A Toast to the Family

By STANTON PEELE
August 31, 2007 - WSJ

Florida, Michigan and New Hampshire are some of a growing number of states to enact laws holding parents accountable for underage drinking at their homes. These laws typically involve hosting parties where alcohol is served to minors.

The target is parents who blithely allow keg parties in their basements and then let the teenagers who attend them drive home drunk. One such couple in Deerfield, Ill., was recently convicted when two 18-year-olds died in a car accident after such a party. Earlier this month, Karen Dittmer was arrested for allowing her 18-year-old son and his friends to drink beer at her birthday barbecue in New York's Suffolk County.

What kind of parents would ever allow their children to drink at home? Doesn't this put youngsters at risk?

The answer to the first question is simple. Most of the state laws include a specific exemption for children drinking at home during family and religious ceremonies. Observant Jews, for example, traditionally serve children small glasses of wine during Friday night Sabbath ceremonies. Other cultures also begin socializing children into drinking at an early age -- including Mediterranean societies such as Italy, Greece and Turkey (and non-Mediterranean societies such as China).

As for the second, two international surveys -- one conducted by the World Health Organization -- revealed that these Mediterranean countries and Israel had the lowest binge drinking rates among European adolescents.

In societies where children drink with their parents, this typically means giving a kid a small amount of wine or other alcohol, often watered down on special occasions or a family dinner. Many European countries also lower the drinking age for children when they are accompanied by parents. In the United Kingdom, for example, the legal age is 18, but for a family at a restaurant it is 16. In France and Italy, where the legal age is 16, there is no age limit for children drinking with parents.

But what might all of this mean for teen drinking problems in America?

Several studies have shown that the younger kids are when they start to drink, the more likely they are to develop severe drinking problems. But the kind of drinking these studies mean -- drinking in the woods to get bombed or at unattended homes -- is particularly high risk.

Research published in the Journal of Adolescent Health in 2004 found that adolescents whose parents permitted them to attend unchaperoned parties where drinking occurred had twice the average binge-drinking rate. But the study also had another, more arresting conclusion: Children whose parents introduced drinking to the children at home were one-third as likely to binge.

"It appears that parents who model responsible drinking behaviors have the potential to teach their children the same," noted Kristie Foley, the principal author of the study. While the phrasing was cautious, the implication of the study's finding needs to be highlighted: Parents who do not introduce children to alcohol in a home setting might be setting them up to become binge drinkers later on. You will not likely hear this at your school's parent drug- and alcohol-awareness nights.

Obviously, if a parent isn't comfortable consuming alcohol -- for whatever reason -- he or she is going to find it difficult to teach a child moderate social drinking. Fair enough. But neither should parents feel guilty or intimidated about responsibly introducing their children to alcohol in a home setting. The research suggests that this is more likely, not less, to protect the kids against the excessive drinking that permeates American high schools and colleges.

The youngest of my three children attends New York University, in a metropolis that is no stranger to alcohol. But alcohol is not forbidden fruit, since Anna drank wine at home. She says binge drinking holds no allure. I believe her.

Mr. Peele, a psychologist, therapist and attorney, is the author of several books on addiction, including the just-published "Addiction-Proof Your Child" (Three Rivers Press).

The Larry Craig Mess

August 31, 2007 - WSJ

So now comes Idaho's Senator Larry Craig to verify one more time Mr. Dooley's truth that "politics ain't beanbag." Were it gentle beanbag, a long parade of troubled politicos caught in cars, tidal basins, on boat decks and inside cookie jars would have been left to God's mercy and their own demons. Even in the days of smoke-filled rooms, the boys knew there were some malefactors who had strayed to that place beyond their protective reach, which is to say, into the hands of the party faithful. Senator Larry Craig is in that place.

Senator Craig's incident inside the men's room of the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport is, at the least, bad timing on his part. His party, it might have occurred to him, had just lost control of Congress for reasons that Republican voters chose to call "corruption." The various corruptions included Representatives Mark Foley and Duke Cunningham, Tom DeLay and the K Street mob, the disgrace of earmarks and bridges to nowhere and whatever else GOP voters concluded had fallen outside the norms of established party principle.

Politicians like to buck obviously poor odds, but Senator Craig hasn't helped his with his decision-making. The incident at the airport occurred on June 11. Nearly two months later, on August 8, he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct for which he received one-year probation from the court. He told no one. When all this became public days ago, Mr. Craig announced that the guilty plea was a mistake and that he should have called a lawyer.

It can be no surprise that the Senate GOP leadership referred the matter to the Ethics Committee, nor that they pushed him from senior committee posts. Senators John McCain and Norm Coleman, citing the guilty-plea standard for staying in office, have urged Mr. Craig to resign, as have Republican House Members.

Senator Craig was elected by the people of Idaho, and it is properly a matter between them and him whether he should finish his term. We agree, however, with those in his party who want the Senator to forgo re-election next year. The Republican Party needs to get its house in order. It is a mess. And that cleanup should include the living room, the library, the front porch and, we daresay, the restroom.

INDEC: ¿dibujarán ahora crecimiento económico?

INDEC: ¿dibujarán ahora crecimiento económico?

Por: Carlos Arbía
Ámbito Financiero

Luego que se conociera a principios de febrero que el IPC del mes anterior había sido modificado por la intervención de la Secretaría de Comercio Interior, que dirige Guillermo Moreno, el mayor temor de los empresarios e inversores era que el efecto se propagara hacia otras áreas del organismo. Y los temores no eran infundados, el contagio de la adulteración de los índices a través de lo que el gobierno llama un cambio metodológico llegó primero a la Encuesta Permanente de Hogares (EPH) y por último al cálculo del EMI (Estimador Mensual Industrial) la semana pasada.

El crecimiento económico medido a través de las cuentas nacionales es uno de los principales insumos para determinar cuánto dinero debe pagar el Estado a los ahorristas por los cupones PBI que fueron emitidos en el canje de la deuda.

# Bonos

Otro de los insumos es el CER o la inflación para indexar el precio de los bonos que se calcula con el cuestionado IPC y por el cual los bonistas cobran menos intereses de los que el Estado debería pagarles. La modificación de este índice también distorsionará los valores de la canasta de pobreza e indigencia que deberán darse a conocer el 20 de setiembre.

Como se puede observar, la enfermedad que empezó con el cambio metodológico del IPC en el INDEC y que ahora se extiende al cálculo del EMI repercute negativamente en la economía. Más allá de la crisis financiera internacional, lo cierto es que los bonos indexados por el CER se han perdido más de 40% de su valor desde los máximos de diciembre pasado en parte por la falta de transparencia y credibilidad en los índices del INDEC. Por ese motivo uno de los grandes interrogantes que devela al mercado financiero y a las empresas es saber cómo repercutirá la manipulación de los datos de producción industrial de julio en el cálculo del crecimiento económico (EMAE) que se debe publicar el 21 de setiembre ¿se utilizará el aumento anual de 5,4% que no incluye la producción de acero o 2,7% que la incluye?

Es probable que las autoridades del INDEC decidan realizar el cálculo incorporando el mayor incremento para mostrar un crecimiento económico superior al observado. En este caso deberían aclarar que se trata del cálculo de un nuevo tipo de EMAE (Estimador Mensual de Actividad Económica) que no incluye el acero, algo inexplicable desde el punto de vista del análisis económico. Lo grave es que se trata de la tercera vez en lo que va del año que el gobierno interviene en la estructura del INDEC para modificar cifras e influir en las estadísticas públicas.

# Diseño

En lo que respecta al cálculo del nuevo IPC, el Ministerio de Economía ya adelantó que está trabajando en el diseño de la nueva canasta del IPC, que se elaborará a partir de la encuesta de gastos de 2004. En este caso, es factible que los cambios en el índice favorecerían al gobierno. La nueva canasta que se utilizará para el cálculo es probable que dé una inflación más baja, ya que perderán peso los servicios públicos que en el futuro podrían aumentar. En cambio el rubro alimentos podrían tener una participación más alta. Lo que se sabe es que no se modificará las variaciones anteriores y allí reside uno de los problemas más difíciles de solucionar. Hoy se observa un INDEC donde el cambio metodológico o la manipulación del IPC una especie de metástasis en otros índices que invade de incertidumbre a los agentes económicos.

Slim Pickings

By BURTON W. FOLSOM
August 29, 2007 - WSJ

In the world of wealth, the big news this summer is that Carlos Slim, 67, of Mexico may have surpassed Bill Gates as the world's richest person. Inevitably, writers compare Mr. Slim, who built his wealth on a telecommunications monopoly, to America's so-called "robber barons" -- including men such as John D. Rockefeller, James J. Hill and Henry Ford.

This is bad history. America's most famous rugged entrepreneurs, especially men such as Rockefeller and Ford, the wealthiest men of their eras, reached mass markets by producing quality products -- kerosene and cars -- at low prices. More recently, Sam Walton did the same thing in retailing. Mr. Slim, by contrast, is better characterized as a "political entrepreneur," who relied more on manipulating Mexico's bureaucracy than on satisfying consumers in a competitive arena.

In the great heyday of late-19th century American capitalism, successful businessmen had to innovate and compete as they helped create mass markets. Government was limited, property rights and contracts were protected, and, except for tariffs and occasional subsidies, government could not play favorites.

Whoever satisfied the most customers would have the largest businesses. Only when Rockefeller sold cheap kerosene to tens of millions of Americans did he become the nation's first billionaire. "We must ever remember," Rockefeller told his partner, "we are refining oil for the poor man and he must have it cheap and good." Ironically, the price of Rockefeller's kerosene dropped to eight cents a gallon in 1885 from 26 cents in 1870 -- all the while he was viciously pilloried as a monopolist by the press, Congress and his competitors.

Ford, Walton and Mr. Gates also had to sell widely to masses of Americans at competitive rates before they rose to the top. Putting a car in every garage, not just the garages of the rich, was Ford's working motto. In serving the most customers, he reaped the largest reward. So did Bill Gates with computers. When America did deviate from free markets -- for example, by granting government subsidies to the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads -- the economy suffered instabilities. But it recovered from the experience and learned a lesson. James J. Hill built the Great Northern Railroad with no federal subsidy -- and outperformed all other transcontinentals.

Mexico, unfortunately, has had a long tradition of weak property rights and a strong, intrusive government. The Constitution of 1917 almost guarantees economic chaos. According to Article 27, property is not a right but a social function. Government officials, therefore, may confiscate land or industry which, in their opinion, is not serving a "public use" or the "public interest."

Inevitably, different groups lobbied the Mexican government to confiscate property "in the national interest." Beginning in the 1930s, railroads were nationalized and turned over to union leaders; banks, the oil industry and some utilities were also expropriated. The dreaded oil gringos from the U. S. were paid off later at about 10 cents on the dollar.

The new nationalized industries, of course, performed erratically and incompetently. The unions and government officials running these industries had little experience managing large firms and no knowledge of how much their workers were worth, how much to invest in new technology, which engineers to hire, and, in the case of oil, where to do exploratory drilling. PEMEX, the nationalized oil company, floundered for decades losing money and trying to recapture lost markets.

Enter Carlos Slim. His father, Julian Slim Haddad, a Lebanese immigrant, made his money as a merchant during the chaos leading up to the Constitution of 1917. Carlos Slim greatly expanded the family fortune by working closely and cleverly with government officials. (In fairness to Mr. Slim, there may not be another avenue to great wealth in a massively interventionist economy.)

His major opportunity came when President Carlos Salinas de Gortari decided to privatize some inefficient industries. Mr. Slim bought Telmex, the nation's phone company, in 1990 in a controversial auction which was decidedly less than transparent. With that purchase came a six-year monopoly guaranteed by the government. Although Mr. Slim was supposed to relinquish the monopoly in 1997, he used a variety of legal and political tools to maintain it, for example filing injunctions in court to block orders from the regulator to provide competitors fair access to his network. According to OECD figures, Mexican consumers and businesses still pay above market telephone rates. Fewer than one-fourth of Mexican homes have telephones.

With a near monopoly of fixed-line telephones and data access (the Internet), Mr. Slim has reaped windfall profits which, wisely invested, have propelled him to immense wealth. Meanwhile, Mr. Slim's newer ventures -- his construction company and his oil services company -- rely on government contracts for their major business. Recently President Felipe Calderón met with Mr. Slim and urged him to accept greater competition.

Not surprisingly, when striving Mexicans want to better themselves, they look to where competition is the rule and property rights are more secure -- and head for the land of the robber barons.

Mr. Folsom is professor of history at Hillsdale College and author of "The Myth of the Robber Barons: A New Look at the Rise of Big Business in America" (Young America's Foundation, 5th edition, 2007).

1934

Not So Hot

August 29, 2007- WSJ

The latest twist in the global warming saga is the revision in data at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, indicating that the warmest year on record for the U.S. was not 1998, but rather 1934 (by 0.02 of a degree Celsius).

Canadian and amateur climate researcher Stephen McIntyre discovered that NASA made a technical error in standardizing the weather air temperature data post-2000. These temperature mistakes were only for the U.S.; their net effect was to lower the average temperature reading from 2000-2006 by 0.15C.

The new data undermine another frightful talking point from environmentalists, which is that six of the 10 hottest years on record have occurred since 1990. Wrong. NASA now says six of the 10 warmest years were in the 1930s and 1940s, and that was before the bulk of industrial CO2 emissions were released into the atmosphere.

Those are the new facts. What's hard to know is how much, if any, significance to read into them. NASA officials say the revisions are insignificant and should not be "used by [global warming] critics to muddy the debate." NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt notes that, despite the revisions, the period 2002-2006 is still warmer for the U.S. than 1930-1934, and both periods are slightly cooler than 1998-2002.

Still, environmentalists have been making great hay by claiming that recent years, such as 1998, then 2006, were the "warmest" on record. It's also not clear that the 0.15 degree temperature revision is as trivial as NASA insists. Total U.S. warming since 1920 has been about 0.21 degrees Celsius. This means that a 0.15 error for recent years is more than two-thirds the observed temperature increase for the period of warming. NASA counters that most of the measured planetary warming in recent decades has occurred outside the U.S. and that the agency's recent error would have a tiny impact (1/1000th of a degree) on global warming.

If nothing else, the snafu calls into question how much faith to put in climate change models. In the 1990s, virtually all climate models predicted warming from 2000-2010, but the new data confirm that so far there has been no warming trend in this decade for the U.S. Whoops. These simulation models are the basis for many of the forecasts of catastrophic warming by the end of the century that Al Gore and the media repeat time and again. We may soon be basing multi-trillion dollar policy decisions on computer models whose accuracy we already know to be less than stellar.

What's more disturbing is what this incident tells us about the scientific double standard in the global warming debate. If this kind of error were made by climatologists who dare to challenge climate-change orthodoxy, the media and environmentalists would accuse them of manipulating data to distort scientific truth. NASA's blunder only became a news story after Internet bloggers played whistleblower by circulating the new data across the Web.

So far this year NASA has issued at least five press releases that could be described as alarming on the pace of climate change. But the correction of its overestimate of global warming was merely posted on the agency's Web site. James Hansen, NASA's ubiquitous climate scientist and a man who has charged that the Bush Administration is censoring him on global warming, has been unapologetic about NASA's screw up. He claims that global warming skeptics -- "court jesters," he calls them -- are exploiting this incident to "confuse the public about the status of knowledge of global climate change, thus delaying effective action to mitigate climate change."

So let's get this straight: Mr. Hansen's agency makes a mistake in a way that exaggerates the extent of warming, and this is all part of a conspiracy by "skeptics"? It's a wonder there aren't more of them.

