Unnamed: 0
int64 0
2.71k
| text
stringlengths 71
526
|
|---|---|
400 | <s>[INST] And among the big countries, [/INST] except Brazil, government-spending numbers don't seem to be worrisome. </s> |
401 | <s>[INST] But despite the positive indicators, the [/INST] social cost of Latin America's free-market revolution is mounting. </s> |
402 | <s>[INST] In Argentina and elsewhere, unemployment is rising [/INST] as state payrolls are slashed and companies strive to become more competitive. </s> |
403 | <s>[INST] Government subsidies are being cut to keep [/INST] fiscal deficits under control, widening the income gap between rich and poor. </s> |
404 | <s>[INST] Even so, the financial managers [/INST] of these countries are sticking to their guns. </s> |
405 | <s>[INST] "In the end, market policies will create economies [/INST] that function right," says Felipe Larrain, an economist at the Catholic University of Chile. </s> |
406 | <s>[INST] So far, Latin American leaders aren't falling into [/INST] the trap of quick-fix solutions, and in many cases, they are showing astonishing political discipline. </s> |
407 | <s>[INST] After decades of failed experiments in government intervention, they believe the only [/INST] thing that will bring a better life for their citizens is fiscal discipline, low inflation, stable currencies, rising foreign investment and freer trade. </s> |
408 | <s>[INST] "There is no point in looking to our past [/INST] for solutions," says President Menem, who tapped a "Chicago boy" to prove he meant business. </s> |
409 | <s>[INST] The replacement of Mr. Cavallo [/INST] is only the latest affirmation of the new pragmatism. </s> |
410 | <s>[INST] After the "tequila effect," a reference to the investor exodus [/INST] that followed Mexico's peso devaluation in late 1994 and lasted through 1995, Latin countries have deepened the reform process. </s> |
411 | <s>[INST] Mexico opened up its fiercely [/INST] protected banking sector to save it from collapse. </s> |
412 | <s>[INST] Brazil began to privatize its energy sector [/INST] and to lift the bar to private-sector investment in communications and other areas. </s> |
413 | <s>[INST] And Argentina used the crisis atmosphere to ram [/INST] changes through Congress on long-delayed reforms that covered everything from deposit insurance to workmen's compensation. </s> |
414 | <s>[INST] The reform push has even [/INST] broadened to include some of the region's holdouts. </s> |
415 | <s>[INST] In March, Venezuelan President Rafael Caldera abandoned populism in favor [/INST] of an International Monetary Fund-approved reform scheme to bring his country back from the edge of economic chaos. </s> |
416 | <s>[INST] Even Abdala Bucaram, the fiery new president of Ecuador who promised [/INST] during his campaign to "tear down the oligarchy," trolled through the country's biggest companies for an economic team to advise him. </s> |
417 | <s>[INST] This realism is being imposed across borders [/INST] by the international investors on whom Latin America depends for financing. </s> |
418 | <s>[INST] Argentina, for instance, can't afford to alienate investors, because [/INST] it's spending more than it collects in tax revenue, which remains depressed by a weak economy. </s> |
419 | <s>[INST] This year, it's expected to [/INST] tap nearly $9 billion from international markets. </s> |
420 | <s>[INST] With this kind of dependency, governments such as Argentina's "realize they have little choice but to preserve market [/INST] confidence," says Tulio Vera, head of Latin American fixed-income research at Bear, Stearns & Co. The commitment to reform reflects not only pressure from bond market vigilantes, but also a lack of alternatives. </s> |
421 | <s>[INST] Aside from the Zapatistas in southern Mexico and the remnants of once-powerful leftist [/INST] guerrilla groups such as Peru's Shining Path, opposition groups nowadays don't much question the orthodoxy, only the manner and pace of its implementation. </s> |
422 | <s>[INST] With the ideological battle won, those in opposition spend their days "arguing [/INST] and delaying, and calling for more spending on debatable projects," says Hernan Felipe Errazuriz, the former president of Chile's central bank. </s> |
423 | <s>[INST] Still, there's likely to be more pain [/INST] before real social benefits are seen from the region's free-market transformation. </s> |
