¿Quién paga el costo de la emergencia?

¿Quién paga el costo de la emergencia?

Por: Enrique Szewach
Ámbito Financiero

Argentina inicia un nuevo año fiscal, el séptimo consecutivo, bajo el paraguas de la Ley de Emergencia Pública. La señal de la «emergencia permanente» marca un «estilo» de enfrentar los problemas que, claramente, incrementa el riesgo de operar económicamente en la Argentina. Y ya se sabe que, a mayor riesgo percibido, menos son los proyectos que califican, o mayor el «premio» que se les exige.

Un país que, simultáneamente, le anuncia al mundo récords de crecimiento, consumo, reservas monetarias y superávit fiscal y se declara «en emergencia» por ley es, por lo menos, poco serio. Así lo están reconociendo los fallos de diversos tribunales en Europa, Estados Unidos y en el CIADI del Banco Mundial, en donde se tramitan el cobro de deudas varias contra el Estado argentino. En dichos fallos se hace mención, con diversas prosas, de lo contradictorio que resulta una declaración « unilateral» de emergencia, en especial, a la luz de la performance exitosa de los últimos años. La interpretación general de estos tribunales y cuerpos colegiados es que, si bien se justificó la emergencia y sus consecuencias sobre contratos, deudas y pagos, en 2002 y posiblemente durante 2003, el tiempo transcurrido y los resultados exitosos alcanzados indican que, al menos macroeconómicamente, la emergencia ha terminado. En otras palabras, la interpretación de estos tribunales es que la Argentina declara unilateralmente una injustificada situación de emergencia, sencillamente, para no hacer frente a sus compromisos.

Internamente, a su vez, el «estilo emergencia» ha generado cambios bruscos en reglas impositivas, prohibiciones de exportar, preciosdiferenciales, subsidios cruzados, etcétera.

Ni que hablar de los efectos de la «emergencia» sobre las mediciones estadísticas del INDEC y la destrucción de una unidad de cuenta de largo plazo en pesos.

La falta de normalización en la relación con las empresas privatizadas ha afectado, claramente, la tasa de inversión de éstas y la expansión, no sólo del servicio eléctrico, sino de todos los servicios de infraestructura sujetos a contratos que hoy siguen sin regularizarse totalmente, o mantienen una regularización precaria y sujeta a arbitrariedades y discrecionalidades varias.

El deterioro creciente de la infraestructura básica, o al menos su dispar evolución con lo observado en el resto de la economía, se hace evidente. Es cierto que resulta difícil hacer historia contrafáctica. Sin embargo, algunos indicadores permiten «estimar» el costo de este escenario.

En medio de la bonanza regional, gracias al boom de los commodities, según datos de la ONU al año pasado, mientras Brasil, Chile y Uruguay muestran un fuerte aumento de la Inversión Extranjera Directa con tasas anuales de 25, 14 y 62% respectivamente, la Argentina presenta un estancamiento en este flujo, por no decir una caída. Una parte de esta disminución se observa en la tasa de inversión global, en donde las empresas grandes y las privatizadas presentan un déficit de inversión de, al menos, 2% del PBI unos 5.600 millones de dólares. Otro indicador importante que refleja el «estilo» argentino ha sido el «despegue» del riesgo local, comparado con el de la región, desde el estallido de la crisis financiera global a mitad de año.

# Castigo

En efecto, mientras el riesgo argentino implícito en el retorno de los bonos en dólares creció casi 600 puntos básicos en el período, Brasil apenas sufrió un castigo adicional de 150 puntos, mientras Colombia y Perú prácticamente mantuvieron el mismo riesgo, pese a plazos de duración de sus instrumentos, muy superiores al bono argentino de referencia. Es decir que la sobretasa implícita en la «emergencia argentina» es de más de 4% anual en dólares. Esto sobre deuda soberana a cinco años. Lo que implica una sobretasa aún mayor para la deuda privada. Otro indicador importante sobre el «costo» argentino ha sido el castigo que sufrieron los precios de venta de empresas argentinas, comparadas con similares operaciones en otros países de la región. Hay poca información, pero se puede estimar en no menos de 25% el diferencial de precio, en contra del valor de las compañías locales.

Asimismo, todos los datos de remuneraciones a ejecutivos, mandos medios y trabajo calificado en la región muestran también el rezago de los ingresos argentinos en puestos comparables. En síntesis, respecto de pagos externos pendientes, la emergencia permanente no sirve, porque los tribunales internacionales ya la desconocen. Internamente, la mayoría absoluta del oficialismo en el Congreso hubiera permitido una normalización institucional sin afectar el poder de negociación del Ejecutivo. Las ventajas, entonces, no se perciben.

En cambio, aunque difíciles de cuantificar, «el estilo emergencia» genera costos importantes, con menor inversión, mayores tasas de interés, menor valor de los activos argentinos y, fundamentalmente, la necesidad de «compensar» estos mayores costos, con un precio bajo, comparado regionalmente, de la inteligencia y el trabajo privado locales.

Bienvenidos a la alta inflación

Bienvenidos a la alta inflación

Por: Juan Luis Bour

Ámbito Financiero

La negociación salarial de 2008 presenta condiciones iniciales que permiten prever un alto nivel de conflictividad y un fuerte impulso a costos laborales. Esas condiciones iniciales incluyen tres elementos novedosos: el primero y más importante es la aceleración de la inflación, mientras que los otros dos -la eliminación del sistema de vales y el aumento de los aportes personales para jubilación- incrementan en forma permanente los impuestos sobre el salario y reducen el neto o salario de bolsillo, y por lo tanto aumentan la brecha o cuña salarial. Son todos factores que alejan a las partes en la negociación, como veremos a continuación.

La primera cuestión es la de la inflación, y el índice que se va a utilizar. Más allá de las grotescas manipulaciones del INDEC, que mide menos de 8,4% estimado para fin de año en GBA, mientras que los índices provinciales medían hasta hace un mes entre 17,3% (IPC6) y 23% (IPC11), la mayoría de los indicadores que no pasan por el edificio de Diagonal Sur se encuentran en un entorno de 20%.

El aumento de la inflación tiene tres dimensiones que hay que considerar en una discusión salarial. La primera es simplemente el nivel: no se discute sobre la base de la pauta oficial de inflación, sino en torno a 20%. De allí que para una economía que discute salarios en forma centralizada como en la Argentina (en lugar de hacerlo por empresa), todos miran la «verdadera» inflación, o lo que crean que ella sea.

El segundo elemento es que si la inflación se acelera, la discusión puede trasladarse ya no a cuál fue la inflación pasada, sino la del año que viene, que puede ser mayor y establece una segunda fuente de discusión.

Con acuerdos salariales que toman como base el concepto de la verdadera inflación, tenemos instalada la indexación. Esta puede ser anticipada ( cuando los salarios se ajustan por la inflación esperada), o rezagada, pero en cualquier caso se establece la indexación de salarios a precios como criterio básico de ajuste. El pedido de los sindicatos de un bono de fin de año (UOM), ajustes de viáticos ( camioneros), pagos por única vez (pero no tanto), etc., no hace más que confirmar que se instaló entre nosotros la indexación salarial.

El tercer elemento se deriva de la aceleración de la inflación: los ajustes de salarios deben hacerse cada vez en forma más frecuente. En efecto, no basta con indexar los salarios para evitar la pérdida del poder de compra: cuando el ajuste es sobre la base de la inflación pasada, siempre se llega tarde. Pero el tema es un poco más complicado. Si se pretende estabilizar el poder de compra de los salarios, se debe tener en cuenta la pérdida que se produce no sólo entre períodos (de un trimestre o de un mes a otro), sino durante el período entre dos pagos (normalmente, dentro del mes). Los asalariados gastan su ingreso a lo largo de un determinado mes, período durante el cual la inflación deteriora el stock monetario (salario) disponible a comienzos de él. Este deterioro intraperiódico está asociado al nivel de inflación, y por lo tanto es relativamente bajo cuando la tasa de inflación también lo es (menos de 1% mensual, por ejemplo). En los casos en que la inflación se acelera, el deterioro del poder de compra crece, y con tasas de inflación altas la única forma de preservar el poder de compra es con pagos salariales cada vez más frecuentes (quincenales, semanales o diarios). Este fue un proceso bien conocido en los episodios de alta inflación de la Argentina entre 1975 y 1990, documentado por FIEL. Aún no estamos en este contexto, pero es claro que el primer elemento que nos acerca a este escenario es que los ajustes ya no se realizan una vez al año, sino que enfrentamos negociaciones con ajustes y reajustes periódicos. ¡Bienvenidos al mundo de la indexación!

Nos queda por considerar cómo influyen en la negociación salarial la eliminación de los vales como sumas no remunerativas, y el aumento de la tasa personal de aportes. La eliminación de los vales (lo que no implica eliminar las sumas no remunerativas, que siguen siendo homologadas por el Ministerio de Trabajo e increíblemente toleradas por la AFIP) aumenta directamente los costos laborales en promedio 4,3%, cuando esos pagos representan actualmente 10% del salario. Este aumento tributario eleva la cuña salarial (tax wedge), lo mismo que la pérdida que recibe el asalariado (4,6%) por aumentar su contribución desde 7% a 11% para jubilación. Si bien se trata de salario diferido en el tiempo, es notorio que la mayoría de los asalariados le aplican una elevada tasa de descuento a un fondo jubilatorio que ha estado sujeto a decisiones discrecionales del gobierno que determinaron pérdidas de valor esperado. Por la eliminación de vales se retraerá la oferta salarial de los empleadores en alrededor de 4%; por la pérdida de salarios por el aumento de aportes, se incrementaráen casi 5% la demanda de aumentos salariales.

Hasta aquí no hemos mencionado una eventual demanda de aumento del salario real, ya sea por aumento de la productividad o por cualquier otro factor, puesto que con alta inflación el tema que domina es el de no perder la carrera con los precios. Por otro lado, en condiciones de inflación alta, los números de productividad agregada poco dicen de lo que pasa en un sector particular de la economía, y suelen ser una excusa para ajustar los salarios por arriba o por debajo de la pauta de inflación, de acuerdo con las necesidades de la política macroeconómica.

En suma, ¿cómo se inicia el año 2008 en salarios? Las demandas suman por un lado la inflación verdadera estimada para ese año (igual o mayor que la de 2007), alguna recuperación por los ajustes del año anterior, el pedido de compensar de alguna forma los aumentos de aportes personales, y el aumento de la frecuencia con que se revisan los ajustes. En términos de números, muchos estarán preocupados por el aumento que establece un piso de 25% a los reclamos, pero del otro lado pensarán en que dicho ajuste tendrá un costo cercano a 30%, y que los sindicatos estarán atentos a acelerar las negociaciones al paso de la inflación. ¿Tenemos un problema con los salarios? En absoluto, tenemos un problema con la inflación.

A Bagman's Tale

A Bagman's Tale
Did Hugo Chávez purchase the allegiance of Argentina's new president?

Wednesday, December 26, 2007; Page A20
Washington Post

IT'S LONG been well known that the close relations between Venezuela and Argentina are not the result of mere ideological affinity: Under President Hugo Chávez, Venezuela has purchased some $4 billion in Argentine bonds, bailing out a government whose paper is widely shunned in international financial markets.

Now it's emerging that Mr. Chávez's personal ties to Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner also may have been fueled with petrodollars. According to a U.S. prosecutor in Florida, Venezuela's self-styled socialist revolutionary dispatched a bagman to Buenos Aires last August with $800,000 for Ms. Kirchner's election campaign. When police seized the cash-filled suitcase, assistant U.S. attorney Thomas Mulvihill said last week, Venezuelan and Argentine authorities conspired to cover up the matter by offering the intermediary $2 million in hush money.

This seamy story is coming to light because the alleged bagman, Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson, happens to be a dual U.S.-Venezuelan citizen with a home in Florida. After his bag was discovered at a Buenos Aires military airport on Aug. 4, Mr. Antonini began cooperating with U.S. law enforcement. Mr. Mulvihill said at a court hearing that numerous recorded conversations document the attempt by Venezuela and Argentina to silence Mr. Antonini, working through businessmen close to the Venezuelan government and a Venezuelan intelligence agent. Three Venezuelans and a Uruguayan were arrested in Florida on Dec. 12 and charged with being unregistered agents of the Venezuelan government; a fifth suspect is at large.

Ms. Fernández de Kirchner, who took office days before the arrests were made, replaced her husband, Néstor Kirchner, a populist who allowed Mr. Chávez to use Argentina as a staging point for anti-American demonstrations. Argentines and Americans who hoped the change of presidents would lead to an improvement in U.S.-Argentine relations are disappointed; some, demonstrating their ignorance of the U.S. legal system, blame the Bush administration for the results of a criminal investigation. The Kirchners' reaction shows that hopes for a change in Argentina's foreign policy were probably misplaced. Rather than distancing themselves from the scandal, both have joined Mr. Chávez in making wild charges about White House "dirty tricks" and a supposed Bush administration plot to subjugate Argentina.

"Relations with the United States are not good, and Argentina isn't a colony" of the United States, Mr. Kirchner declared last Tuesday, shortly after his wife conferred privately with Mr. Chávez. That, of course, doesn't answer the question many Argentines are asking -- which is whether Argentina is becoming a colony of Venezuela.

