Ukraine's European Revolution?

[alfred russel]

Anyways: Greece, Argentina, Mexico, etc.

I don't think that any of those are valid, but you get a chicken and egg argument.

Basically you have countries that run out of money because they spend to much versus tax revenue. They are on the verge of a catastrophic default. The IMF steps in and gives them the money to avoid this, but insists on conditions because otherwise what is the point? They will blow the money like they have all the other money.

The conditions cause pain--paying for things does indeed suck--and make a great scapegoat. In some cases the criticisms may have some merit. Hey, if your own government can't run the place, should you be surprised that random international bankers in quasi government institutions aren't perfect? But they aren't the cause of the total disaster. They are there to avert a total disaster.

[alfred russel]

Anyways: Greece, Argentina, Mexico, etc.

But I don't think I'm up to debating the whole topic of global economic reform at the moment.

Greece has always been a blind spot for me.  Never could bring myself to pay a whole lot of attention.  Mexico I will agree with.  I know you don't want to debate, but what is your case re: Argentina.

Bullshit on Mexico. Repeal NAFTA and seal the border with Mexico tomorrow and watch what happens to the peso and Mexican stock market.

[Valmy]

Oh, and NAFTA caused the current Mexican drug war.

Nonsense the Drug War predated NAFTA by several years.  And that was just the official kickoff of the drug war, it had actually been going on for decades longer.

I was obviously being flip, but our "War on Drugs" is different from the narco-war that's been raging in Mexico.  And even though you're right that there has been drug-related violence in Mexico for decades, the impression I get from Mexicans is that the current level of violence is wholly unprecedented.  Colombia was the drug war bloodbath country formerly.

Yes the current levels of violence are crazy are it is a rather recent phenomenon.  I was questioning the tie to NAFTA.

[Capetan Mihali]

Anyways: Greece, Argentina, Mexico, etc.

But I don't think I'm up to debating the whole topic of global economic reform at the moment.

Greece has always been a blind spot for me.  Never could bring myself to pay a whole lot of attention.  Mexico I will agree with.  I know you don't want to debate, but what is your case re: Argentina.

I'm thinking of the 1998-2002 debt crisis, especially re: the IMF's lending practices.

[Admiral Yi]

Basically what Fredo4liberalization said.

Except that Mexico was not an IMF program to the best of my knowledge.  That bailout was engineered by Jim Brady, US Treasury Sec.  And as far as I know there was no conditionality attached to that plan.  Maybe floating the peso.

[derspiess]

Bullshit on Mexico. Repeal NAFTA and seal the border with Mexico tomorrow and watch what happens to the peso and Mexican stock market.

Okay, maybe I was confused as to what the discussion was about.  I thought he was citing Mexico as an example of doing better economically, but regressing in many other aspects.

[Capetan Mihali]

Anyways: Greece, Argentina, Mexico, etc.

But I don't think I'm up to debating the whole topic of global economic reform at the moment.

Greece has always been a blind spot for me.  Never could bring myself to pay a whole lot of attention.  Mexico I will agree with.  I know you don't want to debate, but what is your case re: Argentina.

Bullshit on Mexico.

Main Findings

•NAFTA has produced a disappointingly small net gain in jobs in Mexico. Data limitations preclude an exact tally, but it is clear that jobs created in export manufacturing have barely kept pace with jobs lost in agriculture due to imports. There has also been a decline in domestic manufacturing employment, related in part to import competition and perhaps also to the substitution of foreign inputs in assembly operations. About 30 percent of the jobs that were created in the maquiladora assembly plants in the 1990s have since disappeared. Many of these operations were relocated to lower- wage countries, particularly China.

•Mexican agriculture has been a net loser in trade with the United States, and employment in the sector has declined sharply. U.S. exports of subsidized crops such as corn have depressed agricultural prices in Mexico. The rural poor have borne the brunt of adjustment to NAFTA and have been forced to adapt without adequate government support.

•Productivity has increased in Mexico over the last decade. NAFTA likely played a significant role, because Mexico cut tariffs deeply and was exposed to competition from its giant neighbors. The desirable growth in productivity may have had the unwanted side effect of reducing the rate of job growth, since fewer new jobs were created as workers already on payrolls produced more.