''Brasil se ubica en el mundo; la Argentina pelea por pasteras''

Entrevista al ex vicecanciller Andres Cisneros
''Brasil se ubica en el mundo; la Argentina pelea por pasteras''

Andrés Cisneros
Ámbito Financiero

Mientras la Argentina continúa concentrando su política exterior en pelear por las pasteras con los uruguayos, Brasil consolida su posición en el mundo y, con ello, obtiene grandes ventajas para su desarrollo económico, dijo ayer en diálogo con Ambito Financiero Andrés Cisneros, vicecanciller en el gobierno de Carlos Menem. A continuación, sus principales definiciones sobre la propuesta lanzada el lunes por el presidente francés, Nicolas Sarkozy, de sumar a Brasil, México, China, la India y Sudáfrica al actual Grupo de los Ocho (G-8), convirtiéndolo en un G-13.

Periodista: ¿Qué ventajas implicaría para Brasil entrar a un G-13?

Andrés Cisneros: En el mundo moderno, la política ya no pasa ni por lo estratégico ni por lo ideológico, sino por lo comercial y económico. Cuanto mejor se posiciona un país, más ventajas obtiene. Brasil tiene el interés de ubicarse en el mundo como un jugador económico con mayores beneficios. Así, busca conseguir el «investment grade», que implica que para las calificadoras internacionales el país no representa ningún riesgo, por lo que los bancos internacionales pueden prestar cobrando el mismo interés que pagan países como Estados Unidos, por ejemplo.

P.: Situación que no ocurre en la Argentina...

A.C.: Acá, como hay un riesgo-país enorme, la tasa de interés con los bancos internacionales es también enorme y, por lo tanto, se desalienta la inversión extranjera.

# Inserción

P.: ¿Qué otras estrategias de inserción internacional tiene Brasil?

A.C.: También está tratando de entrar a la OCDE. Esto tendría un resultado parecido al de lo anterior. Es análogo a obtener un ISO 9000 para una empresa. Y la estrategia se completa ahora con la posibilidad de entrar al G-13. Un país que lo integra tiene voz y voto en las discusiones sobre cómo se manda el mundo. Lo que se decide en las reuniones del G-8 repercute en los otros 200 Estados.

P.: Pero hasta ahora sólo fue una propuesta de Nicolas Sarkozy. ¿Se concretará?

A.C.: El presidente francés se caracteriza por el oportunismo. Es como cuando un grupo de gente reunida decide algo y uno sale antes a la puerta a contar de qué se habló; es lo que hizo Sarkozy. Es muy importante este anuncio.

P.: ¿Qué lugar queda para la Argentina?

A.C.: Mientras Brasil lleva a cabo esta estrategia internacional, nuestra política exterior se dedica a pelearnos con los uruguayos por las pasteras.

P.: ¿Existe alguna posibilidad de que la Argentina tenga un lugar en el G-13?

A.C.: No, eso no sería posible. Un país que ha defaulteado y que debe plata al Club de París no califica.

Entrevista de María Iglesia

A Denier's Confession

August 28, 2007 - WSJ

The recent discovery by a retired businessman and climate kibitzer named Stephen McIntyre that 1934 -- and not 1998 or 2006 -- was the hottest year on record in the U.S. could not have been better timed. August is the month when temperatures are high and the news cycle is slow, leading, inevitably, to profound meditations on global warming. Newsweek performed its journalistic duty two weeks ago with an exposé on what it calls the global warming "denial machine." I hereby perform mine with a denier's confession.

I confess: I am prepared to acknowledge that Mr. McIntyre's discovery amounts to what a New York Times reporter calls a "statistically meaningless" rearrangement of data.

But just how "meaningless" would this have seemed had it yielded the opposite result? Had Mr. McIntyre found that a collation error understated recent temperatures by 0.15 degrees Celsius (instead of overstating it by that amount, as he discovered), would the news coverage have differed in tone and approach? When it was reported in January that 2006 was one of the hottest years on record, NASA's James Hansen used the occasion to warn grimly that "2007 is likely to be warmer than 2006." Yet now he says, in connection to the data revision, that "in general I think we want to avoid going into more and more detail about ranking of individual years."

I confess: I am prepared to acknowledge that the world has been and will be getting warmer thanks in some part to an increase in man-made atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. I acknowledge this in the same way I'm confident that the equatorial radius of Saturn is about 60,000 kilometers: not because I've measured it myself, but out of a deep reserve of faith in the methods of the scientific community, above all its reputation for transparency and open-mindedness.

But that faith is tested when leading climate scientists won't share the data they use to estimate temperatures past and present and thus construct all-important trend lines. This was true of climatologist Michael Mann, who refused to disclose the algorithm behind his massively influential "hockey stick" graph, which purported to demonstrate a sharp uptick in global temperatures over the past century. (The accuracy of the graph was seriously discredited by Mr. McIntyre and his colleague Ross McKitrick.) This was true also of Phil Jones of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, who reportedly turned down one request for information with the remark, "Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?"

I confess: I understand that global warming may have negative consequences. Heat waves, droughts and coastal flooding may become more intense. Temperature-sensitive parasites such as malaria could become more widespread. Lakes may be depleted by evaporation. Animal life will suffer.

But as Bjorn Lomborg points out in his sharp, persuasive and aptly titled book "Cool It," a warming climate has advantages, too, and not just trivial ones. Though global warming will cause more heat deaths, it will also mean many fewer cold deaths. Drought may increase in some areas, but warming also means both more rain and longer growing seasons. Temperature changes will harm some wildlife in some places. But many species will benefit from a bit more warmth. Does anyone know for certain that the net human and environmental losses from global warming will exceed overall gains?

I confess: Denial never solves anything. But neither does sensational and deceptive journalism.

Newsweek illustrates this point by its choice of cover art -- a picture of the sun, where the surface temperature hovers around 6,000 degrees Celsius. Given that the consensus scientific estimate for average temperature increases over the next century is a comparatively modest 2.6 degrees, this would seem a rather Murdochian way of convincing readers about the gravity of the climate threat. On the inside pages is a photograph of a polar bear stranded on melting ice. But the caption that the bears are "at risk" belies clear evidence that the bear population has risen five-fold since the 1960s. Another series of photographs, of a huge Antarctic ice shelf that quickly disintegrated in 2002, suggests the imminence of doom. But why not also mention that temperatures at the South Pole have been going down for 50 years?

I confess: It's easy to be indifferent to far-off and diffuse threats. It's hard to work toward solutions the benefits of which will not be felt in our lifetime.

Then again, if Americans are not fully persuaded of the dangers of global warming, as Newsweek laments, don't chalk it up to the pernicious influence of the so-called deniers and their enablers at ExxonMobil and Fox News. Today, global warming is variously suggested as the root cause of terrorism, the conflict in Darfur and the rising incidence of suicides in Italy. Yet the 20th century offers excellent reasons to be suspicious of monocausal explanations for the world's ills, monomaniacs intent on saving us from ourselves, and the long train of experts predicting death by overpopulation, resource depletion, global cooling, nuclear winter and prions. Also, hypocrites. When we are called on to bike to work, permanently abjure air travel, "eat locally" and so on, we expect to be led by example, not by a new nomenklatura.

I confess: Though it may surprise those who use the term "denier" so as to put me on a moral plane with Holocaust deniers, I have children for whom I would not wish an environmental apocalypse.

Yet neither do I wish the civilizational bounties built up over two centuries by an industrial, inventive, adaptive, globalized and energy-hungry society to be squandered chasing comparatively small environmental benefits at gigantic economic costs. One needn't deny global warming as a problem to deny it as the only or greatest problem. The great virtue of Mr. Lomborg's book is its insistence on trying to measure the good done per dollar spent. Do we save a few lives, at huge cost, as a byproduct of curbing global warming? Or do we save many, for less, by acting on problems directly?

Some might argue it is immoral to think this way. Maybe they are the ones living in denial.

Affirmative Action Backfires

Have racial preferences reduced the number of black lawyers?
BY GAIL HERIOT
Sunday, August 26, 2007 - WSJ

Three years ago, UCLA law professor Richard Sander published an explosive, fact-based study of the consequences of affirmative action in American law schools in the Stanford Law Review. Most of his findings were grim, and they caused dismay among many of the champions of affirmative action--and indeed, among those who were not.

Easily the most startling conclusion of his research: Mr. Sander calculated that there are fewer black attorneys today than there would have been if law schools had practiced color-blind admissions--about 7.9% fewer by his reckoning. He identified the culprit as the practice of admitting minority students to schools for which they are inadequately prepared. In essence, they have been "matched" to the wrong school.

No one claims the findings in Mr. Sander's study, "A Systemic Analysis of Affirmative Action in American Law Schools," are the last word on the subject. Although so far his work has held up to scrutiny at least as well as that of his critics, all fair-minded scholars agree that more research is necessary before the "mismatch thesis" can be definitively accepted or rejected.

Unfortunately, fair-minded scholars are hard to come by when the issue is affirmative action. Some of the same people who argue Mr. Sander's data are inconclusive are now actively trying to prevent him from conducting follow-up research that might yield definitive answers. If racial preferences really are causing more harm than good, they apparently don't want you--or anyone else--to know.
Take William Kidder, a University of California staff advisor and co-author of a frequently cited attack of Sander's study. When Mr. Sander and his co-investigators sought bar passage data from the State Bar of California that would allow analysis by race, Mr. Kidder passionately argued that access should be denied, because disclosure "risks stigmatizing African American attorneys." At the same time, the Society of American Law Teachers, which leans so heavily to the left it risks falling over sideways, gleefully warned that the state bar would be sued if it cooperated with Mr. Sander.

Sadly, the State Bar's Committee of Bar Examiners caved under the pressure. The committee members didn't formally explain their decision to deny Mr. Sander's request for these data (in which no names would be disclosed), but the root cause is clear: Over the last 40 years, many distinguished citizens--university presidents, judges, philanthropists and other leaders--have built their reputations on their support for race-based admissions. Ordinary citizens have found secure jobs as part of the resulting diversity bureaucracy.

If the policy is not working, they, too, don't want anyone to know.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights hopes that it can persuade the State Bar to reconsider. Its soon-to-be released report on affirmative action in law schools specifically calls for state bar authorities to cooperate with qualified scholars studying the mismatch issue. The recommendation is modest. The commission doesn't claim that Mr. Sander is right or his critics wrong. It simply seeks to encourage and facilitate important research.

The Commission's deeper purpose is to remind those who support and administer affirmative action polices that good intentions are not enough. Consequences also matter. And conscious, deliberately chosen ignorance is not a good-faith option.

Mr. Sander's original article noted that when elite law schools lower their academic standards in order to admit a more racially diverse class, schools one or two tiers down feel they must do the same. As a result, there is now a serious gap in academic credentials between minority and non-minority law students across the pecking order, with the average black student's academic index more than two standard deviations below that of his average white classmate.

Not surprisingly, such a gap leads to problems. Students who attend schools where their academic credentials are substantially below those of their fellow students tend to perform poorly.

The reason is simple: While some students will outperform their entering academic credentials, just as some students will underperform theirs, most students will perform in the range that their academic credentials predict. As a result, in elite law schools, 51.6% of black students had first-year grade point averages in the bottom 10% of their class as opposed to only 5.6% of white students. Nearly identical performance gaps existed at law schools at all levels. This much is uncontroversial.

Supporters of race-based admissions argue that, despite the likelihood of poor grades, minority students are still better off accepting the benefit of a preference and graduating from a more prestigious school. But Mr. Sander's research suggests that just the opposite may be true--that law students, no matter what their race, may learn less, not more, when they enroll in schools for which they are not academically prepared. Students who could have performed well at less competitive schools may end up lost and demoralized. As a result, they may fail the bar.

Specifically, Mr. Sander found that when black and white students with similar academic credentials compete against each other at the same school, they earn about the same grades. Similarly, when black and white students with similar grades from the same tier law school take the bar examination, they pass at about the same rate.

Yet, paradoxically, black students as a whole have dramatically lower bar passage rates than white students with similar credentials. Something is wrong.

The Sander study argued that the most plausible explanation is that, as a result of affirmative action, black and white students with similar credentials are not attending the same schools. The white students are more likely to be attending a school that takes things a little more slowly and spends more time on matters that are covered on the bar exam. They are learning, while their minority peers are struggling at more elite schools.
Mr. Sander calculated that if law schools were to use color-blind admissions policies, fewer black law students would be admitted to law schools (3,182 students instead of 3,706), but since those who were admitted would be attending schools where they have a substantial likelihood of doing well, fewer would fail or drop out (403 vs. 670). In the end, more would pass the bar on their first try (1,859 vs. 1,567) and more would eventually pass the bar (2,150 vs. 1,981) than under the current system of race preferences. Obviously, these figures are just approximations, but they are troubling nonetheless.

Mr. Sander has his critics--some thoughtful, some just strident--but so far none has offered a plausible alternative explanation for the data. Of course, Mr. Sander doesn't need to be proven 100% correct for his research to be devastating news for affirmative-action supporters.

Suppose the consequences of race-based admissions turn out to be a wash--neither increasing nor decreasing the number of minority attorneys. In that case, few people would think it worth the costs, not least among them the human costs that result from the failure of the supposed beneficiaries to graduate and pass the bar.

Under current practices, only 45% of blacks who enter law school pass the bar on their first attempt as opposed to over 78% of whites. Even after multiple tries, only 57% of blacks succeed. The rest are often saddled with student debt, routinely running as high as $160,000, not counting undergraduate debt. How great an increase in the number of black attorneys is needed to justify these costs?

The most important other recommendation of the Civil Rights Commission is a call for transparency. As a matter of consumer fairness, law school applicants--regardless of race--need to know the statistical likelihood that someone with their academic credentials will successfully graduate and pass the bar. Once informed, they can better decide whether to undertake the risk of attending that particular school, or any law school at all. If law schools are unwilling to undertake this simple reform, it should be mandated by law.

Under current practices, law school applicants are at the mercy of admissions officers for that information; it is almost never provided except on a class-wide basis where success rates are positively misleading. Minority students whose academic credentials are substantially below their average classmates are lulled into believing that they are just as likely to graduate and pass the bar. When they don't, they may be stuck with the bills, not to mention the loss of several years of their lives.
The problem is that the admissions officer's job is to enroll students, not to draw the risks of failure to their attention. Indeed, in some cases, the officer may be frantic to enroll minority students in order to comply with the stringent new diversity standards of the American Bar Association Council on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar. As the federal government's accrediting agency for law schools, the ABA Council determines whether a law school will be eligible for the federal student-loan program. The law school that fails to satisfy its diversity requirements does so at its peril--as a number of law school deans can amply attest.

Decades of law students have relied upon the good faith of law school officials to tell them what they needed to know. For the 43% of black law students who never became lawyers, maybe that reliance was misplaced.

Ms. Heriot is professor of law at the University of San Diego and a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Canada's Shooting Gallery

Canada's Shooting Gallery
By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY
WSJ

Vancouver, British Columbia

Early on a cool, rainy morning here last week, I decided to walk from my hotel in the most fashionable quarter of this fashionable West Coast metropolis to the "Downtown East Side." I was going to see an old friend, who in his retirement years has joined a Catholic ministry dedicated to outreach among the prostitutes in this notoriously seedy area. I wanted to visit the neighborhood where he works, in part, because it also happens to be where provincial authorities have set up a "safe injection site" for drug addicts. Many of the young women on the streets are hooked on opiates.

When I asked for directions from the hotel concierge, her eyebrows went up and she asked me what time of day I would be going. "As long as it's early and you stick to Pender Street, you should be OK," she said, tracing a path for me on a map.

Her advice, I later realized, was another way of saying, "stay off East Hastings Street," the epicenter of life for drug users here and the location of "InSite," North America's only legal, government-sponsored, injection clinic. Later that morning, as my friend showed me around the neighborhood in his car, I saw why. The sidewalks in front of the clinic were lined with addicts, and for blocks in both directions, all humanity looked sick, drawn, impoverished and defeated. In the gloom of a drizzly, cloud-covered Sunday morning, I felt I had entered one of Dante's inner circles of suffering.