No hay "eficiencia" energética sin señales de precios razonables

No hay "eficiencia" energética sin señales de precios razonables

Por: Fernando Navajas

Ámbito Financiero

El reciente llamado del gobierno a un uso racional de la energía por la vía de un equipamiento y un comportamiento más propenso al ahorro no puede sino ser bienvenido. En especial por todos aquellos que tenemos preocupación por el manejo de los recursos escasos del planeta y nos comportamos de manera austera al definir nuestro patrón cotidiano de consumo de recursos no renovables.

Sin embargo, molesta tanta arrogancia intelectual de quererapropiarse del término «eficiencia», cuando las señales de precios, que son la quintaesencia de los incentivos para ahorrar (o dilapidar) recursos escasos, están tan mal alineadas con una verdadera política de «uso racional». En economía, que para todo el mundo menos para el gobierno argentino es la ciencia que estudia la asignación y distribución de recursosescasos, la palabra eficienciatiene un significado muy preciso en cuanto a la relación estrecha de los precios con los verdaderos costos económicos.

No hay que ser experto para saber o haber oído que los precios de la energía en la Argentina se quedaron atrasados en términos reales. Seis años de congelamiento a nivel de usuario residencial de las tarifas de electricidad en Capital y Gran Buenos Aires y del gas natural a nivel de todo el país dan cuenta de una imagen que es muy clara al respecto. Algún movimiento reciente de las tarifas de los transportes prende la luz indicando que el gobierno se puso las pilas para reconocer que atrasos muy grandes llevan a «facturas» que se pagan tarde o temprano. Pero confrontando con la racionalidad económica en materia de servicios públicos el gobierno es muy cerrado, en cuanto a ideas se refiere. Si con semejante sacudón o «crunch» energético en 2007 no apareció ninguna idea, más allá de cambiar el uso horario y repartir bombitas a domicilio, es porque el gobierno está paralizado frente a las disyuntivas que debe enfrentar para arreglar el desastre o alimentar la inflación. Tarde o temprano no se puede escapar a las disyuntivas, que son la esencia del manejo de la economía.

Los números tarifarios del país en cuanto a lo que pagan de energía amplios segmentos de la demanda no da para más congelamiento en una economía con una inflación de 20%. Con el precio del petróleo alto y estable, llegó la «hora nona» del populismo energético, versión post-2002. Disfrácenlo de lo que quieran, apelen a palabras motivadoras, organicen campañas a beneficio del ahorro de energía. Mientras sigan jugando con la energía a estos precios las cosas no van a terminar bien.

Vamos a la electricidad. Para tener una idea simple y comparativa,hoy un consumidor residencial de la zona metropolitana de Buenos Aires paga -sin importar su nivel de ingreso- una tarifa final de electricidad de aproximadamente 1,5 centavo de dólar por kw/h consumido. Esto es algo así como un cuarto de lo que se paga en países vecinos. Para hacer la comparación algo más dramática, la tarifa social (es decir con descuentos para los pobres) en algunos países de Centroamérica, que están forzados a usar combustibles líquidos para generar electricidad, es superior a los 10 centavos de dólar el kw/h. Si se pusieran los verdaderos costos marginales de generación con gas natural doméstico en las tarifas argentinas, éstas deberían saltar a no menos de 5 centavos de dólar el kw/h o, el doble o más, si se realiza con combustibles líquidos.

# Ajustes

Aún cuando el gobierno decidiera que estos ajustes son inmanejables, una recomposición más tímida hacia, por ejemplo, un reconocimiento de los valores de generación eléctrica similar al promedio de los años 90 -cuando los costos económicos eran mucho más bajos que los que hoy enfrenta la región y el mundo- implicaría un aumento de la tarifa final de no menos de 30%. Esto claro está, dejando afuera los ajustes requeridos para compensar los desajustes de costos de la transmisión y la distribución (en esta última hoy la caja se está cerrando con transferencias ad-hoc de fondos del programa de uso racional de la energía).

Supongamos que tal aumento de 30% fuera decidido por el gobierno, al igual que en el reciente caso del transporte público urbano. El impacto sobre los ingresos de las familias sería muy diferente, dada la desigual distribución del ingreso del país. Simulando tal aumento con los datos de las encuestas de los hogares más recientes, para por ejemplo el caso del Gran Buenos Aires, resultaría que los deciles 1 a 3 de la distribución del ingreso familiar per cápita (esto es, de 10% al 30% más pobre de las familias) sufrirían un aumento equivalente de hasta 1,7% de sus ingresos. En el otro extremo, el impacto para los deciles 8 a 10 (esto es el 30% más rico) se diluiría hasta 0.2% de los ingresos familiares. Esta evidencia llama por sí misma a la necesidad de diferenciar aumentos a través de algún mecanismo de tarifa social que puede ser financiado por los mayores impuestos que cobran los distintos niveles de gobierno, luego del aumento de 30% de la tarifa sobre aquellos que pueden pagarla. Dado que 34% de la factura final son impuestos ad-valorem (es decir que suben con el valor de la energía vendida), la capacidad fiscal de armar un presupuesto ad-hoc para financiar la tarifa social es muy fácil de pensar e implementar. El único detalle es cómo elegir los beneficiarios.

Recomponer los precios de la energía a valores razonables en relación con los verdaderos costos económicos es una necesidad para la sostenibilidad energética de la Argentina. Hacerlo de modo tal que el impacto sobre los grupos de bajos ingresos se diluya es un desafío para la política económica. Precios más altos, esquemas de tarifa social, ese es el camino. Mientras tanto, llamar a que la gente lleve adelante una vida sana «sin cigarrillos» y al mismo tiempo bajar a cero los impuestos y regalar cigarrillos por las calles es tan consistente como estos anuncios de política energética que se acaban de realizar. El problema no está en los anuncios; enhorabuena la mayor conciencia a ahorrar. El problema está en casi todo lo demás, empezando por los precios y por regalar la energía en domicilios donde la palabra escasez no existe.

Magic (by Bill Whittle)

MAGIC
by Bill Whittle
www.ejectejecteject.com

When I was nine I saw a leprechaun!

I’m not kidding. I was in the back seat of our car driving up the hill from the hotel my dad managed, back in Bermuda. I’d ridden up that hill, in that seat, hundreds of times. I knew every rock and clump of grass by heart.

Anyway, there he sat, up against a familiar rock: little green pants, little green vest, little green top hat, small little bone-white pipe. Captain Ahab beard – white, no moustache. I screamed like we had just run over Lassie.

Stop the car!

What is it?

Stop the car! Stop the car!

Dad stopped the car, and I nearly broke Mom’s nose on the dashboard as I flew out of the back seat and ran for the rock.

Gone! The little bastard had ducked into one of his tunnels. This didn’t surprise me much: it’s tough enough to actually see a leprechaun, but to catch one – that was the real bitch. And by the way, I wasn’t interested in Learning About His Little Customs or Making a Wee Friend for Life by letting him go. I wanted his pot of gold so I could buy a dolphin to go snorkeling with.

My parents had to restrain me with ropes to get me to leave. The second I got home, I got on my bike and dashed directly back to the spot. I searched there every day for weeks. I never saw him again. If you had told me that having just seen Finian’s Rainbow the week before might have influenced my nine-year-old imagination, I would have said, Yeah, okay, but I SAW him! And I did see him. I saw him with my own two eyes.

Fast forward six long, dry, magic-free years. Miami, 1975. It’s Friday night and I’m on the roof of the Southern Cross Observatory at the Museum of Science and Space Transit Planetarium. I’ve just been made, as far as I know, the World’s Youngest Planetarium Console Operator, an honor so monumental in the Great Halls of Geekdom as to ensure that I would not get a date for at least three years.

So there I was, trying to convince a group of about twenty people that the image of Saturn they were looking at was not a slide taped to the eyepiece, when all of a sudden, someone screams: My God! Look! UFO’s!

And sure enough, there they were: A V-shaped formation of dully glowing ovals flying pretty much right for us! People were screaming, crying, hugging each other. One of our Junior Birdmen ran for the phones to scramble the interceptors. And they kept coming: no running lights, no sound at all, just weird, slowly moving grey ovals.

I had waited for this moment since I saw the leprechaun six years before. I grabbed the binoculars, and--.

Dammit!

What?! Are they charging their Death Rays?

Nah. They’re just birds.

How could they be birds? But they were. They were geese, with dark necks and wings, but white bellies. These white oval bellies were reflecting the city lights, but if you looked carefully as they got closer, even without the binoculars, you could see the long necks and thin, flapping wings.

It was a flock of geese.

And then something happened that I will never forget: that crowd wasn’t relieved; they weren’t even disappointed. They were angry. They were angry at me. Not dogs and pitchforks and torches angry, but they were surly enough to burn the moment into my young brain.

I had taken away their magic.







There’s a strange cloud that’s settled over our modern society. It’s a pervasive sort of bland contempt for an ingenious collection of lenses and mirrors that can reveal a giant ball of hydrogen, helium, methane and ammonia, billions of miles away, surrounded by untold millions of ice fragments in delicate orbit, yet one which will ascribe to the most banal unknown, a life-changing, quit-your-insurance-job-and-live-in-a-tree status.

For our entire history, right up until a hundred years ago, the idea of flying carpets and magic lanterns held people’s imaginations in thrall. Now that we have everyday miracles like jet aircraft and electric lights, all some people want is to return to a time when the belief in magic was common, but the everyday blessings of magic – telephones, computers, antibiotics – didn’t exist. Back in the anti-nuclear 80’s lots of folks drove around with SPLIT WOOD NOT ATOMS bumper stickers, and I often asked myself, how much wood have these people actually split? I’ve done an hour in my 20’s and I thought I was going to die.

It’s sad, frankly – at least to people like me. I find it terribly, tragically sad that the more successful and comfortable we become, the more people pine for a time when none of these everyday miracles existed. Outdoor bathrooms on January nights and miserable coal stoves that need to be tended hourly just to heat a pathetic half-gallon of tepid water need to be experienced to be believed – and not just in a 24 hour adventure, but continuously. Death, hunger, cold, disease, infant mortality – we have fought them tooth and nail for millennia, for what? Apparently in order to so insulate people that they can long for “ancient wisdom,” return to the “holistic tribal remedies” of the past, and hold up the most primitive and achingly poor cultures on earth as being the sole repository of “authenticity,” while scorning every advance that they take completely for granted.

Magical thinking is everywhere today, and it is growing. It threatens the foundations of reason, individualism, science and objectivity that have delivered this success so well and for so long. It is dangerous. If we are to continue to thrive and progress, then we need to sharpen some sticks and drive a stake through the heart of this monster, and right quick.







I’ll use the term Magical Thinking as a pretty big umbrella to cover a whole host of creeping intellectual chicanery: superstition, wishful thinking, pseudoscience, unsubstantiated claims, assertion, mysticism and anti-science.

Like so many of our other destructive tendencies, this whole mess really started in the latter part of the 1960’s. It’s a sad comment to make, because we were the first nation founded after the Enlightenment, and reason and clarity thunder so triumphantly throughout the Constitution that, in the immortal words of P.J. O’Rourke, the operating manual for an unruly nation of 300 million people is about one-quarter the length of the one for a Toyota Camry.

Of course, superstition and magical thinking have been with us since the dawn of time, but up until very recently, we Americans have prided ourselves on our scientific bent, our Yankee ingenuity – which is nothing less than applying common sense, reason, and hard work to find new ways to solve age-old problems. For most of our history, our public schools were the envy of the world. The very idea that a whole nation could educate their entire population was so radical that scholars from around the world flocked to the United States in the nineteenth century to see such a bold miracle for themselves.

Even before the late 1950’s, when Sputnik lit a fire under science and technical education, US public schools performed magnificently. Now I’m not a professional educator, but I suspect this might have had something to do with the fact that we were more interested in teaching history, science, writing, literature and math than we were about raising self-esteem, discussing birth control and indoctrinating political and environmental beliefs. There were specialized people who taught these things way back then, and they were called “parents.” The only “soft science” taught in those days was “citizenship,” a class that sounds so dated and quaint today that we can only lament how far we have fallen. The idea that we would teach people how the system works, rather than telling them what to think about it, has long gone. And we continue to pay the price for it.

Anyway, some time in the late 1960’s, Sauron gets the Ring and along comes the Hippie movement. Their entire philosophy was summed up succinctly in a slogan from the times: if it feels good, do it.

As a life philosophy, it simplistic and childlike. It is also extremely subtle and pervasive, and as a personal philosophy it has enormous seductive power. It frees you from the constraints of discipline, study, responsibility and ethics, not to mention relieving you of the burden of making choices based on evidence, reason, logic or fact.

Now those Hippies are college professors, and post-modernism is their Graille.

You know the drill: No objective reality. All truth is relative. You can believe whatever you want, when you want. You can be descended from Atlantean Priests! You can have Mental Powers to move objects, read the future, and speak to dead people! Even better, you can save six billion trillion tons of silicon, nickel and iron in the third orbit around the sun –- a sphere that has endured 5 billion years of asteroid impacts, volcanoes, ice ages, and having its core knocked out and into orbit -- by holding up a piece of wood with some lettered cardboard on one end and by marching down the street chanting two-line political philosophies!

What’s not to like!







Let’s go kill some vampires…

Because it is so susceptible to fact and logic, the very best way to fight magical thinking is to simply grant the premise and look at the consequences. This is a silver-tipped, hardened oak stake dipped in garlic paste made from holy water when it comes to demolishing some of these ideas.

