that dominate the global market.

To be sure, several emerging economies are beset by corruption and falling commodity prices; Brazil, where GDP is expected to contract by around 3% in 2015, is a prime example. Nonetheless, the only countries’ recording high rates of annual GDP growth are emerging economies, including Vietnam (6.5%), India, China, Bangladesh, and Rwanda (around 7%), and Ethiopia (over 9%).

What we are likely to see in 2016 and beyond is disparate performance, with emerging economies that are able to adapt to the new world forging ahead. Even while this happens, high- and middle-income countries will come under strain, as their workers compete for jobs in the globalized labor market. Their income disparities will tend to rise, as will the frequency and intensity of political conflict. To respond to this by blocking outsourcing, as some politicians propose, would be a mistake, for such countries’ higher production costs would cause them to be out-competed in global markets.

As the march of technology continues, these strains will eventually spread to the entire world, exacerbating global inequality – already intolerably high – as workers’ earnings diminish. As this happens, the challenge will be to ensure that all income growth does not end up with those who own the machines and the shares.

It is a challenge comparable to what the United Kingdom faced during the Industrial Revolution in the early nineteenth century. Until then, child labor was rampant and viewed as normal; workers routinely labored for 14 hours or more per day, with conservatives arguing that continuous toil helped build character (other people’s, needless to say). The activism of progressive groups, the writings of intellectuals, and the enormous effort that went into crafting the Factory Acts curtailed these abhorrent practices, enabling the UK to avert disaster and become a powerhouse of growth and development.

How dramatically our thinking has changed can be seen from archival records. In 1741, promoting his new roller spinning machine, John Wyatt pointed out how his innovation would enable factory owners to replace 30 adults with “ten infirm people or children.” The attorney general who granted the patent went further, noting that “even Children of five or six Years of age” could operate this machine.

The time has come for another round of intellectual and policy reform. One great injustice of our world is that the bulk of human inequality occurs at birth, with children born into destitute households facing malnutrition and stunting from the start, while a small number come into the world as heirs to large stores of accumulated wealth and income. As labor income is squeezed, this disparity will widen, causing a variety of economic and political crises.

Heading them off will require, above all, greater effort to spread education, build skills, and provide universal health care. Innovative thinking will be needed to achieve these goals. But we also need to think of new ways to bolster labor income.

One example is certain forms of profit sharing. If workers have a stake in their companies, technological innovations will not be a source of anxiety, because wage losses will be compensated by the rise in equity income.

Several economists and legal scholars – including Martin Weitzman, Richard Freeman, and Robert Hockett – have written on this subject. But, as with all innovations, a lot of research is needed to get it right. What we learned in 2015 is that we do not have the luxury of doing nothing.

Why millions more will go hungry in 2016

Millions more people globally are facing the threat of severe food and water shortages in early 2016 as droughts and flooding devastate crops and strain a humanitarian system already struggling to meet needs, aid agencies warned.

The weather disturbances caused by this year’s El Niño, described by the United Nations as the worst in nearly two decades, come as conflict and persecution drive the number of people forced to flee their homes to a record of more than 60 million.



Agencies including Oxfam, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and Care International said the double hit of extreme weather and war had increased the need for assistance and funding and it was critical to get help to vulnerable communities to stop the situation from getting worse.

In Ethiopia, the government estimates 10.2 million people in a population of 94 million will need humanitarian aid in 2016 due to drought exacerbated by El Niño, while Papua New Guinea’s government estimates three in seven people are drought-affected.

“Millions of people in places like Ethiopia, Haiti and Papua New Guinea are already feeling the effects of drought and crop failure,” Jane Cocking, Oxfam GB’s Humanitarian Director, said in a statement.

“Aid agencies are already stretched responding to the crises in Syria, South Sudan and Yemen. We cannot afford to allow other large-scale emergencies to develop elsewhere. If the world waits to respond to emerging crises in southern Africa and Latin America, we will not be able to cope.”

The WFP estimated that in 2015 about 795 million people were going hungry, 98 percent in developing countries.

The United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said it warned in March that the current El Niño would be strong and it now appeared to be the strongest episode in 18 years that would peak at the start of 2016 – before the usual harvest time for farmers in southern Africa.

Poor start to 2016

“The likelihood of another poor season is troublesome as it comes on the heels of a poor one that has already depleted inventories, tightened supplies and pushed up local prices,” the FAO’s Deputy Strategic Programme Leader of Resilience, Shukri Ahmed, said in a statement.

Cocking said South Africa has already declared several provinces as disaster areas due to drought, and Malawi estimates 2.8 million people will require humanitarian aid before March.

Care International’s country director in Ethiopia, Garth Van’t Hul said previous experience highlighted the importance of getting supplies to those in need in time to prevent significantly increased malnutrition rates.

“This is a critical moment for the Ethiopian people and for the international community to step up,” he said in a statement.

“We are also greatly concerned by the disproportionate burden this crisis is placing on women and girls, who are largely responsible for ensuring families have food and water.”

Across Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua, about two million people already need food aid after drought and erratic rains, with more floods expected in January, Cocking said.

The WFP voiced concern about the situation in Yemen where families in war-torn Taiz have been going hungry for weeks.

Muhannad Hadi, WFP regional director, called on all parties to allow safe passage of food to Taiz, one of 10 of 22 governorates facing severe food shortages in Yemen where an estimated 7.6 million of 24 million people are going hungry.

“The precarious situation in Taiz has hampered WFP’s efforts to reach impoverished people, especially in besieged parts of the city, who have not had access to food for many weeks,” he said in a statement.

“WFP has delivered food assistance to Taiz governorate in the hope of reaching every person in need, but so far we have not been able to reach most of them,” he said.