Like most wealthy societies, Canada struggles with the problem of drug addiction. Prohibition was supposed to limit the supply of evil weeds, and thus the temptation to experiment with addictive chemicals. Yet decades of drug laws have had little effect, if any, on the availability of mind-altering substances and their corrosive effects on some part of the population.

While the benefits of prohibition are hard to discern, the cost of the war on drugs is quite clear. Inside the borders of rich countries, the large profits make vigorously pushing illegal substances worth the risk. Children, even in rural areas, are an especially attractive target under the black-market pricing structure. Addicts have to pay dearly; yet, like all intelligent vendors, dealers offer "introductory prices" for beginners. For criminals, prohibition profits make weapons, information technology and bribery of law-enforcement officials easily affordable.

These days Canadians are all too familiar with the price of the drug war outside their borders. Their military is now engaged in some of the heaviest fighting in Afghanistan, where reports from the field suggest that what is making the mission so difficult, at least in part, is the fact that the bad guys have enlisted support from the poppy growers who serve the heroin trade.

Organized crime is also flourishing in the Western Hemisphere. Colombian society has been shredded by drug cartels and, more recently, by narcotrafficking left-wing guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries. The U.S. effort to block Caribbean transit routes sent the traffickers into Central America and Mexico. Since taking office in July 2006, Mexican President Felipe Calderón has made defeating the drug lords a priority. The Calderón crackdown has produced a spike in violence in the past year, claimed the lives of numerous Mexican law-enforcement officials and, if reports from the border are true, is now having a spillover effect in the Southwestern U.S. Yet the drugs keep coming, answering the demand.

This record suggests that attacking supply as a way to reduce demand is fighting a losing battle. Sophisticated economists -- most notably the late Milton Friedman -- have argued that the power of the market is just too great and that the unintended consequences are bound to cause both more bloodshed and more corruption.

Yet even though the war on drugs has been an obvious failure, Canada's experimental approach is hardly a promising alternative. Vancouver's InSite is simply horrifying in different ways. I didn't venture inside the clinic itself, but someone who has describes "bright white lights and a cold clinical setting," with the obligatory "absolutely no smoking" sign hanging at the entry. The idea is that junkies are going to use anyway so the state should help lower the risk, being careful, of course, not to pass judgment. The drugs are illegal, but in the interest of "harm reduction," the state will provide sanitary injection services. "Come right in, get your fix. There, you feel better, don't you?"

This is like something out of Aldous Huxley's novel, "Brave New World." Utilitarian big government discovers a low-cost, efficient method of getting the dregs of society out of everybody's hair. All it takes are sterile needles and mind-numbing drugs supplied by the addicts themselves. Leaving aside the quaint notion that putting oneself in a perpetually medicated state may not be the best way to reach one's human potential, the clinic's approach is hugely problematic. Even the most pro-legalization libertarians would have to agree that a government that engages in drugging the citizenry is pretty far removed from the classic definition of the modern liberal state.

Canada is now debating this issue. A group of 130 Canadian scientists and doctors recently published a statement arguing that InSite has been successful because there has been "reduced needle sharing, decreased public drug use, fewer publicly discarded syringes, and more rapid entry into detoxification services by persons using the facility." But last week Health Minister Tony Clement suggested that other studies have drawn far less happy conclusions. Critics of "harm reduction" programs say that despite free needles, junkies tend to share anyway and that addicts continue to sell sex and spread disease. They also note that signing up for "detoxification" is a far cry from rehab and it's not the least bit clear that needle clinics are paths to treatment.

There is another problem as well with the nanny province getting into the drug injection business: It adds to what one British Columbian described to me as "the growth of the poverty industry" in Vancouver. The bureaucracy that exists to "serve" the drug-dependent community has little interest in seeing the problem go away and, with it, their jobs. Here, as in many other arenas, there is a normal bureaucratic impulse to expand, broadening the state's subsidization of dependency. Viewed in this light, a state-sponsored shooting gallery is good for business.

Something is also very wrong when society officially winks at its own prohibition laws. Indeed, InSite demonstrates that encouraging drug use through the welfare state while at the same time attempting prohibition is not just illogical. It also produces the worst of all worlds.

• Write to O'Grady@wsj.com

Clientelismo: pobreza favorece oficialismos

Clientelismo: pobreza favorece oficialismos
Por: Rosendo Fraga
Ámbito Financiero

La preocupación del Episcopado por el llamado «clientelismo político» se encuentra justificada en la realidad social de la Argentina.

Ya en el Imperio Romano, el cliente era aquella persona de los estratos populares que, a cambio de favores, asistencia o manutención, respondía políticamente a un noble o caudillo político. Desde esta perspectiva, el llamado «clientelismo político» ha existido a lo largo de la historia en diversas formas.

En la Argentina del siglo XIX, los caudillos políticos nutrían sus filas de hombres provenientes de los sectores populares. Tanto conservadores, como radicales y peronistas, utilizaron formas políticas clientelistas de diverso tipo. El acceso al empleo público, facilitar trámites, otorgar favores y ayudas, han sido sistemas de creación de adhesiones y fidelidades políticas no sólo argentinos sino universales.

Sin embargo, en los últimos tiempos se evidencia en nuestro país una agudización de estas formas, que se hacen cada vez más notorias en los procesos electorales.

El aumento de la pobreza y la indigencia, generado por la crisis 2001-2002, incrementó las políticas clientelistas en los sectores populares.

Un ejemplo de ello es que en 2005 se conoció el hecho de que 52% de los beneficiarios de los subsidios para jefas y jefas de hogar desempleados estaba afiliado a partidos políticos, mientras sólo lo estaba 14% de la población total. A ello se agrega que aproximadamente 15% de estos planes eran adjudicados por organizaciones piqueteras, con lo cual dos de cada tres subsidios se distribuyen sobre la base de clientelismo político.

El análisis de los datos electorales muestra claramente que aumenta el voto por el oficialismo -del partido que sea- a medida que aumenta la pobreza.

De esta forma, tomando las elecciones de 2005, en las ocho provincias con mayor porcentaje de población (25,4%) con Necesidades Básicas Insatisfechas (NBI), el promedio obtenido por el oficialismo local fue de 55,7% de los votos. De estos ocho gobiernos provinciales, cinco han sido electos por el PJ y tres por la UCR. Por otro lado, en los ocho distritos que tienen un promedio de 15,7% de la población con NBI, el promedio de votos obtenidos por el oficialismo fue de 44,1%. En cambio, en los ocho distritos que tienen un promedio de sólo 11,1% de la población en esta situación -en los hechos, con menor pobreza- el voto por el oficialismo desciende a 40,7%. La tendencia es clara: a más pobreza más voto por el oficialismo.

El mismo análisis realizado sobre los resultadosde los municipios del Gran Buenos Aires lo corrobora. En las nueve comunas con menos población con NBI -que promedian 9,81% de la población en esta situación-, el voto por el oficialismo fue de 41,6%. En los municipios que promedian 17,97% de la población con NBI, el voto por el oficialismo se elevó a 44,1%; y en los municipios más pobres, que promedian 24,02% de los habitantes con NBI, el voto por el oficialismo llega a un promedio de 54,6%.

La segunda vuelta de la elección porteña del 24 de junio del corriente, confirma la tendencia.

El voto por el oficialismo nacional es de sólo 22,6% en las circunscripciones de sectores altos, se eleva a 41,6% en las de sectores medios y llega a 45% en las de sectores bajos.

Las elecciones provinciales que se vienen realizando este año reiteran lo mencionado. Hoy, la mitad de los votantes vive o sobrevive en base a un ingreso del sector público, ya sea salario estatal, jubilación estatal, pensión o subsidio.

La provincia de Catamarca representa un claro ejemplo ya que 76% de los votantes depende del sector público, y en este distrito el gobernador fue reelecto con 57% de los votos. La «territorialización» de la política, en función de la cual los gobernadores e intendentes han pasado a ser protagonistas centrales frente al debilitamiento de los partidos nacionales -como sucedía en las últimas décadas del siglo XIX- es causa y consecuencia del aumento del clientelismo. Cuanto más personas dependen del Estado para subsistir, más aumenta la base electoral «cautiva» de quien está en el gobierno.

Tanto en 2003 como en 2005, en 20 de los 24 distritos ganó quien gobernaba y lo mismo sucederá en 2007. Los fenómenos de cambio, como el de Capital y Tierra del Fuego, se dan en distritos con predominio de clase media y alto ingreso.

Si a ello se suma que la concurrencia a votar sigue descendiendo, al igual que el voto positivo por partidos y candidatos, el porcentaje relativo del voto cautivo aumenta, al descender el del voto independiente.

Por esta razón, quien hoy está en el gobierno -nacional, provincial o municipal- tiene más ventaja que antes para ganar una elección, porque el electorado cautivo o clientelista actualmente es mayor que en el pasado.

Sin embargo, también hay que asumir que para los sectores populares, el clientelismo termina siendo un mecanismo para resolver no sólo la subsistencia, sino también los problemas cotidianos, y que para ellos votar por la oposición implica crear una situación de incertidumbre sobre su futuro. En realidad es el mismo Estado quien, al no cumplir sus funciones primarias, lo termina haciendo por un canal indirecto que le permite capitalizarlo políticamente.

Se equivocan con la receta inflacionaria

Se equivocan con la receta inflacionaria
Por: Enrique Szewach
Ámbito Financiero

Primero, un repaso a la situación internacional. Da toda la impresión que la rápida reacción de los bancos centrales inyectando liquidez y la reacción de la Fed reduciendo los costos de esa liquidez está dando resultado. Los mercados están reaccionando favorablemente y parecen más cercanos a una corrección, dentro de perspectivas positivas, que a una ratificación del desplome. Sin embargo, todavía no es tiempo de cantar victoria. Como expresaba la semana pasada, los problemas de liquidez se superan con «prestamistas de última instancia», los de solvencia no. Falta ahora la depuración del mercado de aquéllos que, efectivamente, se «merecieron» la corrida, por la pérdida de calidad de sus activos. Habrá que ver, de aquí en más, quiénes de los portadores del «virus» de las hipotecas de baja calidad quedan sanos y quiénes no tendrán cura. Dependiendo de la magnitud de la enfermedad sabremos, en los próximos meses, el grado de la desaceleración de la economía mundial. Por ahora, insisto, el escenario de aterrizaje suave, menor crecimiento, mayores spreads hacia lo más riesgoso, pero sin recesión y sin desplome de los precios de los commodities agrícolas sigue siendo el más probable. ¿Altera en algo este panorama la agenda de política económica local? En realidad no. Quizá le reste algo de margen de maniobra a la política económica. Quizá torne más urgente algunas medidas previstas para más largo plazo. Quizá, también aquí, veamos algunas consecuencias en el sector inmobiliario y en el ingreso de capitales amantes del riesgo argentino. Pero lo cierto es que más allá de estas cuestiones del entorno, que no son menores por cierto, lo que teníamos por delante en materia de política económica un mes atrás, también lo tenemos por delante ahora. Desde el punto de vista macro, la tarea más importante del próximo gobierno será la de recuperar solvencia fiscal y adaptar la política monetaria y cambiaria al nuevo escenario internacional. Sin embargo, la forma en que se intenta recuperar dicha solvencia fiscal resulta peligrosa. La idea de convivir con 15-20% anual de inflación en los ingresos y retomar un escenario de licuación del gasto, es una idea con mucho «sex appeal» en el gobierno y en quienes están cerca del futuro gobierno de Cristina. Me explico: con la maxidevaluación de 2002, el Estado, a través de las retenciones a la exportación, por un lado, y de un «impuesto extraordinario a los ingresos de empleados públicos y jubilados», y un «impuesto extraordinario a las ganancias de las empresas» (al no ajustar ninguno de estos rubros por inflación) por el otro, logró un espectacular superávit fiscal de caja. (Dicho sea de paso, resulta gracioso que todavía le echen en cara a mi amigo López Murphy su modesto pedido de reducción de 10% de los salarios públicos, teniendo en cuenta todo lo que les quitaron, con la inflación, en los años posteriores). Este superávit extraordinario se mantuvo mientras el desempleo y la capacidad ociosa del sector productivo, ponían, de alguna manera, un freno al reclamo de ajuste de los asalariados.

# Compensación

Luego, en la medida que la reducción del desempleo mejoraba los ingresos familiares (al aumentar el número de trabajadores en cada hogar), los asalariados compensaron la caída real de sus ingresos individuales, con los nuevos recursos que ingresaban en la casa, por los nuevos trabajadores. Esta etapa, de alguna manera, terminó, o se desaceleró fuertemente durante el año pasado y parte de éste. A partir de allí, el gobierno del presidente Kirchner en el nivel federal, y los gobernadores, en las provincias, empezaron a «devolver» parte de lo que la inflación les había quitado a los salarios públicos y jubilaciones. Mientras en el sector privado, también por pleno empleo, y fin de la etapa, en promedio, de la capacidad ociosa, los salarios blancos y aún los informales comenzaban a achicar, e inclusive superar, la brecha respecto de lo que la inflación se había llevado desde el estallido de la convertibilidad. Este proceso se aceleró dramáticamente, como no podía ser de otra manera, en este año electoral. Las provincias, en donde el gasto salarial es, en promedio, más de 50% del gasto total, perdieron prácticamente todo su superávit fiscal y algunas pasaron fuertemente al déficit. Mien-tras la Nación redujo su excedente, también rápidamente, aunque en menor medida, dado que el peso de los salarios públicos es relativamente menor y que el rubro de gasto más importante, jubilaciones, no tiene el mismo «reclamo» gremial que los salarios. A esta presión de salarios y jubilaciones -presión a la que cedió rápidamente el gobierno por razones electorales e inclusive ideológicas, en busca de una mejor distribución del ingreso-se le sumaron la maraña de subsidios e inversión pública tendiente a compensar problemas de oferta energética y déficit de inversión privada en infraestructura, por las razones que conocemos, más problemas en precios de alimentos, transporte, etc. Es decir, se trató de devolver parte del impuesto inflacionario, subsidiando algunos precios a ciertos sectores de la población. Sin embargo, sin esta tasa de inflación de 20% en los ingresos -más allá del «dibujo» de Morenolos ingresos fiscales hubieran sido sustancialmente menores. Obviamente que, con una tasa de inflación menor, también hubiera sido menor el ajuste necesitado por los salarios y jubilaciones. Pero, políticamente, no es lo mismo recaudar 20% más, echarle la culpa de la inflación a los «mercados oligopólicos» y luego otorgar «generosamente» un aumento a los empleados públicos y jubilados y subsidiar, además, con fondos discrecionales y control político, consumos y gastos; que, en cambio, tener un aumento de los ingresos de 7 u 8% (recaudar menos impuesto inflacionario), y anunciar menos aumentos en los gastos o subsidiar menos y, por lo tanto, controlar menos a productores, prestadores de servicios o gobernadores. La inflación, en este esquema de gobierno, ha sido parte de la «solución política» y no un problema. La idea entonces, como mencionaba más arriba, es que, pasadas las elecciones y en un escenario de mayor «normalidad», se puede recuperar solvencia fiscal, simplemente, manteniendo relativamente constante la tasa del impuesto inflacionario «verdadera» en torno a 15-20% anual y expandiendo el gasto, levemente por debajo de dicha tasa. En otras palabras, para el Presidente y su sucesora, no sólo se puede convivir con una tasa de inflación de 15% anual, sino que ésta es una manera «política» de administrar mayores recur-sos fiscales y de licuar gasto disimuladamente.