Let's start with those geese bellies…

UFOs, proponents tell us, are physical vehicles from other solar systems carrying large-eyed, small bodied beings who are so technologically and spiritually advanced that they can wing through the light years at will, carry objects aloft on beams of light, move through walls, dispense advice for cultural survival and administer anal probes.

The constancy of the speed of light as a natural speed limit has been so thoroughly and completely tested and vindicated, that these aliens must have learned to harness the power of entire galaxies to bore wormholes through spacetime, which would be necessary to have these infinitely fast, staggeringly maneuverable, gravity-defying, super-hardened space-metal saucers in the skies over our planet.

Sweet!

Well, turns out that in 1946 one of these antigravity, faster than light, space-metal disks…uh…ran into a hill. The ultra-classified alien voice data recorder yielded a single sound: zzrrzzrrrD’oh!rrzzzrr!)

Yes, in 1946 one of these ultra-advanced beings was arguing with the little podlings in the back seat, took his eye off the Iludium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator, and then came the Earth-Shattering Ka-Boom! right outside of Roswell, New Mexico.

They – The Government – recovered a few strips of crumpled aluminum. UFOlogists point to the picture of the Air Force officer holding up a couple of Jiffy-Pop fragments as “hard evidence” – but as for me, I’d like my anti-gravity, faster-than-light intergalactic hyper-dimensional space-metal saucer to produce something more than one-fifth the wreckage you’d expect from a Cessna 150 hitting the ground at 40 mph flown by some teenager experimenting with The Weed.

Apparently, Area 51 has at least one, if not several of these accident-prone vehicles. They are being ‘reverse-engineered’ by the CIA and other Black organizations.

I have on a cheap digital wristwatch. Don’t ask why. Now presumably these masters of gravity, wormholes and anal probes are far, far ahead of us in science and technology – hundreds, or more likely thousands of years more advanced. But let’s take my cheapo, simple, everyday wristwatch back to a watchmaker of only 100 years ago – the finest Swiss watchmaker of 1903. What could he reasonably expect to reverse engineer?

Upon opening the back, he would find – what? No gears, no jeweled movements. No springs or hands. Completely silent, not a hint of ticking. The case – what is that? Not wood, not metal – more of that smooth, curved stuff. And what about that tiny green square wafer with the strange markings on it? Forget about making one that worked for himself – what the hell is that? What does it do? And the numerals – just a piece of clear plastic – only he has no idea what plastic is, let alone the liquid crystal matrix.

He pushes a button. The thing beeps. Where the hell did that come from! There are no visible bellows or acoustic horns to make such a sound. And the accuracy! And – my god! It lights up in the dark! No gas lines, no wicks, no flame of any kind!

Even the nylon strap and Velcro would be completely beyond him.

If the smartest man on earth of 100 years ago would be baffled and driven to madness by a $15 dollar watch, how are we expected to believe that NASA is reverse engineering a faster than light, anti-gravity Spaceship? The ancient Egyptians would have a far easier time reverse-engineering the Space Shuttle.

Why is it that every certified, approved, authorized and official UFO photo has been revealed by experts – or the perpetrators – to be a hoax? That can’t be good. What does it say for the credulity of these people when you can see video reporting of three UFO’s flying in rigid formation at night: a bright white light in the middle, and a red light on one side and a green one on the other? Startling footage shows a string of lights over Phoenix one evening, and thousands call the police reporting the alien armada. Looking at the video, it’s clear that these are either a string of parachute flares or a sinister invasion battlefleet of slowly descending anti-gravity flying disks populated by super-intelligent alien creatures from another solar system. The military response was a deafening yawn. The news media, on the other hand, rushed to welcome our new Insect Overlords and began rounding up humans to work in their underground sugar caves.

But why bother with questions like this? If it feels good to believe that we are being watched over by advanced beings, then none of this will stop you.

More likely, you believe that you are nothing more than an impotent, faceless cog in a vast conspiracy of silence and oppression, a victim of government cover-ups and hidden agendas, of dark metallic disks under canvas in subterranean hangars. If that’s what makes you feel better about your failures and frustrations, then, hey – asking questions like this won’t even slow you down.

But realize this: if your worldview requires all sorts of secret kingdoms, unknowable motives, and unseen forces moving behind the veil of normal human experience, then you have taken yourself from the realm of a free citizen responsible for his own destiny and that of his nation, to a frightened caveman quivering in fear of distant Thunder Gods: immobilized, helpless and in a state of abject surrender. You have thrown away the hard work of millions and millions of your fellow human beings who have worked and studied their entire lives to raise you from those very depths.

Shame on you.







There is a lake in Scotland inhabited by a giant, long-necked creature, a plesiosaur that we thought went extinct fifty million years before man came down from the trees. This gigantic, air-breathing reptile inhabits the cold, dark, murky depths of Loch Ness.

Got it. Granting the premise…

What have we got? Some stories from eyewitnesses. Like the one by the British naturalist who took the most famous picture of the Monster, the famed “surgeon photo.” You’ve all seen it.

Only the son of the photographer has admitted that this single most compelling piece of evidence was a fake. He made a recreation of the model – it’s about the size of a large rubber ducky (and if you look at the picture again, you realize just how small and out of scale it looks relative to the waves).

Divers and automated remote cameras have scoured the Loch. There’s a picture of a fin – only the picture has been enhanced, rotated, and ‘dodged’ – the original shows an unremarkable -- and tiny -- bit of debris on the bottom. No sign of Nessie. What is much more damaging is that there is no sign of much of anything – especially fish. This ten-ton ancient dinosaur presumably does not order out for pizza. What the hell does it eat?

And this is most damning: plesiosaurs were air-breathing. Why is it that the best evidence for the Loch Ness Monster is a distant, grainy video of an ‘unexplained’ wake, shot in the far distance. This creature has to come up for air several times an hour. If we grant that there is a breeding population of aquatic dinosaurs surviving in Loch Ness, they should be sticking their heads out of the water like a giant whack-a-mole game, 24/7. If air-breathing dinosaurs really inhabited these lakes in Europe, and Africa and the US, then the best evidence would be the body hauled ashore by a shotgun-toting British Marine after Nessie ate a busload of tourists in full view of the world press.

Think about it. What if there really is an air-breathing dinosaur in this lake. How many HDTV recordings would there be in a single day. Fifty? A hundred?

Divers did find many sunken logs on the bottom of these peaty, dismal waters. Some of these will, on occasion, float to the surface as the gases from their decay increases their buoyancy. From a distance, they look like a dark, humped shape breaking the water. They eventually sink again.

So which is more likely? A log floats loose, maybe a boat wake propagates across a glassy lake for ten or twenty minutes? Or that a ten ton air-breathing dinosaur the size of a city bus, extinct for 50 million years, escapes detection in a fish-free lake scoured by dozens of cameras every day for the past fifty years?

But people swear they saw it! Same with the UFO’s. many of these people are lying -- convincingly lying, as they did with Nessie's "surgeon photo." Some of them, though, are undoubtedly telling the truth. Like I said, I saw a Leprechaun when I was nine. Saw him clearly enough to stop the car. Saw him clearly enough to go back looking for him every day, for weeks, until my parents took such pity on me they put a few leprechaun dolls around the house in the middle of the night and swore up and down they had nothing to do with it – just so that I could find something.

I saw it. That doesn’t mean it was there.







The immediate, knee-jerk reaction to such hard-headed looks at magical events is to state that rationalists are shuffling grey automatons gloomily dissecting flowers and bunnies through thick lenses and tightly-pursed lips, relentlessly crushing wonder and awe.

What a bunch of crap.

I don’t have a problem with UFO’s, Bermuda Triangles, Sea Monsters, Ghosts, Crystals, Crop Circles and Atlantis because I think they are silly. Silly Things, like the Ministry of Silly Walks, are a prime ingredient of sanity.

I object to these things not because they are silly, but because they are lazy. They are just, in the final analysis, so incredibly boring, mundane and unimaginative, compared to the real wonders, the authentic magic. Look! A Leprechaun! It's like a man! Only smaller than most men you normally see!

We ooh and ahh at some circles stamped out in a wheat field, but completely ignore pillars of gas and dust so beautiful and so enormous that if you drove fast enough to cross the US in a second, your great–grandchildren would grow old before they reached the end of it. We, a species that can make things from individual atoms, who can decode the history of every living thing on earth, draw maps of the world of a billion years ago, take pictures of the far side of Neptune’s moons, puzzle out virtual particles in a bubbling quantum soup, look into space and time back to the first .0000000000000001 second of the Big Bang and who can conceive of and live their lives by concepts such as honor and justice and freedom, can find enough REAL magic, enough authentic, verifiable wonders to keep us busy for as long as we live. Yet this species stands in line to buy books about a face on Mars and how to keep razor blades sharp by storing them in a pyramid made from popsicle sticks.

We are failing our children if we let a two-dollar piece of particle board obscure the view of the redwood forest just beyond it. Give me half an hour in an observatory with anyone and I will introduce them to wonders they will think about for the rest of their lives.

They are more challenging than flying saucers, sea serpents, or wee people with their pots of gold. To understand them enough to be floored by their magnificence requires a little patience, a little imagination. It does, in fact, require some work.

But these wonders have one powerful advantage. They have the advantage of being real.







We all have people who have influenced our thinking – more, for in a very real sense they have made us into who we are. For me, one of the pillars of who I have become was the late Dr. Carl Sagan.

Sagan was not only a great writer, he was a scientist of the first order. When I first read The Dragons of Eden I could see, at last, some basis for why we act the way we do. And Broca’s Brain is nothing less than a brilliant tour de force of how to weigh evidence and build a worldview based upon what is real. It is refined genius of the highest degree.

One of Carl’s last works was The Demon-Haunted World. If you have any interest at all in learning how to tell what is real and what isn’t then this book is indispensable. Carl Sagan fought a lifelong battle to teach people how to think critically, how to challenge assumptions, and how to marry the wonder and awe of an open mind with the tough, disciplined skepticism needed to stop your brains from falling out. In one chapter, called The Dragon in My Garage, he gives an example so eloquent I have to quote it in full here before we go on to slay bigger monsters:

‘A fire-breathing dragon lives in my garage.'

Suppose I seriously make such an assertion to you. Surely you’d want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity!

‘Show me,’ you say. I lead you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, some empty paint cans, an old tricycle – but no dragon.

‘Where’s the dragon?’ you ask.

‘Oh, she’s right here,’ I reply, waving vaguely. ‘I neglected to mention that she’s an invisible dragon.’

You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon’s footprints.

‘Good idea,’ I say, ‘but this dragon floats in the air.’

Then you’ll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.

‘Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless.’

You’ll spray paint the dragon to make her visible.

‘Good idea, except she’s an incorporeal dragon and the paint won’t stick.’

And so on. I counter every physical test you propose with a special explanation of why it won’t work.

Now, what’s the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire, and no dragon at all? If there’s no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring our sense of wonder. What I’m asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so.

[Emphasis mine -- BW]

When a person wants to believe something, no amount of skeptical questioning, logical contradictions or contrary evidence will move them. Couple that with the example of the dragon – the constant moving of the goalposts of proof and verification, and you have the basis for modern magical thinking. And if UFO’s, Loch Ness Monsters and Bermuda Triangles can draw so many believers, how many more can we recruit with more nuanced sleight of hand?







Look around. In the months leading up to the Iraq war, how many people were saying we should hold out and let diplomacy work to remove Saddam? Had diplomacy worked in the previous 12 years? No. Had anything changed since then? It had not. So how will it work this time? Magic! That’s how.

And so to believe that diplomacy, and not force, would remove Saddam from power was a case of deeply magical thinking. Plus, you get to come out against killing people! That feels good! Let’s do it!

If you claim that capitalism is evil, and that a better society can be built from common ownership of everything, administered by a benevolent state – well, this is identical to saying that you have a dragon in your garage. Now I’m an open-minded fellow. Let’s take a look at your claim. Haven’t they tried this before, in Russia. Wasn’t it a disaster? They didn’t do it right. Okay. What’s different this time?

Hello?

But see, sharing is nice. Being nice feels good! It’s a twofer! Everybody works together. Everybody gets along. The community cow is sick at 3:30 in the morning in February in Minnesota, and all the communal farmers fight each other to be the first out of bed to attend to the livestock that no one owns and no one is responsible for! Could work! Mnnnnn…sharing…

There are still many people who cling to the magical notion that George W. Bush did not legally win the Presidency. Challenge their contention with evidence and watch them move the goalpost:

Bush stole the election. No, he had the majority of electoral votes. Yeah, but Gore won the popular vote. The President is not elected by popular votes. He’s elected by electoral votes. The electoral college is outdated. Well, maybe it is and maybe it isn’t, but you don’t get to change the rules after you lost the game. Gore really won Florida. Not according to three recounts he didn’t. The recounts don’t matter because the Supreme Court selected him. The Supreme Court only told the Florida Court to play by the rules. Bush stole the election because I say so! Ahhh. At last. Now we get down to brass tacks.

People believe that adapting the Kyoto treaty will save the earth. If you only do one thing today that will raise your self-esteem and promote diversity, then saving the planet and all of its species cannot be oversold. If you think building the perfect society feels good, just wait till you get a taste for saving an entire planet and everything on it! What a rush that is!