424 | <s>[INST] Gert Rosenthal, executive director of the Economic Commission on Latin America in Santiago, [/INST] Chile, reckons Latin economies would have to grow 6% annually before the cost of restructuring begins to be offset in a meaningful way. </s> |
425 | <s>[INST] Salomon Brothers Inc. economist Lawrence Goodman forecasts [/INST] regional growth at only 2.8% this year and 4.2% in 1997. </s> |
426 | <s>[INST] The next step for policy makers such [/INST] as Argentina's Mr. Fernandez will undoubtedly add to the social burden. </s> |
427 | <s>[INST] Along with his Brazilian and Mexican counterparts, Pedro Malan and Guillermo Ortiz, he's trying [/INST] to dismantle a bankrupt social-security system to bring still-free-spending local governments to heel, and to scrap antiquated labor laws and tax codes that stifle private-sector competition. </s> |
428 | <s>[INST] These moves, say economists, will lay the groundwork for [/INST] higher savings and more productive investment that will serve Latin America well in the future. </s> |
429 | <s>[INST] But in the next two years, at least, the outlook is [/INST] for high unemployment and stagnant salaries, particularly for the traditionally well-subsidized urban middle class, and a higher incidence of poverty. </s> |
430 | <s>[INST] Mr. Larrain, the Chilean economist, [/INST] points to his country's own case as instructive. </s> |
431 | <s>[INST] After several tough years burdened by structural reform [/INST] and a negative world economic environment, Chile has posted 12 straight years of strong growth. </s> |
432 | <s>[INST] Unemployment is low, salaries are rising, and while income [/INST] distribution still hasn't improved greatly, the number of people living in poverty is sharply reduced. </s> |
433 | <s>[INST] ___ Document 108 of 500 The Americas: A tough road for Argentina's [/INST] new economics minister Author: Bongiovanni, Gerardo Publication info: Wall Street Journal , Eastern edition [New York, N.Y] 02 Aug 1996: A15. </s> |
434 | <s>[INST] accountid=28034 Abstract: Gerardo Bongiovanni, the general director of the Rosario Argentina-based Liberty Foundation, discusses the [/INST] challenges that Roque Fernandez, who recently replaced Domingo Cavallo as Argentina's economics minister, will face in righting the economic distortions created by a highly interventionist and inefficient government. </s> |
435 | <s>[INST] Full text: ROSARIO, Argentina -- With the resignation [/INST] of Argentine Economics Minister Domingo Cavallo, what was once unthinkable has finally come to pass. </s> |
436 | <s>[INST] The architect and legendary [/INST] defender of one-to-one peso-dollar convertibility is gone. </s> |
437 | <s>[INST] Fortunately, his replacement, the University of Chicago-educated Roque [/INST] Fernandez, has been well received as a no-nonsense economist with classical liberal views. </s> |
438 | <s>[INST] The Argentine peso has endured [/INST] the transition and for now, stability survives. </s> |
439 | <s>[INST] That will come if and when he sets [/INST] about to right the economic distortions created by a highly interventionist and inefficient government. </s> |
440 | <s>[INST] One place to start would be with a [/INST] reduction in the size of the public sector and a realignment of tax policy. </s> |
441 | <s>[INST] In the past six years Argentina has launched a series of [/INST] economic reforms that, though spotty and incomplete, have moved the country toward economic opening and integration into world markets. </s> |
442 | <s>[INST] Despite numerous obstacles, Argentine entrepreneurs have made great [/INST] efforts to shed an entrenched pro-inflation mentality in favor of efficiency and competitiveness. </s> |
443 | <s>[INST] They have restructured, retooled and readjusted, trying [/INST] in every way to meet the international standards needed to compete. </s> |
444 | <s>[INST] At all three levels -- federal, provincial and local [/INST] -- the evidence is that the public sector is not the least bit interested in reducing itself. </s> |
445 | <s>[INST] But now that the budget deficit is once again a [/INST] significant issue of debate, it's clear that there is an urgent need for more thorough public sector reform. </s> |
446 | <s>[INST] Waste and lack of accountability run rampant in [/INST] the government sector; the proof lies in the notable growth in government spending since 1991. </s> |
447 | <s>[INST] By 1995 that number was [/INST] $82.3 billion, a 75% increase in four years. </s> |