# Problema mayor

¿Por qué esta idea resulta peligrosa? No es la primera vez, en la historia de la política económica argentina, que se intenta utilizar un «poco de inflación» como mecanismo facilitador de la política fiscal. Y allí, precisamente, está el mayor de los problemas. Ningún experimento social puede repetirse, dado que «los ratones» aprendemos. Dicho de otra manera, es difícil hoy en día engañar por mucho tiempo en el verdadero valor del Indice de Precios al Consumidor. También resulta difícil engañar a los inversores sobre la verdadera solvencia fiscal, incorporando recursos de una sola vez, como los provenientes de la reforma previsional, como si fueran recursos corrientes. Es difícil, en una economía en cuasi pleno empleo, licuar salarios privados e inclusive, públicos. Y hasta la Justicia le pone límites a la licuación de jubilaciones y pensiones. En ese contexto, se corre el riesgo, similar al observado en el período 2006-2007, de ir acelerando, sin prisa pero sin pausa, la tasa de inflación, con el objetivo de postergar soluciones de largo plazo en la política fiscal. (Pero ahora partiendo de un «piso» más elevado.) Paradójicamente, juega a favor la probable desaceleración de la economía, tanto por las razones internacionales ya analizadas, como por las limitaciones locales. Pero también, y para evitar un problema mayor de mediano y largo plazo, hará falta ir normalizando precios clave de la economía, como los vinculados a la energía, lo que impactará en los precios en general, aunque reducirá los gastos en subsidios varios. Por otro lado, todavía no se han percibido mecanismos de «evasión» del impuesto inflacionario generalizados. Pero no sería de extrañar que, en la medida que se persista en tasas elevadas, dichos mecanismos comiencen a surgir, obligando al Banco Central a una política monetaria menos expansiva, con lo que ello implica en términos de tasa de interés y la «sintonía fina» del nivel de actividad y el tipo de cambio. En síntesis, el escenario internacional ha cambiado, pero por ahora, se ratifica el aterrizaje, algo menos suave, pero no violento. Esto reduce el margen de maniobra de la política económica local, pero no al extremo de generar una crisis. La idea que prima en el gobierno, respecto a que, pasadas las elecciones, tanto el Presidente como la futura presidenta, podrán volver al escenario de 2005-2006, cobrando impuesto inflacionario en los ingresos y licuando el gasto en los egresos, es una idea peligrosa. No será fácil seguir postergando políticas de fondo en materia fiscal. No será fácil apostar al «acuerdo social» como mecanismo de freno a las demandas sindicales por seguir aumentando el salario real, y a las demandas empresarias por recuperar tasas de rentabilidad extraordinarias que compensen el creciente riesgo argentino. Seguir engañándonos entre nosotros, para evitar enfrentar nuestros dilemas, nunca ha sido una buena solución.

Recipe: Gazpacho With Watermelon and Avocado

2 fat ripe tomatoes (about 1 pound), cored and cut into chunks
1 cup seedless watermelon, diced small
Two-inch-thick slice of day-old baguette (about 1 1/2 ounces), cut into pieces
1 Kirby cucumber, trimmed and cut into chunks
2 tablespoons chopped red onion
1 garlic clove
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 ice cube
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 avocado, peeled and diced small.

1. In a blender combine tomatoes, 1/2 cup watermelon, bread, cucumber, onion, garlic, salt, pepper and ice cube. Purée until smooth. Slowly drizzle in the olive oil. Chill in refrigerator until very cold, at least 30 minutes.

2. Serve, garnished with remaining chopped watermelon and avocado.
Yield: 2 servings.

A Farewell to Alms

By ARVIND SUBRAMANIAN
August 22, 2007 - WSJ

When celebrities such as Angelina Jolie or Bono highlight human tragedy to show that something can be done to alleviate it, the heart melts and the purse strings loosen. But the stars, alas, aren't up on the economic literature. Research is increasingly questioning the benefits of foreign aid.

For a long time, persistent underdevelopment in aid-receiving countries fostered doubts about whether the do-good impulse was doing permanent good. Validation seemed to arrive with two World Bank researchers, Craig Burnside and David Dollar, who purportedly showed in the late 1990s that aid helped boost long run economic growth. It did so not everywhere and all the time, but only where recipient countries followed good policies and had reasonable institutional environments for these policies to be effective.

Governments, nongovernmental organizations, donors, the press and civil society embraced this work with the hungry enthusiasm of the long-deprived. The research had the great virtues of plausibility and expediency -- a finding that aid is unconditionally good would have strained credulity. And by linking aid effectiveness to policies, the research gave intellectual justification to donors' practice of imposing "conditionality" on recipient governments. Tough love had found its intellectual savior.

Unfortunately, the Burnside-Dollar findings did not hold up to further scrutiny. Aid, after all, simply expands resources available to countries to build schools, hospitals and roads, and to pay teachers. These investments in human capital and infrastructure surely boost growth and improve living standards, the thinking went, even if there is some wastage of resources along the way through corruption or mismanagement. But as researchers pored over the data, it became increasingly difficult to maintain that there was any systematic relationship between aid and long-run economic growth.

The problem is that development and long-run growth are less about resources than about the environment for generating and sustaining private sector investment. Two key aspects of this environment are decent public institutions or governance -- the essential "software" for running a market economy, for creating rule of law and protecting property rights -- and incentives that encourage the private sector to export, especially manufactured products.

Aid, especially in large amounts, can damage governance and make an economy uncompetitive. Like revenues from natural resources, it is manna from heaven for governments. When governments receive large oil revenues or aid, they have less incentive to be accountable to their citizens, and governance suffers. In theory, donors impose an alternate form of accountability. In practice, donors' motivations are sometimes a mixture of the murky (think of the U.S. and Pakistan post 9/11 or the West and Zaire's Mobutu several decades ago) and the mindless (in 2000-02, the Tanzanian government reportedly had to write a few thousand reports to donors every quarter). Even where motivations are honorable, recipients have infinite ways of circumventing donor conditions.

Aid can also have adverse effects on an economy's competitiveness. When foreign resources come pouring in and are spent domestically, wages tend to rise, especially for those in scarce supply such as managers, supervisors and entrepreneurs. Factories that export will find themselves becoming uncompetitive and go out of business.

In research with Raghuram Rajan, we find that in countries that received more aid, exportable industries systematically underperformed. And exporting manufactured goods has been the mode of escape from underdevelopment in many of the East Asian successes. Is it a coincidence that, with rare exceptions (Mauritius), there are no booming clothing industries -- the launching pad for some of the East Asian miracles -- in aid-addled Africa? This despite the fact that clothing is only minimally demanding of infrastructure and entrepreneurship, and despite the very favorable access that Africa has always had in Western markets for exports of clothing products.

The new research findings have provoked genuine soul-searching among aid practitioners on the need to do things differently. But a new line, expressed most recently by the New York Times' Nicholas Kristof, goes something like this: So what if aid cannot do permanent good? The question is, can it do some good? Or, even if aid cannot promote livelihoods, can it save lives?

If it can, aid for a set of well-defined objectives, such as improving health and education, should continue to flow, and even increase substantially. There is ample evidence that foreign assistance helps fight disease in poor countries, documented most vividly in the Center for Global Development's "Millions Saved: Proven Successes in Global Health." So, why not do more of the same?

Because the fact that aid can save lives does not mean that aid might not have some of the adverse long-run effects relating to damaging governance and making the economy uncompetitive. Better health could be accompanied by slower growth, and hence reduced prospects for long-run prosperity. Even if the trade-off is worth making, it needs to be acknowledged. Aid advocates evade this by thinking and acting as if the long-run problems caused by aid can be fixed independently. That rarely happens.

Aid advocacy leads to perhaps an even more serious problem. There is a limited stock of good will and good intentions in the rich world and the question becomes whether this stock is best harnessed by mobilizing more aid, or by pursuing alternative actions that could have a bigger impact.

Consider a few: mobilizing more money to provide incentives for greater research and development devoted to addressing poor country health and agriculture problems (the green revolution in Asia was made possible by research on high-yielding varieties of wheat, and Africa hasn't had a similar revolution of its own); making regulatory changes in industrial countries that can reduce corruption (for example, more rigorous enforcement of bribery and corruption by rich country officials and corporations) in poor countries, which could have a huge impact on economic performance; or allowing more immigration from the poorest countries, which would directly benefit the poor.

These solutions are seldom pursued with the zeal that they deserve, in part because they are more difficult to support politically, and in part because that zeal which is essential to overcome the difficulties gets diverted toward, well, to calling for more aid.

Giving aid is like looking for the lost key under the lamppost because that is the easiest thing to do. But it is not obviously the most effective way that outsiders can help. When Ms. Jolie appears on the screen calling for more aid, she not only distracts our attention toward her obviously good looks, she may also be distracting our attention away from the search for more effective solutions to helping the poorest around the world.

Mr. Subramanian is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Government Failure in Peru

By IAN VASQUEZ
August 20, 2007 - WSJ

The water towers on the outskirts of Lima, Peru say "Water is health, care for it." For many residents of Villa El Salvador, one of the Peruvian capital's famous sprawling shanty towns, that admonishment is a cruel joke. Many have petitioned the government for water for decades, to no avail. One million of Lima's eight million citizens have no access to clean water.

The water monopoly -- which loses some 40% of its water through leaky pipes or in ways otherwise unaccounted for -- is only one of Peru's monuments to government incompetence. Peruvians were reminded of another last month when the communist-led teacher's union went on strike, paralyzing schools and triggering violence across the country. The union was protesting a law requiring that teachers be tested and held accountable for competency. An evaluation earlier this year found that one-third of teachers are deficient in reading comprehension and that nearly half cannot do basic math.

The union's grip on schools is the main reason for the failure of public education, according to the Peruvian Institute of Economics, which reports that half of 15-year-olds lack minimum reading skills. In the end, the union agreed to temporarily suspend its strike while it negotiates with the government.

Those hit hardest by the crises in education and water -- poor Peruvians -- are not reacting with complacency, however. They are demanding private solutions. Indeed, during my visits to one of the poorest parts of Villa El Salvador in the past two years, I learned why residents began marching on government offices to demand the privatization of Sedapal, Lima's state-run water company. Community leaders and residents explained that they'd grown tired of being neglected by Sedapal. They have been joined by residents of other shanty towns surrounding Lima.

In one such protest by hundreds of people from the shanty town of Carabayllo at the Ministry of Finance last year, Adolfo Peña Olivos told the daily Diario Correo that "We represent 116,000 families from 120 squatter settlements that have not had water or sewage for more than 10 years, and many children and elderly have died because Sedapal does not have the resources to alleviate our needs."

Lima's marginalized poor are correct about the potential of the private sector to meet their water needs -- they can see for themselves how private companies have made electricity, telephones and cable widely available in their neighborhoods. As José Manuel Saavedra, head of CITPeru, a local NGO, wryly notes, poor communities have Internet access, but no water.

The poor know, too, that the price they're used to paying would fall dramatically with privatization. Water they now buy from unsanitary tanker trucks costs 10 to 15 times more than piped water. In Guayaquil, Ecuador, a privatization carried out in 2001 has lowered the price of water by 90% for 275,000 poor people because their homes became connected to the formal network. Privately run water can also save thousands of lives, as has been the case around the developing world including in Argentina, where child mortality dropped by 26% in the poorest areas that privatized water.

By chance, during my visits I learned that the rejection of state services has extended to education as well. One day, a woman in Villa El Salvador confirmed to me that the large building in the distance was a public school, and volunteered that she did not send her son there. Instead, he goes to a private school that charges a fee. "It hurts, but it's well worth it," she explained.

Somewhat surprised, I then asked if many other parents there send their children to private schools. She estimated that at least half do so. Standing on the dusty hillside overlooking the town, with the putrid smell of human waste wafting through the air, the mother pointed to building after building where private, informal-sector schools educate the poor.

As it turns out, Peru's shanty towns are full of such private, for-profit schools. Yet to my knowledge, the phenomenon has not been carefully studied. The anecdotal evidence is, however, consistent with the pathbreaking work of University of Newcastle Professor James Tooley, who documented how private schools in the African and Indian slums he studied have arisen to educate the majority of the children there. Mr. Tooley found that students in private schools performed notably better than those in public schools, and private schools rated better on most indicators, including teacher attendance.

The same seems to be the case in Peru. The one grade school I visited, San Vicente de Paúl, offered classes to 30 children at a cost of about $12 per month. Its several classrooms were clean and orderly, and looked well supplied. The school even had 10 computers connected to the Internet and a small play area. Director Ariela Roque's main complaint, however, was that her school lacked a property title, thus inhibiting its expansion.

So it is that people in Lima's squatter settlements rely on their wits to overcome any number of obstacles thrown up by government. Their thinking is still, as anthropologist William Mangin, one of the first to document the vast informal economies of Lima's shanty towns, described it some 40 years ago: "Similar to the beliefs of the operator of a small business in 19th century England or the United States . . . Work hard, save your money, trust only family members . . . outwit the state, vote conservatively if possible . . . educate your children for their future and as old-age insurance for yourself."

Even in a country where the government is dysfunctional and vastly larger than that of 19th century England, those values can serve as a good development guide. New spending of the kind President Alan García has begun on water projects in Villa El Salvador will not do the trick. As CITPeru points out, Peru cannot come close to spending the $2 billion necessary to meet Lima's water needs unless there is private investment.

The government's new water pipes will mostly be running dry. It is high time the government recognize the dignity of Lima's poor by trusting their solutions.

Mr. Vásquez is the director of the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity at the Cato Institute.

Is Housing Undervalued?
By DAVID RANSON
August 17, 2007-WSJ

The housing market isn't nearly as mysterious as it seems. Much public confusion stems from our failure to clearly define our terms. Take the popular, long-standing belief that housing is overpriced and unaffordable relative to income. It was said 30 years ago and it is still being said today. The key to solving this puzzle is to widen the definition of income so that it includes the increase in existing wealth. Milton Friedman, in the course of the work on consumer spending that won him a Nobel Prize, introduced a much broader, long-term measure of income called "permanent income" -- including capital gains, physical assets and factors like education that would affect a consumer's earning potential.


Permanent income grows at the same rate as wealth, and generally faster than conventional forms of income. Friedman demonstrated that households base their spending decisions on permanent income rather than on narrowly defined income, such as short-term wages. Fifty years later this idea has yet to sink into our national consciousness. Yet, in a highly developed and wealthy country such as the U.S., annual gains in the value of pre-existing assets are getting larger and larger relative to annual cash income from wages, rents and dividends.

Home prices behave the way they do because housing is not a typical consumer good. Rather, it is a capital asset for which the price is set by the markets for capital assets. These markets continually clear in a way that typical consumption markets do not, and housing is therefore being constantly re-priced. In this limited sense, real-estate prices behave like the prices of other tangible assets such as commodities. Of course, in other ways housing is quite unlike a commodity -- it is immobile, provides services such as shelter to its owners, and its price is geographically very specific. Still, the general level of housing prices, when measured as an index, is as acutely and promptly sensitive to an uptick in inflationary pressures as are other forms of financial or tangible capital.

Inflation tends to boost housing prices in the same way that it boosts the price of any tangible asset. And inflation is surely a major part of the housing-price story. Over the past three decades, the price of housing at the national level has risen at a rate similar to the growth of nominal GDP, and the correlation between housing prices and GDP is statistically significant. But the relationship between housing prices and the prices of highly inflation-sensitive assets such as commodities is much more impressive than the relationship with the economy. There is a particularly strong correlation between percentage changes in housing prices and percentage changes in the price of gold -- especially when a short time lag is taken into account.

When paper money is depreciating rapidly, as in the last five years, it is normal for tangible assets such as housing to appreciate more rapidly than usual, while financial assets such as stocks and bonds tend to perform relatively poorly. This can be understood in terms of the flow of financial capital from one economic haven to another. Capital is mobile. It flows out of assets that are vulnerable to the dollar's depreciation, and into assets that are invulnerable. Capital promotes growth and price appreciation in the sectors into which it migrates, at the expense of the sectors from which it escapes.

Instead of viewing the price performance of housing during the first half of the current decade as a "bubble," I see it as having appreciated for the same reason that the prices of commodities and other tangible assets have appreciated. In nominal dollar terms these prices have to rise in order to maintain the status quo in real terms. The rise in housing prices is one more symptom or early warning of the inflation of which the Fed (rightly) is so fearful.