Think of the arrogance of that statement, the sheer magic involved in a belief such as that. The earth will be here for five billion more years regardless of what you or I do. What are these people really saying? The Earth’s environment has been far hotter, and far colder, than it is today. Which environment are we to save? Human industry may -- in fact, likely does -- have some impact on global temperatures. How significant is this relative to massive factors like solar output? We don’t know. The one thing we do know, with certainty, is that the more technologically advanced and wealthy the society, the cleaner all of its industries become. Want a clean planet? Fill it with rich people.

Even the proponents of Kyoto admit that if fully ratified, it would only delay their own worst-case model’s warming by two or three years over the next century. And all we have to do is wreck the world’s economy. Then we can all go back to that magical time when a few million humans lived in villages and drank herbal teas and sang songs around the campfire and poet-kings ruled lands without warfare and sacred crystals kept everybody healthy just as they did in Atlantis.







Now, ask any professional magician how they pull off their illusions and every last one will tell you it’s all about misdirection. Sadly, those boring, insensitive, dead-white-male laws of physics don’t allow for quarters to disappear into thin air. So to make someone believe that precisely this has happened, we need to physically make that coin go someplace where it is not expected. And the way to do that is to make everyone look somewhere else for a moment.

Humans have retained several reflexes, and for good reason too – they keep us alive. All of today’s animals are reflexively attracted to fast motion in their field of vision. There were undoubtedly many animals that did not have this brain wiring, and these extinct animals are known by the scientific name, breakfast. Whether you’re a two-ounce tree shrew or a one-ton wildebeest, if something moves fast in the bushes, it would behoove you to give it your undivided attention.

This is hard-wired, and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it. So watch a magician carefully next time he makes a coin disappear. You’ll see one hand move quickly – and that is the hand you will watch. Coin’s in the other hand.

Misdirection.

Now to show you how this works in the real world, I need to tell you a story about a real man named Robert Wayne Jernigan. I guarantee you this story will make you very angry, but this is the kind of world we live in today.

Robert Wayne Jernigan is now 28 years old. People who knew him said he was quiet, somewhat stand-offish. He was not widely liked in high school.

Four years ago, a witness reported seeing Jernigan enter a building in a remote suburb of Dallas with an axe. Four people were found dead at the scene, including a nine year old girl. No charges were filed. Less than two days later, Jernigan turned up again, this time at the scene of a suspicious fire in a day care center. Miraculously, no one was injured. But it was just a matter of time.

During the next several weeks, it is possible to place Jernigan at the scene of no less than thirteen suspicious fires. Eleven people died. Eyewitnesses were unshakable in their determination that Jernigan had been on the scene. And yet the police did nothing.

Jernigan had long been fascinated with fire. A search of his apartment revealed fireman-related magazines, posters and memorabilia. Despite the deaths of fifteen people, despite repeated eyewitness accounts and photographic evidence placing Jernigan at these fires, no criminal charges were ever filed against Robert Wayne Jernigan. He remains a free man to this day.

And rightfully so. Because Robert Wayne Jernigan is an ordinary fireman for the Dallas Fire Department.* He is not a serial arsonist at all.

Now re-read the previous paragraphs and tell me where I lied.

Everything I told you was factually true. But the spin, the context, the misdirection… The press always reports serial killers with all three names – Robert Wayne Jernigan sounds a hell of a lot more ominous than Bobby Jernigan. Quiet, stand-offish, not widely liked – instant psychopath, if you read the papers. Entered the building with an axe – oooh! That ought to get the blood boiling. That the people had died from smoke inhalation I decided was irrelevant to the story…

And so on. And so on.

This is how you lie by telling the truth. You tell the big lie by carefully selecting only the small, isolated truths, linking them in such a way that they advance the bigger lie by painting a picture inside the viewer’s head. The Ascended High Master of this Dark Art is Noam Chomsky.

I have long admired Noam Chomsky. It must be absolutely intoxicating to be able to write so free of any ethical constraints. Chomsky flitters and darts through the vast expanse of human experience, unerringly searching out those few, isolated data points that run contrary to the unimaginably vast ocean of facts crashing ashore in the opposite direction.

Here’s a Noam Chomsky moment for those of you without enough duct tape to wrap around your heads to keep your brains from exploding while you actually read his works:

Let’s say we stand overlooking the ocean along Pacific Coast Highway. From high atop the cliffs, we look down to the waves and the sand below. I ask you what color the beach is. You reply, reasonably enough, that it is sandy white. And you are exactly right.

However, there are people who cannot see the beach for themselves because they are not standing with us on this very spot. This is where Noam earns his liberal sainthood. Noam takes a small pail to the beach and sits down in the sand.

If you’ve ever run sand through your fingers, you know that for all of the thousands upon thousands of white or clear grains, there are a few dark ones here and there, falling through your fingers. With a jewelers loupe and an EXCEEDINGLY fine pair of tweezers, you carefully and methodically pluck all of the dark grains you can find – and only the dark grains – and carefully place them, one by one, into your trusty bucket.

It will take you a long time – it has taken Chomsky decades – to fill this bucket, but with enough sand and enough time, you will eventually do so. And then, when you do, you can make a career touring colleges through the world, giving speeches about the ebony-black beaches of Malibu, and you can pour your black sand onto the lectern and state, without fear of contradiction, that this sand was taken from those very beaches.

And what you say will be accurate, it will be factually based, and you will be lying like the most pernicious son of a bitch that ever lived.

Why do so many people take this hocus-pocus at face value? Because, like any audience at a Magic show, they want to believe.

Do this long enough, and you will become an Icon –- no more hours spent sorting sand for you! No sir! And finally, after a few decades as Icon, you may manufacture whatever data you need to make your case, and not one of your followers will call you on it.

Shortly after 9/11, and somewhat before the “Taliban forces did finally succumb, after astonishing endurance” St. Noam thundered that America’s “Silent Genocide” in Afghanistan would kill – pick a number, any number -- somewhere between 3 to 4 million civilians. At one point, he intimated that up to 10 million could die.

The real number was around 500.

Being Noam Chomsky means you get a pass for being wrong not by a factor of ten to one, or even a hundred to one. In Afghanistan, Chomsky was wrong by a factor of 20,000 to one. Being that wrong on a regular basis means going for a $2.99 Happy meal at McDonald’s and paying $59,800 for it. It means frugally walking out of a Nothing Over 99 Cents! store with the seven most expensive items, having just put $138,600 on your credit card. That’s how wrong Noam Chomsky is.

Misdirection. Unsubstantiated allegations. Undocumented assertions. Counting a few scattered hits and ignoring millions of misses. You can prove anything in this manner, if your audience is a willing accomplice and refuses to challenge you.

Michael Moore used exactly this technique to make people believe that America is a land of terrified, racist murderers who are armed to the teeth solely because of their fear of black people. For this he was given an Academy Award, and Bowling for Columbine has been called “the best documentary film ever made.”

I told you this story would make you angry.









I saw Bowling for Columbine in a small art house in Santa Monica, attended by what I think was a small knot of NPR movie club pass holders. This is like watching Triumph of the Will in Nuremburg stadium seated between Goebbels and Himmler. You know before the lights go down that they’re gonna love it.

We’re used to the willing suspension of disbelief when the lights go down. This agreement between the audience and the filmmaker, the magician, is what allows us to watch a kid get bitten by a ‘radioactive spider’ and believe that this will give him the power to climb the side of a skyscraper and shoot webs from his wrists. This is good magic. This is what art is all about.

It takes a particularly badly-made and clumsy film to become so unbelievable that you find yourself muttering, Oh, come on! at the screen, and Bowling for Columbine is nothing like that badly made. It is a lie so carefully and meticulously crafted that you find yourself sitting there in the dark thinking, I have to admit, he’s got a point there.

It’s only later, when the magic is over and you’re walking to your car, only when the narrative flow has released you to swim to the shore of reason, that some people begin to ask some questions. Let me take a few examples from the movie to show you how this lie is constructed on a brick-by-brick basis.

Moore’s thesis – near as I can follow it – is that America commits vastly more handgun murders than the rest of the world. Well, there’s no disputing that. You would think Moore would make the point that it’s because we have such easy access to handguns. He does not. He claims that there are plenty of guns in Canada, but they don’t have our murder rate. The movie’s premise is that we kill people with guns because we Americans are terrified all the time, and the one thing we are most terrified of is Black people. But cross 10 feet over the border into Canada and that terror instantly -- you might say magically -- disappears.

Hope I didn’t wreck the movie for you.

The title comes from Moore’s assertion that Harris and Klebold, the Columbine murderers, were so immune to violence that they went bowling in the morning before they shot up the school. It is a chilling thought. Didn’t happen. But that shouldn’t get in the way of a chilling thought, especially when it’s your opening thesis.

The opening scene features Michael Moore in the North Country Bank & Trust in Traverse City, Michigan, which was running a promotion saying that for every account opened, they would give away not a toaster or a walkman, but a gun. We see Moore filling out the paperwork to open a new account. This done, the teller hands him a rifle. Moore exits the bank, thrusts the rifle into the air like some well-fed Sandinista, and over the freeze-frame says “maybe it’s not such a good idea to give people a gun…in a bank!” Oh, how the NPR film club tittered at that line!

This isn’t just misdirection. This is, pure and simple, a goddam lie. The bank did offer this promotion, and when Moore heard about it, he found out that when you open the new account, they give you a certificate. You then have to go to a gun shop to pick up the gun.

This wasn’t damning enough. So Moore convinced the poor, decent, gullible people who ran that bank that it would be much better publicity for them if they could hand him the gun right there in the bank. Uh, well, um…okay. If it will help you with your movie. But the bank did not hand out guns on the premises. Moore created this scene to advance his premise. It’s a funny scene. It is most emphatically not a documentary scene.

Moving on.

Not wanting to appear one-sided, Moore interviews a few randomly selected gun owners. And who could be a more random handgun owner than John Nichols, brother of Terry Nichols, co-conspirator of Oklahoma City lunatic Timothy McVeigh?

In the interview, John Nichols seems on the verge of total emotional collapse. He makes off-color comments and has a spooky, lithium-deficient smirk that appears at awkward and inappropriate times. After a few moments, this completely random and therefore totally typical American gun owner takes Moore into the back room to ‘show him something.’ He does not allow the camera to enter. A subtitle tells us that John Nichols has put a gun barrel in his mouth. We can hear Michael Moore gently begging him to stop, to put the gun down. Not only a fair man, but gentle, too. When it comes to misdirection, Master Moore has the strongest kung-fu.

Littleton, Colorado is a nice, safe, upper-middle class neighborhood. It’s the kind of place you’d want to raise your kids. It is also home to a Lockheed plant, and Moore goes on the make the assertion that this ‘climate of death’ from these ‘weapons of mass destruction’ is responsible for the Columbine killing spree. Presumably the school shooters in other communities had to settle for magazines and websites of missiles to work up their Death Culture madness.

This would be a stretch – a real stretch – if the ‘entire community’ was indeed wrapped up in ‘America’s Defense Industry Culture of Death.’ But the Lockheed plant in Littleton, the one using ominous missiles as a backdrop for an interview in the film, builds launch vehicles for communications satellites – you know, the ones used by HBO to broadcast Bowling for Columbine across the nation. This little detail was left out of the movie. Keep your eye on the flick of the wrist; pay no attention to the slow palming of the coin.

One of the most widely-quoted sequences, one that drew squeals and applause for the Santa Monica Art House Crowd, was a cartoon series showing Moore’s history of the United States. Terrified white people in England get on a ship, sail to the New World, meet dark, friendly, all-around swell dark-skinned people, and kill them all out of paralyzing, abject fear. Slaves are imported to maintain an excuse for us to stay armed. The black people are then summarily killed to the last man. And so on, with the screaming, yelping, frozen-with-fear white people shooting everything in sight.

Oh, how true. When the box office attendant, who was black, handed me back my change a little too quickly for comfort, I had to drop him with 23 rounds from my trusty 9mm. The snack bar attendant – a mulatto if ever there was one – asked me if I wanted butter on my popcorn in a really threatening way, so it was a shotgun blast to the head for him. And the usher, who was Mexican, took a hostile step towards me as he opened the theater door. Not being completely dark-skinned, I decided it was safe to just stab him in the eyes with my ballpoint pen.

This is what he wants you to believe. His European audience, generally salivating at the chance to hear an American describe his country as a bunch of idiotic, murdering, terrified racists, howls with approval.

Moore then recounts the story of a 6 year old boy who went to school with a handgun and murdered a little girl. We meet his mother, a young African-American woman, in the courtroom, crying and terrified, handcuffed, orange jumpsuit, the whole nine yards. This woman, says Moore, was forced by welfare cuts by those evil bastard Republicans, to leave her child with relatives, get up before dawn, and ride a bus, for hours, so that she could go to a shopping mall and serve biscuits to rich white people.

Moore rides the bus in the pre-dawn hours. It’s depressing. I was watching this, and I thought to myself, you know, maybe we have gone too far.

But when I got to the car, I realized, hey, wait a second. I’ve had to get up in the predawn hours and take a bus to go to work. Millions of people do this every day in America. It’s society’s fault that this woman has to get up and take a bus to work? And the relatives she left her kids with? It was a crack house. Guns and drugs were everywhere. And the fact that she is a black woman standing handcuffed in a courtroom has precisely nothing to do with this. It is much more likely that this would have happened to an equally unskilled white mother.