448 | <s>[INST] Granted, a substantial portion of this increase [/INST] stems from longstanding public obligations, such as retirement benefits and pensions. </s> |
449 | <s>[INST] But if one stops to consider that over the same period dozens of costly government-held [/INST] enterprises have been sold off and privatized, allowing the public payroll and government agencies to be pared down, the growth in public spending is at least mildly perplexing. </s> |
450 | <s>[INST] One major reason for this [/INST] spending spiral is the absence of public sector reform. </s> |
451 | <s>[INST] For example, the Office of the President -- which desperately needs [/INST] an overhaul -- includes 10 secretariats and 12 independent agencies with 20,000 employees and an annual budget of $1.2 billion. </s> |
452 | <s>[INST] The ranks of cabinet secretaries and undersecretaries continue [/INST] to surge, notwithstanding a 1990 presidential decree that was intended to draw down their number. </s> |
453 | <s>[INST] Since 1990 they have swollen from [/INST] 10 cabinet secretaries and 55 undersecretaries to 58 and 131, respectively. </s> |
454 | <s>[INST] The government recently announced that many of these offices [/INST] are to be eliminated, but at the same time three or four more ministries will be created. </s> |
455 | <s>[INST] Consider also our so-called social [/INST] expenditures, which account for over 60% of total spending. </s> |
456 | <s>[INST] It's no surprise that rather than reaching [/INST] the people who really need them, these funds dissipate before leaving the bureaucracy. </s> |
457 | <s>[INST] Agencies created to help the [/INST] poor have 70% of their budgets consumed by salaries. </s> |
458 | <s>[INST] The number of public employees at the provincial level [/INST] has burgeoned to 1.1 million in 1995 from 580,000 in 1984, an increase of 80%. </s> |
459 | <s>[INST] Total spending by the provinces has grown [/INST] to $30.9 billion in 1995 from $17.2 billion in 1991, a 79% increase. </s> |
460 | <s>[INST] Municipal spending has ballooned to $6.8 [/INST] billion in 1995 from $3.5 in 1991, a 91% increase. </s> |
461 | <s>[INST] In some parts of the country, there is one provincial [/INST] employee for every 10 residents; average government salaries and pensions far surpass those of the private sector. </s> |
462 | <s>[INST] The payroll for public employees siphons off [/INST] 70%-80% of provincial government budgets, clearly illustrating the problem of overstaffing. </s> |
463 | <s>[INST] Conspicuous inefficiency crops up in areas such as [/INST] health and education, which are run by the provinces, where bloated budgets yield meager results. </s> |
464 | <s>[INST] Rounding out this picture of inequity are the [/INST] privileged working conditions of the provincial and municipal employees and public school teachers. </s> |
465 | <s>[INST] The federal government lacks the moral authority [/INST] to demand adjustments that it has been unwilling to make itself. </s> |
466 | <s>[INST] Instead it has tried to [/INST] confront the situation through the use of "fiscal pacts". </s> |
467 | <s>[INST] These agreements feature promises of federal funding to the [/INST] provincial governments in return for commitments on privatization of public enterprises and reform of provincial public administration. </s> |
468 | <s>[INST] Mediocre results are a product of [/INST] a lingering faith in a vast welfare state "supporting" private enterprise. </s> |
469 | <s>[INST] Such support only results in a divvying-up [/INST] of spoils by those closest to the politically powerful with little fiscal improvement. </s> |
470 | <s>[INST] Fiscal mismanagement in the provinces also reflects the peculiar nature of the Argentine fiscal system, [/INST] under which the federal government collects the bulk of the taxes and then shares the revenues with the provinces, which in turn share their revenues with the municipalities. </s> |
471 | <s>[INST] Many provinces and city governments thus generate only a fraction of their [/INST] own revenues, and so they lack incentives to develop efficient public sectors and to find ways to operate on lower tax revenues. </s> |
472 | <s>[INST] A spending spree continues in [/INST] the absence of accountability, which would normally force discipline. </s> |
473 | <s>[INST] The top-down fiscal system also isolates citizens from public administration, since [/INST] most priorities are set by the federal and provincial governments, while the local governments are consigned to the sidelines. </s> |