To better understand housing-market trends, we need to clearly distinguish between real and nominal terms. I define the "real price of housing" as the ratio of the national home-price index to an index of precious-metals prices, while the nominal value refers to the price in dollars. Failure to draw this distinction can cause great confusion. For example, the annual gain in the nominal price of housing averaged 4.8% in all the years in which the Fed lowered interest rates, and averaged 7.3% in all the years in which the Fed pushed interest rates up. This calculation, at least in nominal terms, directly contradicts the popular belief that higher interest rates bring real-estate prices down. When the above calculation is repeated using the real price of housing instead of the nominal price, however, the inverse relationship appears. Higher interest rates do tend to depress real housing prices, and this can happen without any significant fall in nominal housing prices.

Expressing the price of housing in real terms not only clarifies the interest-rate confusion, it also changes the overall housing picture. The accompanying graph shows the history of the real national home-price index over the past 30 years. Notice how, during the current decade, instead of the continuing rise in nominal housing prices that made everyone so fearful, in real terms there has been a significant decline. Far from a bull-market bubble that has begun to collapse, housing when viewed in real terms has been in a bear market since the beginning of the decade.

Moreover, like the real price of oil, the real price of housing consistently reverts to the norm. In particular, housing prices have a strong tendency to rise when they have underperformed precious-metals prices. The graph illustrates how the real price of housing sticks to a steadily rising trend over the long haul, occasionally diverging from this trend but afterwards reverting to it. According to the same data, the real price of housing was 30% above its norm as recently as 2001.

Since that time commodity-price inflation has escalated, and nominal housing prices have lagged far behind. The graph suggests that housing prices are now 30% below their equilibrium in terms of the precious-metals benchmark. Any further decline in the ratio plotted in the chart would transcend the bounds of historical experience. The last time that housing prices underperformed the precious-metals market as dramatically as this was in the 1978-80 period, after which they bounced back dramatically.

We can also calculate from these data the average speed at which the real price of housing has historically converged toward its norm. It shows that norm reversion is virtually complete after three years.

All of these various empirical reasons challenge the popular view that housing prices will remain weak because they are in the throes of a "correction" from "bubble" levels. On the contrary, housing prices are weak only in the sense that, after outperforming commodity prices in the late 1990s, they have fallen behind since 2001. History suggests that housing is significantly undervalued, and nominal housing prices have a lot of catching up to do over the next few years.

Housing prices are thus much less enigmatic than they seem. The nation's wealth and its permanent income are growing consistently, and housing is the largest of all the capital asset vehicles in which wealth can be lodged. At the national level, housing prices are not bounded by the growth of wages or other forms of conventional income. Nor are they subject to "irrational" booms or busts. Instead, they respond perfectly rationally to inflationary forces that drive other capital assets and commodities. The real value of housing is much more stable than the currency unit in which housing prices are expressed.

Mr. Ranson is president of H.C. Wainwright & Co. Economics Inc.

El próximo gobierno está a tiempo de superar la crisis

El economista del mes: Adolfo Sturzenegger

El próximo gobierno está a tiempo de superar la crisis

Adolfo Sturzenegger fue el encargado en agosto de exponer su visión del actual momento de la economía argentina en la ya tradicional entrega de este diario «El economista del mes». Quien se desempeña como profesor de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata y director de la consultora IBC&P advierte sobre la peligrosa dinámica fiscal que torna a hacerse insostenible. Habla de la necesidad de un reacomodamiento de la política económica que, hecha a tiempo, le dará margen de maniobra al próximo gobierno. De lo contrario habrá serios problemas económicos y sociales. Para leer detenidamente.

1 Teniendo en cuenta el nuevo contexto de los mercados internacionales, ¿cuál es su visión de la situación argentina?

Vamos a recordar 2007 como un año en el que hubo dos transiciones, una constitucionalmente programada, esperada y visible, que es la transición política. Otra no programada y menos visible que es una transición económica, más específicamente una transición en la política económica. Esta consiste en que, por varias razones, esa política efectuó un pasaje desde una zona bien fácil por la cual transitó los cuatro años anteriores, hacia una bien difícil hoy. Tal pasaje le exige un importante reacomodamiento en el sentido de que varios de sus principales componentes, dado que la situación es muy distinta, deberían ser diferentes de los utilizados en los cuatro años pasados. En este momento, voy a reflejar mi opinión optimista acerca de la posibilidad de que tal reacomodamiento efectivamente se concrete. Y esto por dos razones. La primera es política. El nuevo gobierno va a tener un horizonte político básico de cuatro años, o sea mucho más extenso que el que ha tenido el actual presidente en los últimos meses, preocupado casi exclusivamente por la próxima elección de octubre. No parece políticamente racional que el nuevo gobierno haga lo mismo que hoy con un horizonte tan distinto. La segunda es económica. Al transitar ahora la política económica por una zona bien difícil, los riesgos de no intentar un reacomodamiento de ella serían muy altos, y por eso creo que lo más probable es que se tenga clara conciencia de ello, y que consecuentemente tal reacomodamiento se concrete.

2 ¿Cuáles fueron las bases de la economía hasta hoy?

Para explicar mejor el pasaje de la política económica de una zona a otra, debemos comenzar a explicar por qué existió una zona bien fácil en los cuatro años pasados. En este período actuaron cinco factores «facilitadores». En primer lugar, los altos precios internacionales de nuestros principales commodities de exportación, como trigo, soja, maíz, petróleo, cobre, carne, leche. En segundo término, de importancia decisiva para la facilidad, esos cuatro años se inician con un altísimo nivel de recursos ociosos. Esto permitió que no existieran tensiones importantes entre el objetivo de un alto crecimiento con el objetivo de la estabilidad de precios. Así, en 2002, teniendo en cuenta el desempleo y el subempleo demandante, se llegó a tener 40% de nuestra población trabajadora con problemas de empleo. Por otro lado, la utilización de la capacidad instalada industrial apenas superaba 50%. Algo similar ocurría en otros sectores de actividad. Un tercer factor, también decisivo, fue que el país logró entrar en una fuerte reversión fiscal completamente diferente a la situación de los 50 años previos. Los importantes superávit fiscales que se generaron en esos cuatro años fueron importantes facilitadores, ya que otorgaron al gobierno amplios márgenes fiscales que permitieron sostener una política de ingresos que pudo contar con la posibilidad de introducir importantes subsidios al transporte, a la energía y a los alimentos, con lo cual se pudo reforzar aún más la compatibilidad entre fuerte crecimiento y razonable estabilidad de precios. El cuarto fueron los altos niveles de inversión en los servicios públicos privatizados concretados en los 90. Por esto, el gobierno pudo congelar o atrasar las tarifas de esos servicios públicos sin riesgos importantes de restricciones infraestructurales que pegaran duro sobre el crecimiento. El último punto es que el dólar experimentó una fuerte depreciación internacional en los dos últimos años del período. Así, el gobierno se dio el lujo de que manteniendo un peso nominalmente constante con relación a la divisa norteamericana, el tipo de cambio real multilateral no descendió, lo que se tradujo en el mantenimiento de un alto nivel de competitividad internacional.


3 ¿Cómo es la situación hoy?

En la economía de hoy existen claras señales de que se han debilitado los cuatro últimos factores que permitieron transitar la etapa «bien fácil». Es así que, salvo los precios internacionales de nuestros commodities de exportación, las condiciones del resto de los facilitadores cambiaron significativamente. Por el propio desenvolvimiento económico exitoso, prácticamente desapareció la existencia de recursos ociosos. El desempleo estaría llegando a ser de sólo 8%, y los márgenes de capacidad de producción sin utilizar ya prácticamente no existen. A su vez, la dinámica fiscal instalada en 2007 ha sido tan desalentadora, que los márgenes que permitían apoyar una activa política de ingresos estabilizadora de los precios también han desaparecido. Por el contrario, uno comienza a preguntarse de dónde va a sacar el gobierno los fondos para poder seguir aumentando la inversión pública, lo cual es necesario para poder mantener los subsidios actuales para evitar ajustes traumáticos de tarifas y precios, o para poder afirmar la política de gasto social. En tercer lugar, por la evolución natural de las cosas, han desaparecido completamente los márgenes que brindaban las inversiones hechas en el pasado en los servicios públicos privatizados. Por último, qué va a ocurrir con el dólar en el mercado internacional es impredecible. Sabemos que en los últimos cuatro años se devaluó y eso fue un facilitador, pero ¿qué pasará hacia delante?

4 ¿Cuál es la principal consecuencia del debilitamiento de estos factores facilitadores?

Creo que ha sido la aparición de una fuerte tensión entre el objetivo de alto crecimiento y el de la estabilidad de precios. Las señales de esta tensión son visibles. Por un lado, el gobierno comienza a manipular la información que mide los precios al consumidor. Difícilmente esto hubiera sucedido si la inflación hubiese dado señales de desaceleración. Por otro lado, el índice de precios de la construcción se mueve interanualmente en 20%, el de precios en el interior en 13%, y el de precios mayoristas, aún con un dólar sin mayores aumentos, en 10%.
Pero además de la tensión entre estabilidad de precios y crecimiento, existen otras. En lo fiscal, por ejemplo, después de lo que está sucediendo en este año, aparece claramente la tensión entre el objetivo de mantener o aumentar gastos públicos necesarios, y el objetivo de aumentar los superávit fiscales. Otra tensión entre objetivos deseables es la que se manifiesta en la infraestructura económica. Hoy se requieren fuertes inversiones en el sector de servicios públicos privatizados y para ello se hace necesario ajustar significativamente las tarifas de esos servicios, pero simultáneamente se hace necesario evitar shocks tarifarios que resultarían recesivos y desestabilizadores. Por último, dado que no sabemos qué va a ocurrir internacionalmente con el dólar, se puede plantear la tensión entre el objetivo de mantener un tipo de cambio real elevado, con el objetivo de no devaluar nominalmente el peso para evitar mayores presiones inflacionarias.


5 ¿Qué habría que modificar?

Mientras que en los últimos años se trató de movilizar grandes cantidades de recursos ociosos existentes, hoy se trata de crear recursos adicionales y de aumentar la eficiencia en el uso de los factores de producción. Ya no se trata más de aumentar la demanda global al mayor ritmo posible, lo cual fue correcto en los cuatro años pasados, sino de ampliar la capacidad de oferta global lo máximo que se pueda, lo cual es algo muy diferente.

El reacomodamiento debería abarcar una visión amplia y otra más específica. De acuerdo con la primera, se deberían hacer dos cosas. Primero, priorizar, al menos para los próximos dos años la desaceleración inflacionaria, aún cuando esto tenga el costo de tener que resignar algunos puntos de crecimiento. Para el nuevo gobierno, será un riesgo (político y económico) muchísimo menor crecer a 5% en vez de a 8%, que el correspondiente a una situación en que no se detiene el proceso de aceleración inflacionaria. Lo segundo es que hay que priorizar objetivos de mediano plazo por sobre cualquiera de corto plazo, o sea hacer lo contrario que en los últimos meses.

6 ¿Qué cambios recomendaría?

Dentro de la visión específica, en primer lugar habría que hacer cambios en la política fiscal. En esencia, sería necesario quebrar la equivocada dinámica de este año, para volver a la de los cuatro años anteriores (ver nota aparte). En cuanto a la política monetaria, debería dejar de ser lo permisiva que fue en los cuatro años pasados. Si bien tal permisividad fue básicamente correcta dado el contexto de ese momento donde lo esencial era ocupar a factores productivos ociosos, ahora ya no lo es. Resulta necesario hoy hacerla más activa de tal forma que la tasa de interés real pasiva resulte positiva. Creo que al menos temporariamente, para el período donde la desaceleración en el crecimiento de los precios sea el objetivo prioritario, el esquema monetario debe acercarse a la idea de fijar metas de inflación, decidiendo sobre la base de ese esquema cuán restrictiva debe ser la política. En relación con la cambiaria, también aquí el Banco Central debe aceptar que la prioridad inicial del reacomodamiento que se requiere sería la de priorizar la estabilidad de precios, y por ello no debe temer de aceptar alguna gradual apreciación real del peso. A título de ejemplo, si el dólar se mantuviera internacionalmente estable, las devaluaciones nominales del peso que se produjeran, en cualquier caso, deberían ser menores que la tasa de interés pasiva y que la inflación. Esto significaría reducir el tipo de cambio real multilateral y algún debilitamiento en la competitividad internacional, pero sería importante aceptarlo. Por un tiempo va a ser necesario no atender los reclamos ansiosos de los sectores productores de bienes transables. En cuanto a la política de servicios públicos privatizados, sería necesario presentar un plan creíble de ajustes tarifarios para cambiar las expectativas del sector privado que debe invertir en él. Tal vez un horizonte de tres años para ir efectuando ajustes graduales resulte lo más conveniente. Por último, las cuatro políticas anteriores deberían enmarcarse dentro de un ambiente organizacional que denote credibilidad, respeto, y falta de arbitrariedad del gobierno en sus relaciones con el sistema de información económica y con el sistema de mercados y precios.

7 ¿Qué opinión le merece el anuncio de Cristina Kirchner, como candidata, de crear un Consejo Económico Social?

Lo esencial para el éxito del futuro gobierno es encontrar la forma de concretar un reacomodamiento sustantivo de la política económica hoy prevaleciente. Si se pensara que la creación de ese Consejo puede ser una forma de sustituir, o de poder soslayar, la ejecución de ese reacomodamiento, ello sería un gran error. Bajo esta circunstancia, los acuerdos que eventualmente pudiera lograr ese Consejo resultarían inconsistentes con el proceso de aceleración inflacionaria en que está inmersa la economía, y en el que seguirá estando sin cambiosen las políticas económicas,con lo cual tales acuerdos nunca se concretarían en la realidad económica. Por el contrario, si hubiera consistencia entre los resultados esperables de un reacomodamiento de la política económica y los acuerdos corporativos que se obtuvieran en el Consejo, la creación de este ente puede no ser negativa. Mientras el caso de inconsistencia sería similar al de Gelbard de 1974, el de consistencia sería más parecido al de Gómez Morales de 1951. Sin embargo, aún aceptando la hipótesis de consistencia, mi preferencia sería por la no creación de tal consejo.

8 ¿Cuáles son sus expectativas durante el nuevo gobierno?

Hoy estamos experimentando una visible crisis financiera internacional. Además, como sabemos, el impacto financiero que ha tenido sobre nuestra economía ha resultadoamplificado, ya que transitamos una performance relativa al grueso del resto de los países emergentes, muy preocupante.

Sin embargo, a pesar de tal situación, tengo un visión bien optimista para los próximos años para el caso en que se concrete un importante reacomodamiento de la política económica. Para ello me baso en siete aspectos de la realidad actual que creo llevarían a buen puerto a la economía si tal intento de reacomodamiento efectivamente se concreta. El primero es que disponemos de un muy buen nivel de reservas internacionales. El segundo es que, pese a un importante debilitamiento en lo fiscal, seguimos teniendo la buena situación de los dos superávit gemelos. En tercer lugar, todavía se está cobrando cada año un importante nivel de impuesto inflacionario de más de 2.500 millones de dólares. Cuarto, los resultados cuasifiscales del Banco Central todavía son positivos. Como consecuencia de los últimos tres factores, el quinto es que tenemos una dinámica de nuestra deuda pública muy sostenible. En los últimos tres años las relaciones entre esa deuda y nuestro PBI han estado bajando en forma significativa. El sexto es que continuamos teniendo buenos precios internacionales para nuestras principales exportaciones. Por ejemplo, trigo, maíz y soja, tienen hoy precios internacionales que están alrededor de 50% más altos que hace un año. Por último, nuestro tipo de cambio real multilateral actual brinda fuertes márgenes para nuestra competitividad internacional. Basta recordar que con base diciembre 2001 igual a 1, nuestro tipo de cambio real multilateral actual supera los 2,20, siendo a su vez bastante más altos los cambios reales bilaterales con el euro y el real.