And furthermore, if you had a six year old child, and you absolutely had to leave him in a place like that, would your kid take a gun to school and shoot someone? Or do you think that maybe, perhaps, just possibly, this tragedy had more to do with this individual’s parenting skills than the fact that she has to take a bus to go to work in the morning? Is this an indictment of a heartless society, or an insult to the millions and millions and millions of Americans, black and white, rich and poor, who get up every morning and go to work without their children murdering a classmate during the course of the day?

Bowling for Columbine is not a documentary. It is propaganda, created in many cases from whole cloth, and in others by selective interviewing, biased editing and false assumptions. Much of it is, in fact, downright lies. That it was awarded an Oscar only reveals that the Academy Awards have suffered as much ethical rot as the Nobel Peace Prize, in that it was awarded by faceless voters who wanted nothing more than to take a swipe at the Bush administration.

As for his assertion that Americans kill because they are nothing but terrified white people, a quick look at the murder statistics will show any dispassionate reader that this is, in fact, nearly the exact opposite of the truth. Black-on-Black violence is many, many times greater than White-on-Black violence

Michael Moore claims to be the Conscience of America and the Champion of the Common Man. As my friend James Lileks points out, he is neither.

If Michael Moore was only interested in saving innocent lives, he would have done better to have tackled a subject that kills many hundreds of times the number taken by handguns, namely, obesity-related diseases. Is that a cheap shot? It is. It is a factually-based cheap shot, which is more than can be said about Bowling for Columbine.







We find ourselves living in a time when people grow increasingly unwilling or unable to determine fact from assertion. In a society ruled by the people, this is a fatal condition. Where magical claims go unchallenged, where feeling good about something is the measure of its truth, public policy plummets into the same disconnect from reality that has doomed entire civilizations.

As always, we face a choice: we can live our lives by fantasy ideologies and wait for the train wreck called reality, or we can learn not what to think, but how to think. How to test and compare the barrage of information and statements we receive on a daily basis.

Howard Zinn has a theory of American History. Victor Davis Hanson has another. Which one is right? How do we know?

A few nights ago, during one of my regular visits to the main sensor screen at USS Clueless, I read something that absolutely bored a hole in my brain. You always have to pay attention when you read Steven Den Beste, but this was something else again. I could feel the veins in my temples throbbing like I was a Talosian trying to keep Captain Pike from seeing that the top of the mountain had been blown off. My hands and feet went cold, then numb, as the blood rushed to my head. I staggered into the kitchen, ripped open a five-pound bag of sugar, and washed it down with Hershey’s syrup: brain needs more glucose! Brain must have more glucose!

Steven was talking about how people think – no, more than that. He was talking about what thought is. He talked about thought as a series of heuristics.

I liked the American Heritage Dictionary entry best: Relating to or using a problem-solving technique in which the most appropriate solution of several found by alternative methods is selected at successive stages of a program for use in the next step of the program.

Now remember, I’m fresh from the Krell Mind Machine myself, but as I understand it, what we know and what we believe are a series of heuristics, which basically means we use models – little index cards – when we deal with problems. A simple heuristic might be touching a red-hot stove burns. We don’t have to keep touching the stove every time to find this out. All we have to do is touch it once – I remember doing it and so do you – and now we emphatically know red hot burners bad.

This is a simple heuristic, and a damn good one. But as Steven points out, a heuristic doesn’t have to be true all the time – just enough of the time for it to be a useful mental shortcut.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that the right-wing raving lunatics meet the left-wing barking moonbats somewhere off the map where There Be Dragons. So how useful is a complex heuristic like Democrats can’t be trusted with national security?

Hot stove burns is right pretty much every time: it is an effective heuristic, certainly useful, but pretty damn narrow and limited. That is, its predictive power is good, but the things it accurately predicts are pretty limited. Democrats can’t be trusted with national security is far more complex, open to infinitely more variables and exceptions, and therefore will be less accurate. It will be proven wrong more often. Roosevelt and Truman were Democrats, and they could hardly be improved upon.

But if you think about how you think, you may realize that everything we see in the world is colored by our enormous pyramid of ever-more-complex heuristics, our personalized set of index cards on how the world works.

When we have discussions, like this one, what we are essentially doing is trading cards; I’ll try to give you a Democrats can’t be trusted with national security, but you may respond with Republicans don’t care about anything beyond their own wallet.

We nod when we read or hear something new that makes sense to us, but that’s only because, while new, it is a conclusion that makes sense based on the heuristics we already hold. It is a new assumption based upon less complex assumptions, based on still less complex assumptions, all the way down.

Big fleas have little fleas

Upon their backs to bite ‘em

And little fleas have lesser fleas

And so ad infinitum

(and these small fleas

of course, in turn

have larger fleas to go on

and larger still, and larger still,

and larger still, and so on)

Now…

Post-modernists will look at this and come to the conclusion that because we all have these internal clichés, all truth is relative, there is no objective reality, and a nineteen-year-old English Lit student knows the true meaning of Hamlet better than Shakespeare does.

Here, in my experience, is a very reliable heuristic: All Post-modernists are idiots. Of course, your mileage may vary.

As usual, they have gotten it exactly wrong. It is true that no one can re-learn every lesson they have learned throughout their entire lives every day. To build on knowledge, to grow smarter, to become educated, is to add layers based on the existing foundations.

Science works because each layer is inspected – by science itself – and checked for accuracy. Entire theories, entire skyscrapers of ideas, have been demolished because new experiments proved that a single, simple piece of foundation data was in error. As new experiments provide new information – repeatedly, reliably, independently and in the expected quantities – these then become the steel and concrete with which we build newer, taller and stronger theories, stronger heuristics.

And the end result is cell phones, antibiotics, MRI scanners, 747s, weather satellites and the internet.

This process is the exact opposite of magical thinking. It is disciplined. It is rigorous. It is determined to follow the evidence that reality provides when we question it through experiment. It does not have a destination in mind – it follows the path wherever it may lead. Its results are not always comforting, which means it requires courage to walk that path.

And wherever it has been applied, the results have been absolutely magical. Miraculous. Astonishing. Awe-inspiring.

It is also a way of thinking that we Americans formerly tried to apply to politics with pride. Show me. I'm listening. We abandon it at our mortal peril.

Because of this rational, disciplined, skeptical, hopeful and ultimately joyous way of looking at the world, we have been able to behold wonders that no poor human imagination could begin to predict. It is the mirror-image of seeing the world as the drab, lifeless, mechanical thing that mystics accuse rationalists of. Rather, it is driven by the elation that we can do difficult things well, see layers upon layers of the infinitely large or infinitesimally small being peeled back, generation after generation, to reveal an entirely new stage and cast of wonders and miracles. Big fleas have little fleas…and so, ad infinitum.

If someone chooses to run their lives through the horoscope printed next to the comics, that is their business. They certainly have the freedom to do so. But when magical ideologies are put forward as political positions of equal weight and value, as a chart to sail the ship of state, when assertion carries the same weight as proof, we will surely lose our way. And then we will have nothing left to save us but all the luck we can wring from whatever leprechauns we can get our hands on.









*I made up Robert Wayne Jernigan only because I do not have, at hand, a real fireman with real stories to tell. If I had, I could have sold the story even better by adding the real-world details such an interview would have provided. The more data points I have to choose from, the better I can build the lie.

The Gift Of Doing Very Little

The Gift Of Doing Very Little

By George F. Will
Sunday, December 23, 2007; Page B07
Hellbent on driving its approval rating into single digits, Congress adjourned after passing an omnibus spending bill larded with at least 8,993 earmarks costing at least $7.4 billion -- the precise number and amount will be unclear until implications of some obscure provisions are deciphered. The gusher of earmarks was a triumph of bipartisanship, which often is a synonym for kleptocracy.

This was the first year since 1994 that Democrats controlled both houses. Consider Congress's agreeably meager record:

It raised the hourly minimum wage from $5.15 to $5.85 -- less than the $7 entry wage at McDonald's -- thereby increasing the wages of less than 0.5 percent of the workforce. Rebuffing George W. Bush, who advocates halting farm subsidies to those with adjusted gross incomes of more than $200,000, the Senate also rejected -- more bipartisanship -- a cap at $750,000. This, in spite of the fact that farm income has soared to record levels, partly because Congress shares the president's loopy enthusiasm for ethanol and wants more corn and other agricultural matter turned into fuel.

Although Congress trembles for the future of the planet, it was unwilling to eliminate the 54-cent-a-gallon tariff on Brazilian ethanol. But our polymath Congress continued designing automobiles to make them less safe (smaller) and more expensive. It did this by mandating new fuel efficiency -- a 35-mpg fleet average by 2020 -- lest the automotive industry design cars people want. And Congress mandated a 12-year phaseout of incandescent light bulbs.

Bruce Raynor, president of the union Unite Here, expressed organized labor's compassionate liberalism when he urged sparing workers the burden of democracy: "There's no reason to subject workers to an election." The House agreed, voting for "card check" organizing that strips workers of their right to a secret ballot when deciding for or against unionization of their workplace. Unions, increasingly unable to argue that they add more value than they subtract from workers' lives, crave the "card check" system. Under it, once a majority of workers, pressured one at a time by labor organizers, sign a card, the union is automatically certified as the bargaining agent for all the workers. Senate Republicans blocked this, but the Senate Democrats voted to cripple the Labor Department agency that requires union bosses to explain how they spend their members' money.

To improve Americans' health, Congress hopes that by 2017, 22 million more people will begin smoking, enough to pay the increased cigarette taxes that purportedly would finance an expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program. The program, supposedly for low-income children, would have been expanded to cover many children -- and adults -- from households with incomes far above the nation's median income. The president vetoed the expansion.

Having vowed to end the war in Iraq, House liberals ended the year in a minuet of moral evasion. Representatives passed a bill containing money for the war in Afghanistan but not for the one in Iraq. The Senate added money for Iraq. House Democrats then voted 141 to 78 against final passage, but House Republicans and moderate Democrats passed it and liberals headed home to brag about having voted against funding the war.

In January, with much preening, House Democrats embraced "pay-go," the pay-as-you-go rule that any tax cut must be "paid for" by compensatory tax increases or spending cuts. In December, Democrats abandoned it because of the alternative minimum tax.

The AMT was enacted in 1969 as an indignation gesture aimed at fewer than 200 rich people who managed, legally, to owe no taxes. But the enactors neglected to index the AMT against inflation, so this year it would have been a $50 billion bite out of 23 million taxpayers. The House voted to suspend the AMT for almost all who would have had to pay it and fund that with a $50 billion tax increase. Senate Republicans argued that no Congress ever intended the AMT to collect, or ever will allow it to collect, such large sums from such a large number of Americans. Therefore, pay-go would siphon $50 billion to compensate for a fictitious $50 billion. The Senate voted 88 to 5 to not collect the AMT this year, the House acquiesced and pay-go evaporated.

Rep. John Campbell, a California Republican, notes that this year the House took many more votes (1,186) than ever but that only 146 bills became laws, and most of those named buildings or other things or extended existing laws. Congress, and especially the Democratic majority, should be congratulated for this because a decrease in the quantity of legislation generally means an increase in the quality of life.

georgewill@washpost.com

A Brief History of Christmas

By JOHN STEELE GORDON
WSJ, December 21, 2007 - WSJ

Christmas famously "comes but once a year." In fact, however, it comes twice. The Christmas of the Nativity, the manger and Christ child, the wise men and the star of Bethlehem, "Silent Night" and "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" is one holiday. The Christmas of parties, Santa Claus, evergreens, presents, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and "Jingle Bells" is quite another.

But because both celebrations fall on Dec. 25, the two are constantly confused. Religious Christians condemn taking "the Christ out of Christmas," while First Amendment absolutists see a threat to the separation of church and state in every poinsettia on public property and school dramatization of "A Christmas Carol."

A little history can clear things up.

The Christmas of parties and presents is far older than the Nativity. Most ancient cultures celebrated the winter solstice, when the sun reaches its lowest point and begins to climb once more in the sky. In ancient Rome, this festival was called the Saturnalia and ran from Dec. 17 to Dec. 24. During that week, no work was done, and the time was spent in parties, games, gift giving and decorating the houses with evergreens. (Sound familiar?) It was, needless to say, a very popular holiday.
[Illo]

In its earliest days, Christianity did not celebrate the Nativity at all. Only two of the four Gospels even mention it. Instead, the Church calendar was centered on Easter, still by far the most important day in the Christian year. The Last Supper was a Seder, celebrating Passover, which falls on the day of the full moon in the first month of spring in the Hebrew calendar. So in A.D. 325, the Council of Nicea decided that Easter should fall on the Sunday following the first full moon of spring. That's why Easter and its associated days, such as Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, are "moveable feasts," moving about the calendar at the whim of the moon.

It is a mark of how late Christmas came to the Christian calendar that it is not a moveable feast, but a fixed one, determined by the solar calendar established by Julius Caesar and still in use today (although slightly tweaked in the 16th century).

By the time of the Council of Nicea, the Christian Church was making converts by the thousands and, in hopes of still more converts, in 354 Pope Liberius decided to add the Nativity to the church calendar. He also decided to celebrate it on Dec. 25. It was, frankly, a marketing ploy with a little political savvy thrown in.