474 | <s>[INST] Fortunately Mr. Fernandez has already recognized this clear and present danger: Ignore [/INST] the need for public sector reform and an overhaul of the tax system and the country's stability would be at risk. </s> |
475 | <s>[INST] The time has come to build [/INST] an efficient public sector that is transparent and accountable. </s> |
476 | <s>[INST] If we fail in this, the international [/INST] markets will provide the necessary discipline and that is not a pretty scenario. </s> |
477 | <s>[INST] --- Mr. Bongiovanni is the [/INST] general director of the Liberty Foundation in Rosario. </s> |
478 | <s>[INST] ___ Document 118 of 500 After Cavallo Publication [/INST] info: Wall Street Journal , Eastern edition [New York, N.Y] 31 July 1996: A14. </s> |
479 | <s>[INST] accountid=28034 Abstract: An editorial analyzes the impact on [/INST] Argentina's economy of the replacement of Economics Minister Domingo Cavallo with Roque Fernandez. </s> |
480 | <s>[INST] The editorial warns that changing the guard at the Ministry of Economics will not [/INST] solve Argentina's problems--high unemployment and sluggish economic growth--and urges President Carlos Saul Menem to move forward with the type of economic reform that Cavallo had advocated. </s> |
481 | <s>[INST] Full text: No sooner was the resignation of Argentina's [/INST] Economics Minister, Domingo Cavallo, official than a support campaign began around his replacement Roque Fernandez. </s> |
482 | <s>[INST] Domingo Cavallo built and guarded Argentina's convertibility [/INST] law, which links the value of the peso to the U.S. dollar. </s> |
483 | <s>[INST] He is responsible for nothing less than [/INST] the demise of inflation as a time-honored policy tool in Argentina. </s> |
484 | <s>[INST] Investor angst over the future of stability ex-Cavallo had built [/INST] a wall of worry around Argentina, and the spin doctors have been scrambling recently to reassure the markets. </s> |
485 | <s>[INST] With Argentina's unemployment running over 17%, [/INST] one might think it easy to dispose of the minister. </s> |
486 | <s>[INST] It was Mr. Cavallo, at the height of a speculative attack induced by [/INST] the Mexico crisis in 1995, who circled the wagons to defend the Argentine peso -- as 20% of bank deposits fled the country. </s> |
487 | <s>[INST] Sound money, he told us, was the [/INST] only monetary policy that Argentina would pursue while he was on watch. </s> |
488 | <s>[INST] Over his five year tenure, [/INST] he sold a credible Argentine peso to the world. </s> |
489 | <s>[INST] As importantly, he designed and implemented a [/INST] massive privatization program that sparked a four year growth spurt for the country. </s> |
490 | <s>[INST] Argentina had turned from being an [/INST] object of ridicule in world financial circles to a success story. </s> |
491 | <s>[INST] Success made Mr. Cavallo a god [/INST] and worse -- it made him bigger than the president. </s> |
492 | <s>[INST] The investment community was enamored of him, but he became so [/INST] entangled in political problems at home that by the end even Mr. Cavallo himself said he was "a spent force". </s> |
493 | <s>[INST] Reportedly, the only lines in Buenos Aires this weekend were [/INST] formed by portenos waiting to see the Argentine opening of the new movie, "The Hunchback of Notre Dame". </s> |
494 | <s>[INST] Foreign investors and Argentines are collectively relieved that the Menem-Cavallo drama is over and [/INST] sufficiently convinced, for now, that Mr. Fernandez's University of Chicago training qualifies him as a classical liberal; he is considered more orthodox than Mr. Cavallo. </s> |
495 | <s>[INST] But a changing of the guard [/INST] at the Ministry of Economics doesn't solve Argentina's problems. </s> |
496 | <s>[INST] These are not caused by a lack [/INST] of technical know-how, which, by all accounts, Roque Fernandez brings to the job. </s> |
497 | <s>[INST] Economic malaise is instead rooted in [/INST] the absence of political will to continue with reform. </s> |
498 | <s>[INST] The feisty and sometimes hardheaded Domingo [/INST] Cavallo had more than personality differences with President Menem and Congress. </s> |
499 | <s>[INST] He was pushing hard for vital [/INST] structural reform and butted heads with powerful political forces. </s> |
Subsets and Splits