HOME SECURITY
One Family's Journey
Into a Subprime Trap

By JAMES R. HAGERTY and KEN GEPFERT
August 16, 2007 - Wall Street Journal

FULLERTON, Calif. -- Nearly two years ago, Mario and Leticia Montes found a home they loved, a gray stucco bungalow with a hot tub in the backyard in a middle-class neighborhood of Orange County.

The price was a major stretch at $567,000. But the couple, who had sold a home a few years earlier to move to a better area, was tired of renting. Mr. and Mrs. Montes convened a meeting with their two teenage daughters around the kitchen table to hash out the implications. "We agreed we wanted to be homeowners again," says Mr. Montes, "even if it meant the end of vacations and not eating out as often."

With a December "reset" on their loan looming, however, the refinancing option now looks impossible. A friend who works as a loan officer called with some bad news this week: Similar homes in their area have been selling for $535,000 to $565,000 recently. That means the Monteses' loan balance may exceed the value of their home.

The Monteses are caught in a trap -- one that hundreds of thousands of people could face as the housing market totters and the easy credit of recent years dries up. They in effect bet that the boom in housing prices would continue. It was more important to hop onto the escalator than to wait until they could afford to make the leap according to traditional measures.

And with thousands of mortgage banks and brokers threatened with extinction, lenders that embraced all kinds of risky loans two years ago are enforcing increasingly strict standards. They are refusing even to consider extending new credit to people like the Monteses who lack any equity in their homes.

Until recently, the Montes family didn't seem like the type that would find itself faced with foreclosure. They live in a solid neighborhood and are both employed and in good health. "My wife and I make pretty good money," says Mr. Montes. Mrs. Montes works as a school secretary. Together, they earned nearly $90,000 last year.

But they already pay about $38,400 a year on their home loans, even before taxes and insurance. In December, when their primary loan "resets" to a higher rate, that cost will rise to about $50,000 a year, Mr. Montes says.

Tightening Standards

Lenders have been tightening their standards for the past year in the face of rising defaults and growing jitters among the investors who provide funding for loans. That tightening has accelerated in the past two weeks as many lenders -- uncertain at what price they might be able to sell loans -- have stopped making all but the safest ones.

"It's getting worse and worse," says Jeff Lazerson, chief executive of Mortgage Grader, a mortgage broker in Laguna Niguel, who tried to help the Montes family last spring but concluded even then that they couldn't qualify for a new loan. Many people who have been counting on a refinancing to ease their debt burdens will find that's now impossible, he says: "It's either work 24 hours a day to make ends meet [with the existing loan] or mail the keys back to the bank."

Being stuck with little or no home equity is no longer a rare situation. Christopher Cagan, director of research at First American CoreLogic, a housing and mortgage data supplier in Santa Ana, recently found that nearly 7% of 32 million U.S. households studied as of December owed more than their homes were worth, based on computer estimates of the property values. An additional 4% had home equity of 5% or less. Since then, house prices have edged down in much of the country, erasing more home equity.

Partly as a result, foreclosures are surging. Moody's Economy.com, a research firm in West Chester, Pa., projects that lenders will acquire about 760,000 homes through foreclosure this year and 935,000 in 2008, up from an average of about 440,000 a year from 2000 through 2006.

When the Monteses decided to buy the bungalow in 2005, they had only a so-so credit record and little savings. So they settled for a "subprime" loan, with costlier terms than those available in the prime market.

The Monteses' primary loan is the type that became the dominant subprime mortgage during the housing boom of the first half of this decade -- and now has become a symbol of misguided lending, swept away by regulatory fiat and investors' flight from mortgages deemed too risky. These loans are known in the trade as 2/28 mortgages. The interest rate is fixed at a relatively low rate for the first two years (5.45% in the Monteses' case), then floats at a predetermined margin above an interest-rate index for the next 28 years. In many cases, that "reset" of the interest rate after two years leads to a monthly payment increase of 30% or more.

U.S. lenders originated about $600 billion of subprime home loans in 2006, or 20% of all home mortgages, according to Inside Mortgage Finance, a trade publication. About 56% of those subprime loans were 2/28 mortgages, says Keith Ernst, senior policy counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending, a nonprofit research and lobbying group in Durham, N.C.

Mario and Leticia Montes and daughter, Christina, in front of their house in Fullerton, Calif.
The lending industry touted the 2/28 loans as "affordability" mortgages, because they helped people buy houses that wouldn't have been affordable with the higher immediate payments on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages. To make the loans even more affordable in the early years, they were often structured as "interest-only," meaning that principal payments were deferred until later.

Lenders sometimes described these loans as "credit-repair tools." The idea was that people with blemished credit records could take out a 2/28 subprime loan and keep up with the payments long enough to improve their credit records and qualify for a less-costly prime loan.

Earlier this year, regulators ordered subprime lenders to make such loans based on the borrower's ability to afford the loan after the reset, not just for the initial two years, as was the common practice. That change, along with tighter guidelines from rating agencies and risk-aversion among investors, has recently prompted major subprime lenders to stop making 2/28 loans. Instead, they are making more subprime loans that carry a fixed rate for at least five years, as well as ones that hold down payments by stretching the payments over 40 years instead of 30.

The Montes family got their loan through a mortgage broker in Rancho Cucamonga. Using what was then a common formula, the broker offered to arrange for two loans, one to cover about 80% of the home price and the other, a so-called piggyback loan, for the rest. For the first two years, their total monthly mortgage payments are about $3,200. The loans are initially interest-only.

Mr. Montes recalls feeling edgy about whether he would be able to afford the higher costs -- about $900 more per month -- due to take effect after two years. But he says the broker assured him he could refinance before those costs kicked in.

Mr. Montes preferred not to name the broker publicly because the broker has a business connection with a relative of the Monteses. The broker declined to comment.

Mrs. Montes says she was apprehensive about the broker's assurances. "But I blame that on that I don't understand the lingo they were talking," she says. "It's a scary experience.... All I could see was all these numbers flash before me.... I said, 'Mario, I hope you don't get into something that is going to hurt us.'"

They moved into their home and hung a sign on the front door reading, "Life is a daily celebration of love." Within months, things started going wrong. The Monteses received a letter informing them their property taxes had been reassessed based on the $567,000 sale price instead of its previous $389,000 value. That raised their taxes to $6,000 from $2,900 a year and would have increased their monthly payments (including the mortgages and taxes) to $3,931. "Whoa!" Mr. Montes recalls saying. "I can't afford this. I went into emergency mode."

He was able to successfully challenge part of the tax increase, but another shock came in late February of this year when he began looking at refinancing possibilities. Mr. Montes says four brokers -- including the one who arranged the original loan -- turned him away, saying it wouldn't be possible to refinance because, with home prices flat at best, the family had little or no equity in the home. Worse for the Monteses, they learned that they faced a $12,000 prepayment penalty if they refinanced within three years of the original mortgages -- something that Mr. Montes says wasn't made clear to him when he took out those loans.

Then another broker told him in March that his home had gained enough in value for him to qualify for a more affordable loan. They paid for an appraisal and were told their home was worth $620,000, or about $53,000 more than they paid in 2005. The Monteses were jubilant, thinking their home was saved. But more than three months later, the broker outlined a package that would have involved payments far higher than indicated in earlier meetings.

Next, Mr. Montes sought the help of Laurie Arnold, a former neighbor who is a loan officer at IndyMac Bancorp, a large lender based in Pasadena. In another blow, Mr. Montes learned that the appraisal he had done in March -- at a cost of $375 -- is no longer valid. Ms. Arnold sounded out appraisers and concluded that there was no hope the house could appraise for enough to allow the family to qualify for a refinancing. Based on recent sale prices and other data, Zillow.com, an online service that provides home-value information, estimates that the price of a typical home in Fullerton is down 6.7% from a year ago.

The Monteses now hope for help from the company that services their loan, America's Servicing Co., a unit of Wells Fargo & Co. Mr. Montes telephoned America's Servicing Tuesday to ask whether it might consider a modification in the terms of the loans to help him keep the payments affordable beyond the reset date. An employee of the servicing company said that wouldn't be possible if the family has no home equity, Mr. Montes says.

A Wells spokesman declined to comment on the Monteses' loan but said the bank reviews requests for loan modifications "on a case-by-case basis and works with customers on solutions that address their individual financial needs."

Mr. Montes says the family may try to sell the house, but that would be tricky in today's weak market. Or they could try to trim other expenses and keep meeting the higher monthly home payments that are due to take effect in December.

Borrowing for College

There is very little wiggle room. Mr. and Mrs. Montes also have two car loans, with payments totaling about $700 a month, and are borrowing more money to help put their elder daughter through college. They recently had to tell their younger daughter they couldn't afford $70 a month for her to take piano lessons.

The couple now eat out once or twice a month, instead of once or twice a week before they bought the house. They have yet to visit a nearby jazz club they had hoped to frequent. The trips they used to take to Lake Tahoe now are out of the question.

To bring in a bit more income, Mr. Montes two weeks ago found a weekend job as a bartender for a catering company. He says he might be able to take on a third job.

"Bottom line, it's our little home," Mrs. Montes told a visitor one evening in April as tears welled in her eyes. "We're going to keep it. Hopefully, we won't go down and if we do, we're going to go down with a fight."

Write to James R. Hagerty at bob.hagerty@wsj.com5 and Ken Gepfert at Ken.Gepfert@wsj.com6

Religion beat became a test of faith

A reporter looks at how the stories he covered affected him and his spiritual journey.

By William Lobdell
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer - July 21, 2007

WHEN Times editors assigned me to the religion beat, I believed God had answered my prayers.

As a serious Christian, I had cringed at some of the coverage in the mainstream media. Faith frequently was treated like a circus, even a freak show.

I wanted to report objectively and respectfully about how belief shapes people's lives. Along the way, I believed, my own faith would grow deeper and sturdier.

But during the eight years I covered religion, something very different happened.

In 1989, a friend took me to Mariners Church, then in Newport Beach, after saying: "You need God. That's what's missing in your life." At the time, I was 28 and my first son was less than a year old. I had managed to nearly ruin my marriage (the second one) and didn't think I'd do much better as a father. I was profoundly lost.

The mega-church's pastor, Kenton Beshore, had a knack for making Scripture accessible and relevant. For someone who hadn't studied the Bible much, these talks fed a hunger in my soul. The secrets to living well had been there all along — in "Life's Instruction Manual," as some Christians nicknamed the Bible.

Some friends in a Bible study class encouraged me to attend a men's religious weekend in the San Bernardino Mountains. The three-day retreats are designed to grind down your defenses and leave you emotionally raw — an easier state in which to connect with God. After 36 hours of prayer, singing, Bible study, intimate sharing and little sleep, I felt filled with the Holy Spirit.

At the climactic service Sunday, Mike Barris, a pastor-to-be, delivered an old-fashioned altar call. He said we needed to let Jesus into our hearts.

With my eyes closed in prayer, I saw my heart slowly opening in two and then being infused with a warm, glowing light. A tingle spread across my chest. This, I thought, was what it was to be born again.

The pastor asked those who wanted to accept Jesus to raise their hands. My hand pretty much levitated on its own. My new friends in Christ, many of whom I had first met Friday, gave me hugs and slaps on the back.

I began praying each morning and night. During those quiet times, I mostly listened for God's voice. And I thought I sensed a plan he had for me: To write about religion for The Times and bring light into the newsroom, if only by my stories and example.

My desire to be a religion reporter grew as I read stories about faith in the mainstream media. Spiritual people often appeared as nuts or simpletons.

In one of the most famous examples, the Washington Post ran a news story in 1993 that referred to evangelical Christians as "largely poor, uneducated and easy to command."

Another maddening trend was that homosexuality and abortion debates dominated media coverage, as if those where the only topics that mattered to Christians.

I didn't just pray for a religion writing job; I lobbied hard. In one meeting with editors, my pitch went something like this:

"What if I told you that you have an institution in Orange County that draws more than 15,000 people a weekend and that you haven't written much about?"

They said they couldn't imagine such a thing.

"Saddleback Church in Lake Forest draws that type of crowd."

It took several years and numerous memos and e-mails, but editors finally agreed in 1998 to let me write "Getting Religion," a weekly column about faith in Orange County.

I felt like all the tumblers of my life had clicked. I had a strong marriage, great kids and a new column. I attributed it all to God's grace.

First as a columnist and then as a reporter, I never had a shortage of topics. I wrote about an elderly church organist who became a spiritual mentor to the man who tried to rape, rob and kill her. About the Orthodox Jewish mother who developed a line of modest clothing for Barbie dolls. About the hardy group of Mormons who rode covered wagons 800 miles from Salt Lake City to San Bernardino, replicating their ancestors' journey to Southern California.

Meanwhile, Roman Catholicism, with its low-key evangelism and deep ritual, increasingly appealed to me. I loved its long history and loving embrace of liberals and conservatives, immigrants and the established, the rich and poor.

My wife was raised in the Catholic Church and had wanted me to join for years. I signed up for yearlong conversion classes at a Newport Beach parish that would end with an Easter eve ceremony ushering newcomers into the church.

By then I had been on the religion beat for three years. I couldn't wait to get to work each day or, on Sunday, to church.

IN 2001, about six months before the Catholic clergy sex scandal broke nationwide, the dioceses of Orange and Los Angeles paid a record $5.2 million to a law student who said he had been molested, as a student at Santa Margarita High School in Rancho Santa Margarita, by his principal, Msgr. Michael Harris.

Without admitting guilt, Harris agreed to leave the priesthood. As part of the settlement, the dioceses also were forced to radically change how they handled sexual abuse allegations, including a promise to kick out any priest with a credible molestation allegation in his past. It emerged that both dioceses had many known molesters on duty. Los Angeles had two convicted pedophiles still working as priests.

While reporting the Harris story, I learned — from court records and interviews — the lengths to which the church went to protect the priest. When Harris took an abrupt leave of absence as principal at Santa Margarita in January 1994, he issued a statement saying it was because of "stress." He resigned a month later.

His superiors didn't tell parents or students the real reason for his absence: Harris had been accused of molesting a student while he was principal at Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana from 1977 to 1979; church officials possessed a note from Harris that appeared to be a confession; and they were sending him to a treatment center.

In September 1994, a second former student stepped forward, this time publicly, and filed a lawsuit. In response, parents and students held a rally for Harris at the school, singing, "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow." An airplane towed a banner overhead that read "We Love Father Harris."

By this time, church leaders possessed a psychological report in which Catholic psychiatrists diagnosed Harris as having an attraction to adolescents and concluded that he likely had molested multiple boys. (Harris, who has denied the allegations, now stands accused of molesting 12 boys, according to church records.) But they didn't step forward to set the record straight. Instead, a diocesan spokesman called Harris an "icon of the priesthood."

Harris' top defense attorney, John Barnett, lashed out at the priest's accusers in the media, calling them "sick individuals." Again, church leaders remained silent as the alleged victims were savaged. Some of the diocese's top priests — including the cleric in charge of investigating the accusations — threw a going-away party for Harris.

At the time, I never imagined Catholic leaders would engage in a widespread practice that protected alleged child molesters and belittled the victims. I latched onto the explanation that was least damaging to my belief in the Catholic Church — that this was an isolated case of a morally corrupt administration.

And I was comforted by the advice of a Catholic friend: "Keep your eyes on the person nailed to the cross, not the priests behind the altar."

IN late 2001, I traveled to Salt Lake City to attend a conference of former Mormons. These people lived mostly in the Mormon Jell-O belt — Utah, Idaho, Arizona — so-named because of the plates of Jell-O that inevitably appear at Mormon gatherings.

They found themselves ostracized in their neighborhoods, schools and careers. Often, they were dead to their own families.