History does not tell us exactly when in the year Christ was born, but according to the Gospel of St. Luke, "shepherds were abiding in the field and keeping watch over their flocks by night." This would imply a date in the spring or summer when the flocks were up in the hills and needed to be guarded. In winter they were kept safely in corrals.

So Dec. 25 must have been chosen for other reasons. It is hard to escape the idea that by making Christmas fall immediately after the Saturnalia, the Pope invited converts to still enjoy the fun and games of the ancient holiday and just call it Christmas. Also, Dec. 25 was the day of the sun god, Sol Invictus, associated with the emperor. By using that date, the church tied itself to the imperial system.

By the high Middle Ages, Christmas was a rowdy, bawdy time, often inside the church as well as outside it. In France, many parishes celebrated the Feast of the Ass, supposedly honoring the donkey that had brought Mary to Bethlehem. Donkeys were brought into the church and the mass ended with priests and parishioners alike making donkey noises. In the so-called Feast of Fools, the lower clergy would elect a "bishop of fools" to temporarily run the diocese and make fun of church ceremonial and discipline. With this sort of thing going on inside the church to celebrate the Nativity, one can easily imagine the drunken and sexual revelries going on outside it to celebrate what was in all but name the Saturnalia.

With the Reformation, Protestants tried to rid the church of practices unknown in its earliest days and get back to Christian roots. Most Protestant sects abolished priestly celibacy (and often the priesthood itself), the cult of the Virgin Mary, relics, confession and . . . Christmas.

In the English-speaking world, Christmas was abolished in Scotland in 1563 and in England after the Puritans took power in the 1640s. It returned with the Restoration in 1660, but the celebrations never regained their medieval and Elizabethan abandon.

There was still no Christmas in Puritan New England, where Dec. 25 was just another working day. In the South, where the Church of England predominated, Christmas was celebrated as in England. In the middle colonies, matters were mixed. In polyglot New York, the Dutch Reformed Church did not celebrate Christmas. The Anglicans and Catholics did.

It was New York and its early 19th century literary establishment that created the modern American form of the old Saturnalia. It was a much more family -- and especially child -- centered holiday than the community-wide celebrations of earlier times.

St. Nicolas is the patron saint of New York (the first church built in the city was named for him), and Washington Irving wrote in his "Diedrich Knickerbocker's History of New York" how Sinterklaes, soon anglicized to Santa Claus, rode through the sky in a horse and wagon and went down chimneys to deliver presents to children.

The writer George Pintard added the idea that only good children got presents, and a book dating to 1821 changed the horse and wagon to reindeer and sleigh. Clement Clarke Moore in 1823 made the number of reindeer eight and gave them their names. Moore's famous poem, "A Visit from St. Nicholas," is entirely secular. It is about "visions of sugar plums" with nary a wise man or a Christ child in sight. In 1828, the American Ambassador Joel Roberts Poinsett, brought the poinsettia back from Mexico. It became associated with Christmas because that's the time of year when it blooms.

In the 1840s, Dickens wrote "A Christmas Carol," which does not even mention the religious holiday (the word church appears in the story just twice, in passing, the word Nativity never). Prince Albert introduced the German custom of the Christmas tree to the English-speaking world.

In the 1860s, the great American cartoonist Thomas Nast set the modern image of Santa Claus as a jolly, bearded fat man in a fur-trimmed cap. (The color red became standard only in the 20th century, thanks to Coca-Cola ads showing Santa Claus that way.)

Merchants began to emphasize Christmas, decorating stores and pushing the idea of Christmas presents for reasons having nothing whatever to do with religion, except, perhaps, the worship of mammon.

With the increased mobility provided by railroads and increasing immigration from Europe, people who celebrated Christmas began settling near those who did not. It was not long before the children of the latter began putting pressure on their parents to celebrate Christmas as well. "The O'Reilly kids down the street are getting presents, why aren't we?!" is not an argument parents have much defense against.

By the middle of the 19th century, most Protestant churches were, once again, celebrating Christmas as a religious holiday. The reason, again, had more to do with marketing than theology: They were afraid of losing congregants to other Christmas-celebrating denominations.

In 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant signed into law a bill making the secular Christmas a civil holiday because its celebration had become universal in this country. It is now celebrated in countries all over the world, including many where Christians are few, such as Japan.

So for those worried about the First Amendment, there's a very easy way to distinguish between the two Christmases. If it isn't mentioned in the Gospels of Luke and Mark, then it is not part of the Christian holiday. Or we could just change the name of the secular holiday back to what it was 2000 years ago.

Merry Saturnalia, everyone!

Mr. Gordon is the author of "An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power" (HarperCollins, 2004).

Con inflación de 20%, es tiempo de macro, no micro

Con inflación de 20%, es tiempo de macro, no micro

Por: Enrique Szewach

Ámbito Financiero

En su discurso inaugural, la Presidente hizo una ratificación explícita de la continuidad de la política económica, al resaltar «que no se puede estar cambiando todo cada cuatro años». Por supuesto que marcó la continuidad desde la «fundación de la patria», en 2003, mientras todo lo anterior fue explícitamente demonizado.

Pero esto no podría sorprendernos. Cada revolución, para refirmarse, necesita una nueva fundación y denostar el pasado. Es cierto que en este caso particular, los revolucionarios de hoy también tuvieron protagonismo importante en las revoluciones de ayer. En otras palabras, ni el círculo más reducido del kirchnerismo, ni el más amplio del peronismo-radicalismo K estuvieron en los 80 y los 90 escondidos en las sierras luchando por la liberación. Al contrario, fueron defensores, protagonistas importantes y claros beneficiarios de las «revoluciones pasadas».

Ese «pequeño detalle» no empaña la clara manifestación de Cristina a favor de la continuidad de la revolución de quien estaba «sentado a su izquierda». Sin embargo, lo que sorprendió del discurso de Cristina, además del cambio extraordinario en el tema educativo (por primera vez, en un discurso público, un gobernante argentino reconoce que no es sólo con plata que se arregla el problema educativo y que los docentes tienen que saber más que los alumnos), es el hecho de que haya renunciado, explícitamente, a los mecanismos de control de precios y a establecer pautas salariales indicativas. Fue cuando planteó, con todas las letras, que no fue votada para ser «gendarme de la rentabilidad empresaria» o «mediar en una interna sindical». Creo, respetuosamente, que se equivoca. Su marido le deja, entre otras cosas, una inflación alta y expectativas de aceleración junto con la necesidad de cambiar precios del sector energético, dramáticamente atrasados. En ese contexto, o se modifica la política cambiaria, revaluando el peso, o se camina hacia un superávit fiscal y una moderación en el crecimiento del gasto, muy superior a lo anunciado. O no queda más remedio, si se insiste con «la revolución K», que complementar las medidas fiscales, el «anclaje» del tipo de cambio y los ajustes de precios energéticos, con la « coordinación de expectativas» que surge de algún tipo de «control de la rentabilidad empresaria» y freno a las aspiraciones salariales sindicales.

Quizá resulte exagerado comparar a Cristina con un personaje de Edgar Allan Poe. Pero después de todo, cualquier crónica de la historia de la política económica argentina es siempre exuberante. Si la Presidente imaginaba que podía ofrecer como «cambio modesto de estilo dentro de la continuidad», la «libertad de precios y salarios» y la sustitución del acuerdo social que anunció en la campaña por planes de competitividad sectoriales, es probable que, como un personaje de Poe, se vea obligada una y otra vez a hacer lo que no quiere, ni le gusta.

# Rentabilidad

De la misma manera que aceptó, con cierto cinismo, gobernar con la Ley de Emergencia Pública que nunca votó. El kirchnerismo considera que los mercados en la Argentina son poco transparentes, concentrados y que unos pocos «formadores de precios» deciden arbitrariamente sus rentabilidades. En estos años, lejos de diseñar políticas para generar más competencia y transparencia en los mercados,se dedicó sistemáticamentea concentrarlos aun más y a «sentarse a la mesa de los formadores» a negociar cada precio, cada salario, cada subsidio, cada impuesto.

Eso está en el «corazón» del modelo K y no es algo que se puede abandonar fácilmente sin tener que cambiar toda la estructura del modelo productivo. Entre fines de 2005 y principios de 2007 sólo hubo acuerdos y controles de precios, mientras se aceleraba el gasto público y con ello las presiones inflacionarias. En 2007, esas presiones obligaron a abandonar la política de acuerdos y controles, y a trampear en el índice, mientras el gasto se aceleraba aun más y el peso atado a un dólar débil magnificaba la expansión local y aceleraba más la tasa de inflación. Ahora se intenta desacelerar sólo con política fiscal y el anclaje del peso a un dólar que se sigue devaluando contra los commodities más importantes.

Podemos tener una economía que se desacelera y una inflación que sigue alta. Cuando la inflación es de 20% anual, no es «tiempo de la micro». Es tiempo de la macro adecuada.

Argentina Answers To the Crazy Call Of Dr. Tangalanga

Argentina Answers To the Crazy Call Of Dr. Tangalanga
Phone Prankster Spouting Nonsense Delights Crowds; The Perplexed Handyman

By MATT MOFFETT
December 15, 2007; Page A1

BUENOS AIRES -- Last month, 700 people turned out at a nightclub to celebrate Julio de Rizio's 91st birthday. Mr. de Rizio himself provided the entertainment, using a telephone hooked up to the audio system.

He dialed a convenience store and, in a tone that was civility itself, inquired about closing time. "I'm asking because I'm going to rob you at 3 a.m.," he told the startled clerk.

Mr. de Rizio then made harassing calls to a middle-aged comic-book collector and to a fellow who was offering his services as pop vocalist. He got him to belt out a few bars -- badly off-key. Finally, he called a handyman who had advertised that he would take care of "everything your husband doesn't have time to fix." Mr. de Rizio went off on a bawdy riff about not having time to satisfy his wife. He asked the flustered handyman whether he could fix that.

Mr. de Rizio, known by his stage name, Dr. Tangalanga, has won fame and fans throughout Latin America for making prank phone calls. His devotees call him "the telephone avenger" for the verbal pummeling he inflicts on inept or unscrupulous service providers -- quack healers, tarot card charlatans, butchers with heavy thumbs and builders who misfire their caulk-guns.

But no Argentine telephone owner is safe, not even the medical student who had obtained some skeletal remains from a cemetery. Tangalanga called her and told her that the bones were those of his cousin. "Couldn't you put him back together so I could bring him some flowers?" he asked.

Mr. de Rizio, who labored anonymously for decades as an account executive at Colgate-Palmolive Co. in Argentina, made his first comic calls in the early 1960s to cheer up a friend who was dying. He started working the phones in earnest some years later when he himself was bedridden with hepatitis. Homemade tapes of the calls began circulating informally around Buenos Aires, creating a sizable fan base. Eventually, he was signed by a publisher and record companies, which collected his oeuvre in three books and 41 cassettes or CDs. He has performed in Mexico, Chile and Uruguay in recent years and still works private parties in Argentina.

Mr. de Rizio's deadpan delivery and gravitas prompt victims to take him seriously, never mind the nonsense he spouts. Posing as a reporter for the mythical Peruvian magazine Angustia, or Anguish, he once called a collector of tango records looking for a bogus recording titled, "How Deep Can the Ravine Be if the Frog Climbs It at a Trot?" Neither the collector nor his wife, who also came to the phone, could place the song. They promised to take it up with other tango buffs, though. "Yes," Mr. de Rizio said, "all of them will have to come together and asphyxiate themselves." "Of course, of course," replied the collector's wife.

DR. TANGALANGA CALLING

Mr. de Rizio's best pranks border on the surreal. He once asked a wig-repair specialist to make a house call because his wife's hairpiece had burst into flames while she was wearing it.

A prominent Argentine philosopher, Alejandro Rozitchner, wrote that Tangalanga is "an artist" and likened him to "the boy who satisfies himself participating in the world of grown-ups, acting out the role of one of them." An Argentine rock star sampled Tangalanga on an album, and a cabinet minister had him tape a message for his answering machine.

When not performing, Mr. de Rizio isn't anything like the profane and politically incorrect Tangalanga. For many years, he spent two or three days a week as a volunteer visiting people in hospitals. Mr. de Rizio has been married for 66 years to the girl who grew up next door to him in Buenos Aires. He credits the telephone tricks with keeping him healthy and lucid after all these years.

Throughout the world, prank calls have an extensive comic pedigree. From Steve Allen on the original "Tonight Show" in the 1950s, to Bart Simpson today, the telephone hoax has been a durable source of laughs.

Mr. de Rizio enlivens his jokes with an earthy Buenos Aires argot called Lunfardo, which was born in the immigrant underworld in the late 19th century and became the language of tango. Even when he has taken his act abroad, Mr. de Rizio has often found himself dialing back to Buenos Aires to find comic foils. Argentines have no peers in their irascibility and the language they use to express it, he says.

When Tangalanga made a nuisance call to a Buenos Aires woman who sold statues used in the Santeria religion, she spent nine minutes cursing him. She insulted his mother and his sister -- and then she insulted his mother's sister. When he called back, she cussed him out for another 13 minutes. Later he and the woman became friends, and she appeared as a guest at one of his shows.

But some people never get over their anger at being the butt of Tangalanga's jokes. A couple of years ago, Mr. de Rizio had a pair of off-duty police officers accompany him to a performance because he had been threatened by a man whose yoga-instructor wife had fallen for a Tangalanga prank. Concerns about reprisals are the reason Mr. de Rizio assumed the Tangalanga alias and performs with his face concealed behind a baseball cap and a fake beard.