•Real wages for most Mexicans today are lower than when NAFTA took effect. The stunning setback in wages is mainly attributable to the peso crisis of 1994-1995. However, during the NAFTA period, productivity growth has not translated into wage growth, as it did in earlier periods in Mexico. Mexican wages are also diverging from, rather than converging with, U.S. and Canadian wages.

•   Income inequality has been on the rise in Mexico since NAFTA took effect, reversing a brief declining trend in the early 1990s. Compared to the period before NAFTA, the top 10 percent of households have increased their share of national income, while the other 90 percent have lost income share or seen no change. Regional inequality within Mexico has also increased, reversing a long-term trend toward convergence in regional incomes.

•The experience of Mexico confirms the prediction of trade theory, that there will be winners and losers from trade. The losers may be as numerous as, or even more numerous than, the winners, especially in the short-to-medium term. In Mexico, farmers are still struggling to adapt to NAFTA-induced changes.

•The short-to-medium term adjustment costs faced by the losers from trade can be severe, and in Mexico the losers are often those segments of society least able to cope with adjustment, due to insufficient skills, meager savings, and limited mobility. It must also be recognized that there may be permanent losers from trade, due to these limitations.

http://carnegieendowment.org/2004/02/25/mexican-employment-productivity-and-income-decade-after-nafta/8te

Findings from 2004... and the current narco-war begins in earnest 2 years later.

Repeal NAFTA and seal the border with Mexico tomorrow and watch what happens to the peso and Mexican stock market.

This hypo is a little silly.  After 20 years of NAFTA, repealing it tomorrow (and sealing the border, which is really a whole other story) is obviously not going to return us to the status quo ante or show us what Mexico would be like today had there never been a NAFTA (or a CAFTA now, which also impacts Mexico given the numbers of "illegals" flooding their own labor market...)

[Valmy]

•NAFTA has produced a disappointingly small net gain in jobs in Mexico. Data limitations preclude an exact tally, but it is clear that jobs created in export manufacturing have barely kept pace with jobs lost in agriculture due to imports. There has also been a decline in domestic manufacturing employment, related in part to import competition and perhaps also to the substitution of foreign inputs in assembly operations. About 30 percent of the jobs that were created in the maquiladora assembly plants in the 1990s have since disappeared. Many of these operations were relocated to lower- wage countries, particularly China.

Yeah that was the big one, when the jobs starting moving to China.

[Valmy]

Findings from 2004... and the current narco-war begins in earnest 2 years later.

Ok and Mexico is still one of the richer countries in the world, hardly an economic disaster zone.  I guess I do not get the connection, are you suggesting if we just did the Drug War without NAFTA that there would be no narco-war?  What do tariffs on non-drug related items have to do with that?

[alfred russel]

Mexico's biggest problem is its security situation, which I think is far fetched to blame on NAFTA, but go ahead if you want. NAFTA had the promise of US companies outsourcing to northern Mexico. Unfortuantely for Mexico, word got out some time ago that Northern Mexico and Mexico City are great places to get kidnapped and held for ransom. A lot of those businesses thought to be movign to Mexico ended up moving to Asia.

[Admiral Yi]

There are so many problems with that Carnegie assessment of NAFTA I don't know where to begin.

But just for starters, it doesn't even touch on the benefits to Mexican consumers.  It also assigns the blame for the decline in export manufacturing jobs to NAFTA, when it should be assigned to the opening up of other, cheaper sources of labor.

And Mihali, of course they could return to the status quo ante if they wanted to.

[CountDeMoney]

Well, duh.  Capitalism is where the money is.  Hell, even the Party of Money here would rather vote for oligarchs, and curtail the democratic system (i.e., voter registration reform) to insure that it happens.

  You funny.

Me right.  No shareholder value in letting darkies vote.

[Sheilbh]

Also the Asian financial crisis.

[Capetan Mihali]

And Mihali, of course they could return to the status quo ante if they wanted to.

I'm not sure I understand.  Cancelling NAFTA today would put us back at the same policy situation as 1994, so status quo ante in that sense, yes: but watching the economic chaos it would reap in 2014 Mexico would be far from demonstrating the alt-hist point of Dorsey's scenario, that Mexico would be like that (or comparably bad off) today had they never signed NAFTA.

[Beenherebefore]

I think even my American friends would agree that the growing gap between the rich and the rest in most of the developed world is not a sustainable and viable model of society.