"If Mormons associate with you, they think they will somehow become contaminated and lose their faith too," Suzy Colver told me. "It's almost as if people who leave the church don't exist."

The people at the conference were an eclectic bunch: novelists and stay-at-home moms, entrepreneurs and cartoonists, sex addicts and alcoholics. Some were depressed, others angry, and a few had successfully moved on. But they shared a common thread: They wanted to be honest about their lack of faith and still be loved.

In most pockets of Mormon culture, that wasn't going to happen.

Part of what drew me to Christianity were the radical teachings of Jesus — to love your enemy, to protect the vulnerable and to lovingly bring lost sheep back into the fold.

As I reported the story, I wondered how faithful Mormons — many of whom rigorously follow other biblical commands such as giving 10% of their income to the church — could miss so badly on one of Jesus' primary lessons?

As part of the Christian family, I felt shame for my religion. But I still compartmentalized it as an aberration — the result of sinful behavior that infects even the church.

IN early 2002, I was assigned to work on the Catholic sex scandal story as it erupted across the nation. I also continued to attend Sunday Mass and conversion classes on Sunday mornings and Tuesday nights.

Father Vincent Gilmore — the young, intellectually sharp priest teaching the class — spoke about the sex scandal and warned us Catholics-to-be not to be poisoned by a relatively few bad clerics. Otherwise, we'd be committing "spiritual suicide."

As I began my reporting, I kept that in mind. I also thought that the victims — people usually in their 30s, 40s and up — should have just gotten over what had happened to them decades before. To me, many of them were needlessly stuck in the past.

But then I began going over the documents. And interviewing the victims, scores of them. I discovered that the term "sexual abuse" is a euphemism. Most of these children were raped and sodomized by someone they and their family believed was Christ's representative on Earth. That's not something an 8-year-old's mind can process; it forever warps a person's sexuality and spirituality.

Many of these victims were molested by priests with a history of abusing children. But the bishops routinely sent these clerics to another parish, and bullied or conned the victims and their families into silence. The police were almost never called. In at least a few instances, bishops encouraged molesting priests to flee the country to escape prosecution.

I couldn't get the victims' stories or the bishops' lies — many of them right there on their own stationery — out of my head. I had been in journalism more than two decades and had dealt with murders, rapes, other violent crimes and tragedies. But this was different — the children were so innocent, their parents so faithful, the priests so sick and bishops so corrupt.

The lifeline Father Vincent had tried to give me began to slip from my hands.

I sought solace in another belief: that a church's heart is in the pews, not the pulpits. Certainly the people who were reading my stories would recoil and, in the end, recapture God's house. Instead, I saw parishioners reflexively support priests who had molested children by writing glowing letters to bishops and judges, offering them jobs or even raising their bail while cursing the victims, often to their faces.

On a Sunday morning at a parish in Rancho Santa Margarita, I watched congregants lobby to name their new parish hall after their longtime pastor, who had admitted to molesting a boy and who had been barred that day from the ministry. I felt sick to my stomach that the people of God wanted to honor an admitted child molester. Only one person in the crowd, an Orange County sheriff's deputy, spoke out for the victim.

On Good Friday 2002, I decided I couldn't belong to the Catholic Church. Though I had spent a year preparing for it, I didn't go through with the rite of conversion.

I understood that I was witnessing the failure of humans, not God. But in a way, that was the point. I didn't see these institutions drenched in God's spirit. Shouldn't religious organizations, if they were God-inspired and -driven, reflect higher standards than government, corporations and other groups in society?

I found an excuse to skip services that Easter. For the next few months, I attended church only sporadically. Then I stopped going altogether.

SOME of the nation's most powerful pastors — including Billy Graham, Robert H. Schuller and Greg Laurie — appear on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, benefiting from TBN's worldwide reach while looking past the network's reliance on the "prosperity gospel" to fuel its growth.

TBN's creed is that if viewers send money to the network, God will repay them with great riches and good health. Even people deeply in debt are encouraged to put donations on credit cards.

"If you have been healed or saved or blessed through TBN and have not contributed … you are robbing God and will lose your reward in heaven," Paul Crouch, co-founder of the Orange County-based network, once told viewers. Meanwhile, Crouch and his wife, Jan, live like tycoons.

I began looking into TBN after receiving some e-mails from former devotees of the network. Those people had given money to the network in hopes of getting a financial windfall from God. That didn't work.

By then, I started to believe that God was calling me, as he did St. Francis of Assisi, to "rebuild his church" — not in some grand way that would lead to sainthood but by simply reporting on corruption within the church body.

I spent several years investigating TBN and pored through stacks of documents — some made available by appalled employees — showing the Crouches eating $180-per-person meals; flying in a $21-million corporate jet; having access to 30 TBN-owned homes across the country, among them a pair of Newport Beach mansions and a ranch in Texas. All paid for with tax-free donor money.

One of the stars of TBN and a major fundraiser is the self-proclaimed faith healer Benny Hinn. I attended one of his two-day "Miracle Crusades" at what was then the Pond of Anaheim. The arena was packed with sick people looking for a cure.

My heart broke for the hundreds of people around me in wheelchairs or in the final stages of terminal diseases, believing that if God deemed their faith strong enough, they would be healed that night.

Hinn tells his audiences that a generous cash gift to his ministry will be seen by God as a sign of true faith. This has worked well for the televangelist, who lives in an oceanfront mansion in Dana Point, drives luxury cars, flies in private jets and stays in the best hotels.

At the crusade, I met Jordie Gibson, 21, who had flown from Calgary, Canada, to Anaheim because he believed that God, through Hinn, could get his kidneys to work again.

He was thrilled to tell me that he had stopped getting dialysis because Hinn had said people are cured only when they "step out in faith." The decision enraged his doctors, but made perfect sense to Gibson. Despite risking his life as a show of faith, he wasn't cured in Anaheim. He returned to Canada and went back on dialysis. The crowd was filled with desperate believers like Gibson.

I tried unsuccessfully to get several prominent mainstream pastors who appeared on TBN to comment on the prosperity gospel, Hinn's "faith healing" or the Crouches' lifestyle.

Like the Catholic bishops, I assumed, they didn't want to risk what they had.

AS the stories piled up, I began to pray with renewed vigor, but it felt like I wasn't connecting to God. I started to feel silly even trying.

I read accounts of St. John of the Cross and his "dark night of the soul," a time he believed God was testing him by seemingly withdrawing from his life. Maybe this was my test.

I met with my former Presbyterian pastor, John Huffman, and told him what I was feeling. I asked him if I could e-mail him some tough questions about Christianity and faith and get his answers. He agreed without hesitation.

The questions that I thought I had come to peace with started to bubble up again. Why do bad things happen to good people? Why does God get credit for answered prayers but no blame for unanswered ones? Why do we believe in the miraculous healing power of God when he's never been able to regenerate a limb or heal a severed spinal chord?

In one e-mail, I asked John, who had lost a daughter to cancer, why an atheist businessman prospers and the child of devout Christian parents dies. Why would a loving God make this impossible for us to understand?

He sent back a long reply that concluded:

"My ultimate affirmation is let God be God and acknowledge that He is in charge. He knows what I don't know. And frankly, if I'm totally honest with you, a life of gratitude is one that bows before the Sovereign God arguing with Him on those things that trouble me, lamenting the losses of life, but ultimately saying, 'You, God, are infinite; I'm human and finite.' "

John is an excellent pastor, but he couldn't reach me. For some time, I had tried to push away doubts and reconcile an all-powerful and infinitely loving God with what I saw, but I was losing ground. I wondered if my born-again experience at the mountain retreat was more about fatigue, spiritual longing and emotional vulnerability than being touched by Jesus.

And I considered another possibility: Maybe God didn't exist.

TOWARD the end of my tenure as a religion reporter, I traveled to Nome, Alaska. Sitting in a tiny visitor's room, I studied the sad, round face of the Eskimo in front of me and tried to imagine how much he hated being confined to jail.

Peter "Packy" Kobuk was from a remote village on St. Michael Island in western Alaska. There natives lived, in many ways, just as their ancestors did 10,000 years ago. Smells of the outdoor life hung heavy in his village: the salt air, the strips of salmon drying on racks, the seaweed washed up on the beach.

But for now, Packy could smell only the disinfectants used to scrub the concrete floors at the Anvil Mountain Correction Center. Unfortunately, alcohol and a violent temper had put Packy there many times in his 46 years. For his latest assault, he was serving three months.

The short, powerfully built man folded his calloused hands on the table. I was surprised to see a homemade rosary hanging from his neck, the blue beads held together by string from a fishing net.

I had come from Southern California to report on a generation of Eskimo boys who had been molested by a Catholic missionary. All of the now-grown Eskimos I had interviewed over the past week had lost their faith. In fact, several of them confessed that they fantasized daily about burning down the village church, where the unspeakable acts took place.

But there was Packy with his rosary.

"Why do you still believe?" I asked.

"It's not God's work what happened to me," he said softly, running his fingers along the beads. "They were breaking God's commandments — even the people who didn't help. They weren't loving their neighbors as themselves."

He said he regularly got down on his knees in his jail cell to pray.

"A lot of people make fun of me, asking if the Virgin Mary is going to rescue me," Packy said. "Well, I've gotten helped more times from the Virgin Mary through intercession than from anyone else. I won't stop. My children need my prayers."

Tears spilled from his eyes. Packy's faith, though severely tested, had survived.

I looked at him with envy. Where he found comfort, I was finding emptiness.

IN the summer of 2005, I reported from a Multnomah County, Ore., courtroom on the story of an unemployed mother — impregnated by a seminary student 13 years earlier — who was trying to get increased child support for her sickly 12-year-old son.

The boy's father, Father Arturo Uribe, took the witness stand. The priest had never seen or talked with his son. He even had trouble properly pronouncing the kid's name. Uribe confidently offered the court a simple reason as to why he couldn't pay more than $323 a month in child support.

"The only thing I own are my clothes," he told the judge.

His defense — orchestrated by a razor-sharp attorney paid for by his religious order — boiled down to this: I'm a Roman Catholic priest, I've taken a vow of poverty, and child-support laws can't touch me.

The boy's mother, Stephanie Collopy, couldn't afford a lawyer. She stumbled badly acting as her own attorney. It went on for three hours.

"It didn't look that great," Stephanie said afterward, wiping tears from her eyes. "It didn't sound that great … but at least I stood up for myself."

The judge ruled in the favor of Uribe, then pastor of a large parish in Whittier. After the hearing, when the priest's attorney discovered I had been there, she ran back into the courtroom and unsuccessfully tried to get the judge to seal the case. I could see why the priest's lawyer would try to cover it up. People would be shocked at how callously the church dealt with a priest's illegitimate son who needed money for food and medicine.

My problem was that none of that surprised me anymore.

As I walked into the long twilight of a Portland summer evening, I felt used up and numb.

My soul, for lack of a better term, had lost faith long ago — probably around the time I stopped going to church. My brain, which had been in denial, had finally caught up.

Clearly, I saw now that belief in God, no matter how grounded, requires at some point a leap of faith. Either you have the gift of faith or you don't. It's not a choice. It can't be willed into existence. And there's no faking it if you're honest about the state of your soul.

Sitting in a park across the street from the courthouse, I called my wife on a cellphone. I told her I was putting in for a new beat at the paper.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
william.lobdell@latimes.com

Northern Rights

Northern Rights
By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY
August 13, 2007; Page A14


When Russia planted its flag on the Arctic Ocean floor a fortnight ago the world was treated to a spectacular bit of retro-theater, circa 1957. It is as if we were reliving the days of Sputnik. Only this time the Kremlin was officially notifying the world that it intends to dominate the Arctic and control the vast natural resources that it contains.

Of course, if Russia plans to abide by the Law of the Sea Convention, which it has signed, the flag, four kilometers beneath the sea, brings it no closer to owning the treasures buried there. "Jurisdiction over resources is not determined by staking claims," says John Norton Moore, an international law scholar at the University of Virginia. That will be decided by the "commission on the limits of the continental shelf," established under the convention.

On the other hand, if Russia thinks it can bully its way into the Arctic while it stirs up nationalism back home, planting the flag makes perfect sense.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is one Russian neighbor who doesn't seem to be betting on Kremlin honor. His government dismissed the Russian action as a stunt, but last week the prime minister embarked on his own Arctic adventure. He went on a three-day trip to the region and announced Canadian plans to build a deep-water military port there, and a new Canadian Forces winter-fighting school.

Mr. Harper's defense initiatives in the Arctic are animated at least in part by a vastly different world view than that of his recent predecessors in Ottawa. He ran for office promising a stronger military and he has been a staunch defender of Canada's Afghanistan mission. Last month he announced the purchase of six Canadian-made Arctic patrol ships at a cost of more than $6.6 billion. Under his leadership, Canada seems finally to be waking up to the geopolitical risks it has invited by gutting its defense forces and massively shrinking its international relevance over recent decades.

The U.S. has not signed the Law of the Sea Convention, but our NATO allies have, and the commission has already rejected, for lack of evidence, a 2001 Russian claim that the Lomonosov Ridge beneath the Arctic Ocean is an extension of Eurasia. Now the Russians seem to be asking, who is going to stop us? While Mr. Harper's attempts to reclaim a Canadian military presence are important, they are unlikely to be enough to defend the North from the Russian bear. To do that, it will need the U.S., which was even more dismissive of the flag escapade than Canada. State Department spokesman Tom Casey said, "I'm not sure whether they've put a metal flag, a rubber flag or a bed sheet on the ocean floor. Either way, it doesn't have any legal standing or effect on this claim."
[The Americas]

American and European solidarity with Canada against Russian expansionism in the Arctic will be crucial. But Canada's case would be stronger if it weren't simultaneously making its own unsubstantiated claim of sovereignty over the Northwest Passage, a claim recognized by neither the U.S. nor the European Union.

The U.S. does not challenge Canada's sovereignty over its Arctic lands, and the Law of the Sea allows states to adopt limited environmental protections in ice-covered areas. But the U.S. and EU do maintain that the passage is an international strait and not the internal waters of Canada.

As detailed on the nearby map, the Northwest Passage connects two "high seas," a key geographic test for defining an international strait. A second test, known as "usage," is not recognized by the convention but even it seems to have already been met by submarine traffic. The bottom line is that any attempt to impede transit through the passage's deep water channels -- which offer a path some 7,000 kilometers shorter than the Panama Canal journey from east to west -- goes against established maritime law.

For the U.S., this is no small matter. As U.S. Navy Commander James Kraska explains in a recent issue of the International Journal of Marine and Coastal Law, "maintaining a stable regime that ensures global maritime maneuverability and mobility is considered a cornerstone of the nation's economic and national security."

It is very clear that if there is a territorial predator it is Russia and not the U.S., and it is also clear that Canada needs help securing the Arctic. That means that it is in Ottawa's best interest to work out the passage dispute. But that won't be easy. There may be nothing that so symbolizes Canadian identity as the rugged Arctic -- even though an overwhelming majority of Canadians live within 200 miles of the U.S. border.

Unfortunately, despite the sentimentality about the North, Canada has shown little interest in the region. In a 2004 paper on the Northwest Passage dispute for the War Studies Program at the Royal Military College of Canada, doctoral candidate Andrea Charron noted that "Canada has not made securing a presence in the Arctic a priority," because it has "always known it can rely on the U.S." and because "establishing a significant presence in the North is extremely expensive."

Now that Russia is acting up, Canada will have to rethink its priorities. One option, Ms. Charron wrote three years ago in anticipation of growing international interest in the region, would be "Canadian control of the passage as a way of securing the North American perimeter," while "accepting the compromise that comes with relying on our neighbors for security (as was done in the Cold War.)" Given the way Russia is behaving these days, the need for Canadian flexibility may be greater than anyone realizes.