In defense of what he does, Mr. de Rizio notes that his calls provide comic relief to thousands of fans. Ex-president Carlos Menem said Tangalanga tapes were one of the things that helped him cope with his grief after his son died in a helicopter crash in 1995.

Mr. de Rizio has taken aim at some prominent targets, including another ex-president, Fernando de la Rua. He called Mr. de la Rua pretending to offer legal services and gave him a spurious return phone number with 10-digits rather than the customary eight. Why so many numbers? asked the ex-president. "Divided by two," Dr. Tangalanga replied. "Ah," Mr. de la Rua said.

Among his other distinctions, Mr. de Rizio has probably left some of the most baffling phone messages ever to find their way onto Post-it Notes. He told one message taker to look for him on "1614 Cochabamba St., second floor, fourth corridor, row 17, on the shady side."

Besides working wedding or anniversary parties, Mr. de Rizio now usually confines himself to one big live show a year for his birthday. Last month, Carlos Marcarian, a 38-year-old dental assistant, rode the early morning ferry from his home in Uruguay to see his idol in action. "It is amazing that a man his age can think so fast," he says. Most audience members were in their twenties or thirties and many sported tattoos and piercings. During the birthday show, Mr. de Rizio was assisted by his friend and manager, Roberto Fasano, who provided numbers of prospective victims culled from the classifieds or suggested by fans.

It's a risky brand of comedy, though. Some would-be targets -- a singer who claimed to be a dead ringer for Joe Cocker and a wart-removal specialist -- weren't home when he rang up. And when Mr. de Rizio phoned a restaurant, the manager started laughing uncontrollably and replied "Si, Tangalanga." One downside of Tangalanga's fame is that about one in three people he calls now recognizes him.

Still, there are more hits than misses. The biggest laughs came during Mr. de Rizio's conversation with a magician calling himself Alex White, an Anglicized version of his real name, Alejandro Blanco. Tangalanga said he wanted to hire him to saw Mrs. Tangalanga in half -- only he didn't want any magic tricks. "You've got to kill her well," Tangalanga said. There was a pause and then a palpable quiver of concern in the magician's voice. "You seem like you need another type of service," he said.

Write to Matt Moffett at matthew.moffett@wsj.com

Las valijas chavistas consolidan aislamiento y dependencia del país

Las valijas chavistas consolidan aislamiento y dependencia del país

Por: Carlos Menem
Ex presidente de la Nación

Ámbito Financiero

Las noticias que llegan desde Estados Unidos a raíz de una investigación del FBI y del Ministerio de Justicia de aquel país han puesto nerviosas a las máximas figuras del gobierno. Esas noticias no deberían sorprender: reflejan algunas consecuencias de políticas practicadas sistemáticamente desde mayo de 2003. En el instante mismo de asumir la presidencia cuatro años atrás, la familia Kirchner puso el escenario, los reflectores y los equipos de sonido a disposición de la dupla constituida por el comandante Fidel Castro y el coronel Hugo Chávez para que pudieran desplegar su histriónica propaganda y su acción política en territorio argentino. El venezolano Chávez, embriagado con barriles de renta petrolera, se considera con derecho a intervenir en la política de los países sudamericanos y en la Argentina lo ha hecho con la anuencia del gobierno y la complicidad de muchos dirigentes oficialistas. Que con dineros extraídos al Estado venezolano haya financiado grupos de activistas, campañas políticas y candidaturas presidenciales en nuestro país reviste una alta gravedad institucional que no se puede ocultar, so pretexto de patriotismo, atacando a quienes ofrecen las pistas reveladoras. La manipulación ilegal de fondos, el lavado de dinero, el ocultamiento no son precisamente métodos de transparencia política ni contribuyen a mejorar la calidad institucional. En verdad, si hay algo que hoy perturba tanto esos altos objetivos como las buenas relaciones entre los países de América es el comportamiento de Chávez y de sus amigos, que alientan divisiones tanto entre naciones hermanas y vecinas, como en el seno de los propios países y, mientras fatigan con interminables discursos sobre la unidad continental, obstruyen y obstaculizan procesos concretos de integración y progreso americanos como el que impulsamos decisivamente en la década del 90.

Hoy resulta evidente para los argentinos y el mundo que el nuevo período presidencial que se inauguró en nuestro país el lunes 10 de diciembre ha enterrado todas las promesas electorales de «cambio» y las reemplaza por el continuismo: la señora de Kirchner no sólo quiere mantener contra viento y marea su amistad con Chávez y sus petrodólares, sino que gobierna con el mismo personal que su esposo, con las mismas ideas y aplicando los mismos instrumentos de los últimos cuatro años. Que nadie se declare sorprendido si los resultados que obtiene están en la misma línea (aunque con mayores signos de deterioro).

Con esas políticas hemos cosechado el aislamiento internacional, la inflación creciente (un «logro» en el que competimos con Chávez), la crisis energética (que es la consecuencia de la total imprevisión y de la falta de inversión en infraestructura), los índices de inseguridad, delito y narcotráfico más altos de la historia argentina y los más notables avances de la corrupción (con dólares sospechosos escondidos en valijas voladoras y bolsas olvidadas, casos como Skanska y los enormes sobreprecios de la obra pública o la persistente incógnita sobre los fondos de Santa Cruz, para citar sólo algunos ejemplos).

# Culpas

Los funcionarios, cada vez que se mencionan esos desdichados logros, culpan al mensajero, se envuelven en la bandera o maldicen un pasado cada día más lejano (en el que, por otra parte, ellos tuvieron alguna participación).

Frente a este panorama de devastación, haría falta producir un drástico cambio de dirección. Trabajar para la reinserción internacional de la Argentina, fortalecer la relación con Brasil, trabajar para la consolidación del Mercosur; resolver rápidamente, mediante el diálogo y la negociación, los problemas creados con Uruguay; restablecer la asociación con Chile, garantizando el abastecimiento de gas; reanudar los vínculos estratégicos con Estados Unidos y los demás países del mundo desarrollado, y realizar una fuerte apertura económica y comercial hacia China y los demás países del continente asiático. Hay que terminar para siempre con la difamación permanente contra los adversarios políticos y con el ataque sistemático a las instituciones fundamentales y fundacionales de la Nación, como son la Iglesia Católica y las Fuerzas Armadas. Y hay que liberar de una buena vez a la Argentina de la enfermiza dependencia de los petrodólares y los delirios de Chávez.

Inquisición en el INDEC no cede, se acrecienta

Inquisición en el INDEC no cede, se acrecienta

Por: Agustín A. Monteverde

Ámbito Financiero

«El INDEC admitió que hay más inflación.» Palabra más, palabra menos, con estos términos fue que algunos saludaron el anuncio oficial sobre la marcha de los precios durante noviembre. Es que, habiendo extendido el gobierno su política de congelamiento de los precios a los índices, el número cantado debía ser «menor o a lo sumo igual» al del mismo mes de 2006 -que también fue manipulado, aunque con otro método-. Festejaban entonces que se informara 0,9% cuando aquella consigna le ponía tope en 0,7%. ¿Está justificada la algarabía? Por nuestra parte, mantenemos nuestra apreciación inicial de una suba de 26% en los precios para el corriente año. Sin embargo, la inflación -en su versión oficial- acumuló en los primeros once meses apenas 7,5%, un tercio de lo que indican tanto nuestras mediciones como lo que informan entes estadísticos independientes, como el mendocino y el puntano. Está claro pues que muy poco resuelve aquel 0,2% adicional frente a los mil quinientos puntos básicos (15%) de retraso, cuando aún falta ingresar diciembre, el mes de estacionalidad más gravosa en términos inflacionarios. Mientras algunos alimentos como el pan, la harina y la papa han trepado 30% en esta segunda mitad del año, según el gobierno la canasta básica alimentaria aumentó en ese mismo lapso 2,8% (llegando al colmo de bajar 1,3% el último mes).

Son varias las direcciones de estadísticas provinciales que validan hoy una inflación anual en torno a 26%. La Pampa informó en octubre un alza de 26,6% interanual; Misiones, de 26,7%; Tierra del Fuego, de 26,4%, y Chubut, de 27,8%.

Para tranquilidad del Inquisidor de precios, estas provincias no forman parte del índice minorista nacional. Pero sí alarmados por la díscola actitud no sólo de San Luis, sino de la vicepresidencial Mendoza, ya encontraron un sencillo antídoto para evitar nuevos desaguisados: dejar de elaborar el indicador nacional. Todo un avance en la lucha contra la inflación. Un país en serio.

Es que el gobierno kirchnerista, en una primera etapa, decidió reemplazar el control de la inflación por el control del índice de inflación. Y no nos referimos aquí al ingreso de datos apócrifos o su digitación; hablamos de la manipulación del índice mediante el control de precios sobre los productos que integran esa canasta por vía del método de la sugerencia y la coacción explícita. Ocultamiento de síntomas sin atacar las causas: bolsas de hielo para la fiebre.

Pero mucho más preocupante fue la etapa siguiente, en la cual el autoritarismo de los controles de precios fue superado por la práctica francamente despótica de controlar la información que consumen los votantes, convirtiendo el combate a la inflación en un incipiente ejercicio de control social.

La insoportable levedad del CER. Es así que hoy no sólo los índices de inflación, sino toda la información generada por el INDEC ha perdido verosimilitud y utilidad para la toma de decisiones: actividad, ventas minoristas, pobreza e indigencia, empleo, consumo y producción de servicios públicos son algunos de los indicadores en los que se han detectado groseras manipulaciones y desvíos «metodológicos».

Ciñéndonos exclusivamente a la información estadística (la falta de transparencia alcanza a otras áreas, como la gestión fiscal y monetaria), la Dirección de Cuentas Nacionales -a donde también llegó el Inquisidor- ha dejado, asimismo, de ser fiable.

Hemos quedado sin termómetro ni instrumentos para conocer el estado del paciente; la provisión de datos económicos fiables es otra área propia del Estado y en la que éste cede su lugar a los privados.

No hay esperanzas de que en el segundo mandato kirchnerista se termine con el falseamiento estadístico. La presidente Kirchner ha defendido la intervención en el INDEC.

La publicitada adopción de una nueva metodología, con elementos del sistema español y del estadounidense, está encaminada a ocultar y disimular previsibles reacomodamientos de precios para los próximos meses. La modificación más evidente en ese sentido sería el reemplazo por sustitutos de aquellos productos que registren subas significativas. También se podrán tomar listas de precios enviadas por las empresas o cámaras en lugar de efectuar relevamientos de campo (como ya ocurrió con el turismo, donde fuertes subas fueron trocadas por fantasiosas caídas de precios y tarifas).

La nueva canasta del índice se basará en los resultados de la última encuesta de gasto de hogares, lo que servirá para reducir la incidencia de los servicios, donde se esperan las mayores recuperaciones relativas. Del sistema estadounidense quieren tomar la medición de la inflación núcleo, que no computa alimentos ni energía. Todo vale en la versión K del combate a la inflación.

# Contracara

Es que no es sólo una cuestión de imagen. También está en juego la caja, verdadera espina dorsal del poder kirchnerista. Es que con cada punto de inflación que se oculta se ahorran casi u$s 600 millones de ajustes a aplicar sobre la deuda indexada por CER (entelequia elaborada para evitar hablar de indexación por inflación). A ello hay que sumar los ajustes e intereses que deberían aplicarse en el tiempo sobre ese mayor capital ajustado. Jugoso rendimiento para el gobierno el de la digitación de la inflación, aunque ello signifique una nueva quita a los futuros jubilados, que fueron forzados por el mismo presidente Kirchner a recibir esos títulos en el momento de la reestructuración de la deuda.

Todo sirve. La subestimación de la inflación tiene como contracara -no menos beneficiosa políticamente- la sobreestimación del crecimiento económico. Es que el crecimiento se mide a través del PBI a precios constantes. Y para ello, al PBI a precios corrientes se le aplica como deflactor de algunos componentes la inflación minorista y mayorista. Si el deflactor es pequeño, el resultado -el PBI- es mayor. He aquí un buen motivo para comprar cupones ajustables por PBI y vender bonos ajustables por CER.

Vale aquí señalar que diferentes señales -entre ellas, la recaudación del IVA en los últimos tres meses- sugieren cierta desaceleración en la actividad. Recientes sucesos, como los cambios retroactivos en regímenes tributarios, el incremento en la presión impositiva y previsional, y reiterados fracasos de las licitaciones para ampliar la oferta energética hacen pensar que los indicadores de crecimiento durante el segundo mandato conyugal estarán compuestos cada vez más por inflación oculta y menos por actividad genuina.

Pero si queremos una solución pronta que resguarde nuestro derecho a la información, poco cabe esperar de la Justicia argentina. El juzgado de Canicoba Corral, tan expedito en otros casos, tiene desde hace meses la causa. No contento con demorar estratégicamente el trámite para después de las elecciones, se preocupó por adelantar off the record a los medios su opinión de que «no constituiría delito» la tergiversación estadística. Para ello argumentó que la metodología no está regulada por ley y que no habría tergiversación «si tomaron precios acordados u otras fuentes». Es decir, si el índice queda reducido a un mero promedio de listas de precios autorizados por el gobierno, pero no vigentes en el mercado, para el magistrado no habrá falsificación estadística.