The Real Uribe Record

By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY
August 6, 2007 - WSJ

Congressional Democrats out to quash the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement argue that the terror-torn South American country doesn't adequately protect human rights and thus doesn't deserve FTA status. In the Democrats' book, the way to make Colombia more just is to deny it the chance to deepen its commercial relations with the U.S.

This is curious thinking, and all the more so coming from a party that also argues that the U.S. ought to lift its trade embargo on the Cuban dictatorship as a way to help the Cuban people. Given Cuba's dismal track record on human rights and the hard work Colombia has done over the past six years to defend human life, it is hard to square that circle.


Americas columnist Mary O'Grady discusses opposition to a free-trade agreement with Colombia.
Classical liberals might argue that open trade with all countries is an individual right. Human-rights advocates might counter that doing business with a dictatorship props up the tyrant. Isolationists may want to cut everyone off. But it is hard to understand just what rational belief system could support expanding commercial exchanges with a dictator while denying deeper trade relations to a democracy, especially one that has shed so much blood for America's war on drugs.

Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy is one of many in the Democratic Party who seem conflicted on this subject. Mr. Leahy says he hasn't decided how he will vote on the U.S.-Colombia FTA. But just last month, in a letter published in this newspaper, he accused me of viewing "the assassinations of hundreds of trade unionists" in Colombia as "irrelevant" because I am in favor of boosting trade as a way to consolidate democratic capitalism and increase economic opportunities for all Colombians. I'm still trying to figure out the connection.

Funny enough, Mr. Leahy, like many of his colleagues -- including New York Rep. Charles Rangel in the House -- has no such qualms about trade with the despotic regime in Havana. The senator has said that the U.S. should seek engagement with Cuba by "lifting the embargo" and increasing "contact between Americans and Cubans -- in other words, we should be tearing down the barriers between our countries not building them ever higher."

The Cuba Mr. Leahy wants to get closer to isn't simply accused of failing to prosecute human-rights violators, as is the case of Colombia. It is a human-rights violator. It is regrettable that the senator apparently believes that the murder of thousands of Cubans, the torture and imprisonment of tens of thousands of others, the exile of millions and the denial of all human rights, including the right to organize unions, is irrelevant.

Quite apart from this glaring contradiction, there is also the matter of whether Colombia is even guilty, as Democrats have suggested, of ignoring or being complicit in the murders of Colombian trade unionists. A serious look at the record suggests that left-wing propaganda is trumping the facts in the Democrats' war room. If the party's leadership sustains this view, the outcome will not only harm Colombia but will badly damage U.S. interests in the region.

You wouldn't know it from all the grandstanding by Democrats, but the Colombian government has been very open about the persistence of violence in the country. President Álvaro Uribe talks often and candidly about the issue, as he did in a speech in New York on July 22, and he doesn't sugarcoat the tragedy.

"They still assassinate 17,000 Colombians a year. We would like to show a greater reduction but they used to kill 35,000. Not one town has been destroyed in Colombia this year. In the year before my administration, terrorist groups destroyed 84 towns in Colombia. Our freedom was threatened by terrorism. There were years when they killed 15 journalists. This year they have not assassinated one. We had years when they kidnapped more than 3,000 Colombians. This year they have kidnapped 107. We'd like not to have a single kidnapping. We're gaining on kidnapping but still we have not been able to defeat it."

Unionists have certainly benefited from the improved security. There were years when more than 250 of them were killed, the president said in New York, but recently far fewer have died. In 2006, he said, the violence intensified and the number went up to 60 from 25 in 2005. This year only four trade unionists have been killed and the Justice Ministry says that preliminary investigations indicate that their deaths were not linked to union activism. The government is also investigating the murders of 12 teachers-union members.

In Colombia, unionists are killed much for the same reasons peasants are murdered. They are caught in the crossfire between paramilitaries and guerrillas. As Mr. Uribe explained in his New York speech, "paramilitaries kill unionists, accusing them of collaboration with the guerrillas and guerrillas kill unionists, accusing them of collaboration with the paramilitaries." Now even the two main guerrilla groups, in certain regions of the country, are battling one another. "The [rebel group] ELN kills a unionist because they say he's a friend of the [rebel group] FARC and the FARC kills another because they say he's a friend of the ELN."

Still, homicides of unionists are down by two-thirds since Mr. Uribe took office and the government is bending over backward to protect union members. A special protection program for vulnerable individuals, which allows anyone who feels threatened to appeal for special help, now covers more than 5,000 individuals. According to the government, 1,500 of them are unionists. Last year it spent $24 million protecting union leaders and their families, it says. The attorney general's office has established a special program to investigate human-rights violations against union members. As to unsolved murders, the AG sat down with union leaders and agreed on a list of 200 cases that now have high priority for investigation and prosecution.

Mr. Uribe's government has demobilized 43,000 illegal armed combatants. Some 33,000 were paramilitary members and 10,000 were guerrillas. But the president notes that the country started with some 60,000 "terrorists," so there is still work to be done.

Even if none of this progress had occurred, it would make little sense to reject the FTA. Colombia needs the free trade agreement, Mr. Uribe said in New York, because it's how "we can generate more employment of a higher quality, send more of our products to the U.S. market and in this way we will have less illicit drugs, less terrorism, more peace, more security, more well-being for the Colombian people." If only the government in Havana cared as much about the Cuban population.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here is Oleg in Brooklyn. Oleg, I'm glad you waited. I really appreciate your patience. Hello.

CALLER: Yes. Hello. Mega dittos from the motherland, Rush. Motherland, where taxes were high and that's why national disasters never happened. The government withheld 95% of the people's income and that's why in the USSR bridges never fell, levees never broke, and Chernobyl reactors never exploded, if you know what I'm saying.

RUSH: Well, I do, that's very funny, thanks for the call.

CALLER: You're welcome. I now live in America, but I keep the memory of the old country alive on my satirical website which you mentioned on Monday when you referenced what you said was "a great editorial cartoon."

RUSH: It was. This is the one with the Founding Fathers discussing creating a nation --

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: -- of murderers, thugs, tyrants, spreading disease, destroying the planet and all that, and then stealing all the world's oil?

CALLER: Absolutely.

RUSH: That was such a great cartoon, Oleg.

CALLER: Thank you.

RUSH: The satire in that, you know, the great thing about comedy which you captured in that cartoon is that good comedy has to have an element of truth in it, and the element of truth in your cartoon is that there are gobs and loads of Americans who believe that that's what the purpose of this country is, and that we had some corrupt founders that actually set it up. They are actually Americans that believe it, and that's why it was funny.

CALLER: Right. Well, a lot of it on my website is funny. You said that you didn't know who did the cartoon, so I decided to fix that historical mistake because you are the all knowing Maha Rushie.

RUSH: Well, the problem is that somebody sent it to me with just the picture of the cartoon. I have tried to tell people, if you're going to send me something you think I might like, send me the link, so, A, I can say verify it, and, B, put on my website and cite the source. It is something I am constantly having to pound over the heads of my staff. It happens every day. They forget to send links and yours unfortunately was one of those where the link was not sent.

CALLER: That is okay.

RUSH: But we found it for the website.

CALLER: Did you find it?

RUSH: I think we did, I think Koko was looking desperately for it. I was unable to provide any help because the person that sent it to me didn't send the link.

CALLER: Can I say the name of it?

RUSH: Sure. What is the name of your website?

CALLER: It is ThePeoplesCube.com. A lot of people already know about it, but I thought the mention would not hurt. It's a parody site working under the slogan: "Curing weak liberalism with strong communism," it's sort of like a Stalinist version of The Onion.
RUSH: (Laughing.) A Stalinist version of The Onion. (Laughing.) Curing weak liberalism…

CALLER: That cartoon is a sample.

RUSH: Okay, so it's www.ThePeoplesCube.com.

RUSH: All right, in about 30 seconds, Oleg, your site will be shut down. This audience is making such a mad dash to get to it right now if your server farm is not capable of the load that it's going to get, as a result of your site being broadcast on this program, then it will actually look like a denial of service attack, it really isn't. We shut down websites constantly when they get mentioned on this program. It's not the KGB coming after you, it's not Putin.

CALLER: (Laughing.) Right. We are the party ourselves. On the website, we have our own party, we have our own politburo members, and we have discussions, you know, planning and plotting.

RUSH: This sounds cool. I love satire. I love parody.

CALLER: I know.

RUSH: Especially with people who don't get it. That's the most fun is when they don't get it and they really get upset, really get irritated, really get riled, that's what it's fun, because they eventually will figure it out.

CALLER: Oh, I have a lot of enemies already because of that.

RUSH: You know, learn to take as a measure of success the criticism of your enemies. That is a fundamental thing that people like you in controversial businesses have to learn how to do. Take as a measure of success the hatred, the actual despising of you that they have. Okay, I think I've shaken Oleg up here a little bit. It won't be that bad. It won't be that bad. We've gotta take a brief time-out. Oleg, thanks for the call, ThePeoplesCube.com is his website, if you can still access it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

Sicko Europe

By DANIELE CAPEZZONE
WSJ - August 3, 2007 - Rome

We live in an age of unprecedented medical innovation. Unfortunately, most of today's cutting-edge research is conducted outside Europe, which was once a pioneer in this field. About 78% of global biotechnology research funds are spent in the U.S., compared to just 16% in Europe. Americans therefore have better access to modern drugs. One result is that in the U.S., the annual death rate from cancer is 196 per 100,000 people, compared to 235 in Britain, 244 in France, 270 in Italy and 273 in Germany.

It is both a tragedy and an embarrassment that Europe hasn't kept up with the U.S. in saving and improving lives. What's to blame? The Continent's misguided policies and state-run health-care systems. The reasons vary from country to country, but broadly speaking, the custodians of public health budgets aren't devoting the necessary resources to get patients the most modern and advanced medicines, and are happier with the status quo. We often see news headlines about promising new cures and vaccines next to headlines about patients who can't get life-saving drugs as politicians impose ever stricter prescription controls on doctors.

The human toll can be measured in deaths and unnecessary suffering. It also costs us a lot of money. Prevention is cheaper than treatment. Modern medicine can prevent many medical complications that would otherwise require hospitalization and other expensive care. For every euro spent on new medicine, national health-care systems could save as much as €3.65 in later treatments, according to a National Bureau of Economic Research study.

This situation is especially dire in Italy. The government has capped spending on pharmaceuticals at 13% of total health-care expenditures while letting expenses for infrastructure and staff skyrocket. From 2001 to 2005, general health expenses in Italy grew by 31% while expenditure on medicines increased a mere 1.7%. Italian patients might well have been better off if the reverse was the case, but the state bureaucrats who make these decisions refuse to acknowledge the benefits of advanced drugs.

Also as a result, pharmaceutical research in Italy is falling behind even faster than in the rest of Europe. In 2004, pharmaceutical R&D spending was €3.9 billion in Germany, €3.95 billion in France and €4.78 billion in Britain, compared to only €1.01 billion in Italy.

Part of the problem is that regional authorities manage most of Italy's health-care spending. A strike by health-care personnel has an immediate impact on the region, but the consequences of cutting the budget for medicines are only felt in the long term and distributed across the nation. Hence, local authorities continue to focus on personnel and infrastructure in an age when medical research has become the most efficient way to improve public health.

Most recently, some Italian regions decided to drastically expand the scope of reference pricing, in open defiance of the central government. Reference pricing is used in most European countries to reduce government spending on medicine and is one of the reasons the Continent is lagging behind in pharmaceutical research. New drugs are grouped with existing drugs used to treat the same medical condition, and the government typically limits reimbursement to the cheapest price in the reference group. This way, patients are discouraged from using the most modern and more expensive medicine.

The Italian regions, however, are taking reference pricing one step further by grouping together drugs that do not necessarily have identical therapeutic effects. This way, the reference groups grow larger, and the regions can save more money. But patients are forced to choose between paying high out-of-pocket expenses or the risk of taking the wrong medicine.

This is a tragic state of affairs in a country with a higher natural demand for advanced medicine than most others in Europe. The older people get, the more likely they are to get ill, and today 20% of Italians are 65 years of age or older -- by far the largest percentage of any European country. The proportion is projected to rise to 24.5% by 2020.

Italian leaders have a responsibility to prevent parochialism from undermining public health and pharmaceutical research. But it is worth repeating that the combination of an aging population and an inefficient health-care system is a European, not exclusively Italian, problem.

It is time for politicians and regulators to confront our backward health-care systems and unleash the powers of medical research. Besides expanding drug budgets, European countries should work together to deregulate the pharmaceutical industry -- for instance, by speeding up the approval process for new drugs. The EU can better ensure that drug patents are adequately protected both in Europe and around the world against compulsory licensing and other infringements. Finally, we should give medical researchers tax incentives to slow the brain drain to the U.S. -- much like Ireland is attracting artists with favorable tax laws. We Europeans are getting older; we should be getting wiser, healthier and happier, too.

Mr. Capezzone is the president of the productivity committee of the Italian Chamber of Deputies.

Autos: boom de venta de era Kirchner, aún lejos de los 90

En julio se alcanzó un nuevo récord con 49.545 O km patentados

Autos: boom de venta de era Kirchner, aún lejos de los 90

Por: Horacio Alonso
Ämbito Financiero

- ¡¡¡¿Cuánto?!!!

- Tranquilícese señor, por favor... pueden ser cinco meses, con suerte cuatro. Lo que pasa es que la demanda de autos no para y cada vez hay más demora en las entregas.

El diálogo entre clientes y vendedores se repitió una y otra vez durante julio en las concesionarias. Es que el mes pasado, la venta de 0 km sorprendió a todos. Según datos de la asociación que agrupa a las concesionarias (ACARA), las operaciones crecieron 34% respecto de igual mes del año pasado llegando a 49.545 unidades comercializadas.

«No sé cuándo va a parar. En siete meses ya se patentaron 350.000 vehículos. Todo un récord. El mejor julio de la historia. Y las previsiones de 520.000 autos para este año van a quedar cortas. Esa cifra va a ser el piso», dijo a este diario Horacio De Lorenzis, directivo de la entidad.

Lo que muchos se preguntan a esta altura es por dónde van a circular todos estos nuevos autos (la mayoría se vende en la Capital Federal y el Gran Buenos Aires) teniendo en cuenta que el tránsito está ya prácticamente colapsado.

Con unos 6 millones de autos que circulan por el país y un volumen de ventas que podría rondar este año los 550.000 vehículos, el parque automotor se está renovando a un ritmo de casi 10% anual.

Pero si bien este año se encamina a ser el mejor de la historia (en 1998 se vendieron 508.000 unidades), hay una realidad: todavía habría que mantener este ritmo en los próximos tres años para igualar el boom de venta de los 90.

Entre 1991 y 2000, se comercializaron en el país unos 3,6 millones de autos a un promedio de 360.000 vehículos anuales. Desde 2001 hasta 2007 inclusive, el mercado demandó 2,1 millones. Esto significa un promedio de 300.000 autos por año. Sólo para equiparar los niveles de la década pasada, en 2008, 2009 y 2010 se tendrán que vender 500.000 vehículos por año. Si bien hoy no parece exagerado lograr ese objetivo, en una economía tan cambiante como la de la Argentina nada está asegurado. (Por ejemplo, a mediados de los noventa se estimaba para 2000 un mercado de 700.000 unidades y en 2002 apenas se comercializaron 85.000 vehículos.)

Pero hay que tener en cuentaun factor importante que es el crecimiento poblacional. Suponiendo un aumento en la cantidad de habitantes de 10% en una década, eso agrega un adicional de 360.000 autos a repartirse en los próximos tres años, lo que significa una gran desafío sólo para alcanzar el volumen de mercado de los criticados 90.

Mientras tanto, países de la región como Chile, Brasil y México tuvieron un aumento real de las ventas de 20% a 40%, comparado con la década pasada, lo que muestra que la Argentina recién está recuperando su mercado y sólo crece si se lo compara con lo peor de la crisis.