Para cubrir con un manto de transparencia su actuación, el juez ordenó reprocesar los índices. Lo curioso es que optó por encargar esa tarea a la Policía Federal, que, más allá de su carencia de expertise en la elaboración de estadísticas económicas, está directamente subordinada al Ejecutivo, responsable precisamente de subestimar la suba de precios.

Los técnicos del INDEC que prestaron declaración testimonial contra el secretario de Comercio fueron, en tanto, desplazados de sus cargos; el fiscal de Investigaciones Administrativas responsabilizó al juez por no haberles brindado la debida protección.

Showdown at Fort Tiuna

Showdown at Fort Tiuna
By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY
December 10, 2007
WSJ

Americas columnist Mary Anastasia O'Grady reports on the continuing impact of Venezuela's rejection of dictatorship.


There is only one thing more amazing than Hugo Chávez's defeat last week in a referendum designed to give him dictatorial powers. That is the suggestion, now being peddled by some members of the foreign press, that by accepting the loss the Venezuelan president has proven his democratic bona fides.

This is a preposterous claim, and no one is doing a better job of disproving it than Mr. Chávez himself. In the week since the vote, he has done nothing to conceal his appetite for vengeance and his determination to satisfy it. He has twice crudely referred to the opposition victory as excrement and he has even insulted his followers, who he says were "lazy and cowardly" for not turning out in greater numbers at the polls.

As to the democratic ideal of accepting the will of the people, he will have none of it. Rather, he is pledging to find another way to push through the constitutional amendments that voters rejected.

After nine years of Chávez rule Venezuelans know their president all too well, and there was plenty of hand-wringing this past week about the potential for a Chávez crackdown in the wake of the referendum. Indeed, only a wishful thinker could have bought into the president's conciliatory act in the early morning hours of Monday, when he calmly congratulated the "No" campaign. Feigning acquiescence in the face of defeat is classic Chávez and dates back to at least 1992, when he led a coup d'état and failed. At that time he used the same phrase -- "for now" -- as he did last week when speaking before a national television audience about his defeat. In both cases his message was the same: He had lost a battle but not his insatiable thirst for power.

This gives Venezuelans reason to be fearful. But the events that transpired behind the scenes on the night of the referendum have leaked into the public arena. And now there are grounds for hope too. As it turns out, Mr. Chávez is neither as popular nor as powerful as his friends in the foreign press have made him out to be.

Venezuela's National Electoral Council (CNE) was supposed to issue a preliminary report about two or three hours after the polls closed at 4 p.m. a week ago Sunday. By 10 p.m. there was still no news and the public was growing agitated. Around 12:30 a.m. Caracas time I inquired from New York about the delay. One source close to the tallying process told me that Mr. Chávez's "Sí" campaign had lost but that he was refusing to concede. Interestingly enough, according to Caracas-based sources, he was arguing with the military at its headquarters at nearby Fort Tiuna. Finally, just before 1:15 a.m. the CNE announced that the "No" vote had won.

Venezuelans of course wanted to know why the announcement had taken so long, and apparently there were those in the military who wanted to tell. On Tuesday, Hernán Lugo-Galicia, a writer for the Venezuelan daily El Nacional, published a chronicle of the long night. And while his piece relies on unnamed military sources inside the fort, its account of the president's behavior is consistent with other reports and with the failure of the CNE to announce the results in a timely fashion as it promised.

Mr. Chávez denies that the military pressured him into accepting defeat. But he has not denied that he went to Fort Tiuna and met with the high military command. Mr. Lugo-Galicia reports that the president told the officers that until 100% of the votes were counted he would not recognize his defeat.

"Tension is growing," Mr. Lugo-Galicia writes of that moment. The fort "is ordered closed and soldiers confined to their barracks. A general stands up, and after expressing respect for the commander in chief, warns that the Armed Forces will not go out to repress the population." If tallying the votes were to take four days, the general warns, there would be mayhem and "this country will not bear such days of agitation."

Mr. Chávez seems to have been surprised by the vote. Mr. Lugo-Galicia reports that he was "irate," and launched recriminations against his closest confidants saying, "they lied to me, they deceived me."

Yet there was not much he could do to reverse the results. As was expected, retired Gen. Raúl Baduel, who had publicly called the government's effort to pass the amendments a "coup against democracy" seems to have played an influential role in persuading the president to accept his defeat.

According to Mr. Lugo-Galicia, military officials close to Gen. Baduel tried to make Mr. Chávez understand that it was useless "to prolong the agony." The chronicle continues: The president "only listens and says nothing. Finally he gets up and withdraws to his private office within the military installation. He remains there a long time. No one knew what would happen." What happened, it seems, was that Mr. Chávez was thwarted by the university students.

In a 2004 recall referendum against the president, the paper ballots were never audited against voting machine totals. This time the students joined the opposition, fanned out across the country to witness the vote, and promised that they would demand a full auditing of the paper ballots if there was suspected hanky-panky. This, together with Mr. Chávez's drop in popularity, made it difficult to rig the final outcome.

In the end, while Mr. Chávez did not ignore the vote, it wasn't because he didn't want to. Rather, he calculated that giving in, when all the evidence was against him, was safer than facing an almost sure uprising from the population, which the military had already said it would not put down.

Mr. Chávez may have had some help in reaching that decision from his aging mentor, Fidel Castro. The Miami Herald reported on Friday that when he went to his office at the military headquarters, he phoned the Cuban dictator for advice. If so, it would be routine Chávez behavior. In 2002, when he was briefly removed from power, he was also coached by telephone from Havana. After that he briefly expressed contrition for his bullying ways and then resumed them. There is a pattern of behavior here and it's not that of democrat.

Agoniza dólar alto

Agoniza dólar alto

Por: Guillermo Laborda

Ámbito Financiero

Mala noticia para la gestión de Cristina de Kirchner: lo mejor del dólar alto ya pasó. Desde el inicio del gobierno de su marido, en 2003, la estrategia fue siempre evitar el traspaso a precios de la devaluación. O demorar ese ajuste al máximo. Al decir del Nobel James Tobin (aplicado a su impuesto a todas las transacciones internacionales), es «echar arena a las ruedas de una carreta para disminuir su velocidad». Por ello es que el gobierno, primero con acuerdos de precios, luego con controles y, por último, ya interviniendo el INDEC, intentó detener ese inevitable proceso. De la arena se pasó directamente a tirar adoquines a la rueda para frenar el proceso, como graficara otro economista.

Lo concreto es que Néstor Kirchner asumió con un dólar a 2,90 pesos, y lo deja 8,7% por encima, a $ 3,15. Pero en el ínterin los precios minoristas crecieron 50% ( considerando una inflación de 15% en 2007). ¿Cuánto más queda por delante? Hay quienes dicen que el dólar alto ya murió. La inflación se lo devoró. Otros, destacan que le quedan 24 meses de vida, considerando que los precios en ese período aumentarán 40%.

Pero éste no es el caso si se toma el tipo de cambio multilateral que sigue muy depreciado. Con el peso atado al dólar, y el derrumbe de la moneda norteamericana contra el euro, yen, real, por ejemplo, la situación es bien distinta. Considerando una canasta de monedas, el tipo de cambio estaría en 1,90 peso tomando como referencia el valor a diciembre de 2001. Muy lejos aún del 1 a 1. Aquí Cristina de Kirchner tiene mucho más oxígeno para «el modelo productivo», pero claro que la inflación en la Argentina sigue su propia dinámica mientras que del otro lado, es altamente improbable que se repita otra debacle del dólar en el mercado internacional de cambios. De lo que no hay dudas es que, el gobierno no tiene herramientas ni más adoquines a mano. Si decidiera subir el tipo de cambio nominal, como ya propone el titular de la UIA Carlos Lascurain, habrá traslado a precios y mucho más rápido del observado en los últimos meses. Ayer por lo pronto siguió el ingreso de divisas al país ya sea por las AFJP obligadas a repatriar fondos, de los exportadores, o de quienes apuestan a títulos argentinos. El Banco Central vuelve a tener el problema de cómo sostener la divisa sin generar inflación.

La radiografía del tipo de cambio tiene otros matices según la actividad. Tomando el de la industria o el del agro (incluyendo retenciones), se estaría en $ 1,15. Pero el campo igual muestra utilidad porque los precios de los commodities siguieron subiendo y sólo en la gestión de Néstor Kirchner lo hicieron 110%. Como el precio del Big Mac en diferentes países que elabora The Economist, hay otros indicadores, más caseros, para intentar medir cuán alto está el dólar en la Argentina. Hay quienes ven señales de atraso cambiario con la llegada de bandas de rock y hasta con el auge de las importadas Pringles ( papas fritas) en maxiquioscos. Más allá de esta «sensación térmica» cambiaria, las importaciones están subiendo consistentemente aunque deteriorando levemente por ahora la balanza comercial. Esto porque subieron también los precios de las exportaciones argentinas. Pero los gemelos (los superávit fiscal y comercial) por ahora dan la sensación de haber resucitado tras haber estado, por lo menos uno de ellos, el fiscal, al borde de la desaparición previo a las elecciones.

Los jubilados, mentiras y videos

Los jubilados, mentiras y videos

Por: Enrique Szewach

Ámbito Financiero

Esta semana, en un fallo controvertido, la Corte Suprema decidió un mecanismo de ajuste automático de los haberes que perciben los jubilados que cobran más de la mínima y cuyos ingresos cayeron en términos reales en los últimos años. En rigor de verdad, sólo los haberes de uno de ellos. Y ordena también al Congreso y al Ejecutivo solucionar, mediante un procedimiento general y estable, este problema.

(Dicho sea de paso y en una «venganza» infantil, la presidente electa le recordó a la sociedad que los mismos jueces que se preocupan por el haber de los jubilados no pagan el Impuesto a las Ganancias por una acordada de esta misma Corte Suprema del año pasado, que ratificó fallos anteriores.)

A primera vista, el índice de ajuste elegido suena razonable. Si las jubilaciones que paga el Estado son parte de un sistema de reparto que distribuye entre los jubilados los aportes que realizan los trabajadores y empleadores de hoy y estos aportes evolucionan proporcionalmente al salario, lo lógico es ajustar el reparto a la evolución de los salarios en blanco. Pero esto sería así, si 100% de las jubilaciones del Estado se «fondearan» en los aportes mencionados.

# Déficit

La realidad es que esos aportes apenas cubren, en un año récord como el actual, 45%-50% de los gastos de la ANSeS. Dicho en criollo básico, ¡la ANSeS tiene un déficit de 50% de las jubilaciones que paga! ¿Pero cómo, no dicen que tiene superávit y que incluso le presta a 28 años al Estado nacional para que haga frente a sus propios compromisos? Se preguntará usted, amable lector, con justa razón.

Efectivamente, tiene superávit porque ese «bache» de los aportes, hace años que se cubre con el 15% de los ingresos impositivos que deberían ir a la Coparticipación Federal, con la recaudación del Impuesto a los Bienes Personales, con parte del Impuesto a los Combustibles. Y algún otro impuesto que ahora no recuerdo. Dicho de otra manera, como los aportes no alcanzaban, lentamente le fuimos pasando a la ANSeS recursos de otras fuentes.

Claro, como la economía está creciendo fuerte y la inflación es alta, la recaudación impositiva se incrementa a un ritmo superior a 30% anual. De manera que, ahora, a la ANSeS «le sobran» fondos. ¡Pero le sobran fondos que no le pertenecen al sistema! Y esto es lo más grave de esta historia, porque de tanto mentirnos en los números, de la ANSeS, del INDEC, del escrutinio electoral, etc., etc., ya hemos perdido perspectiva respecto de cuál es la verdad y cuál es la mentira y se toman decisiones, se arrogan representatividades y se dictan fallos en función de esas mentiras.

El sistema de reparto está condenado, por la demografía, y los favorables cambios en las expectativas de vida de la población, a absorber cada vez más recursos de otras fuentes o a pagar cada vez menos. Una parte del problema se intentó resolver con la reforma previsional del 94. Se pretendía asociar el grueso de las jubilaciones a los ahorros de los trabajadores e ir reduciendo lentamente los recursos públicos hasta concentrarlos, exclusivamente, en los sectores de menores ingresos y menor capacidad de ahorro. Pero lo paradójico de esta historia es que en enero de este año, cuando ya estaba vigente la orden de la Corte Suprema de agosto del año pasado para que se «solucionara» el problema de las jubilaciones licuadas, los honorables miembros del Congreso de la Nación, a pedido del Poder Ejecutivo, en un debate que duró apenas dos semanas, sancionaron una contrarreforma previsional, que no sólo no contempló lo planteado por la Corte, sino que, mejorando algo los ingresos actuales, agravó para adelante el problema del sistema de reparto, ya empeorado con una generosa moratoria que amplió en más de un millón cuatrocientos mil personas el número de beneficiarios del régimen.

Si ahora, además, se inventa un esquema de «ajuste automático» de las jubilaciones, independiente de la evolución de la totalidad de los recursos, en poco tiempo se volverá a reunir el Congreso, a instancias del Poder Ejecutivo, para votar una recontracontrarreforma previsional.

# Problema similar

Dicho sea de paso, el problema del «ajuste automático» de la seguridad social es global. Si se me permite una digresión que viene a cuento, en la década del 90, enfrentado a un problema similar, el gobierno del presidente Clinton decidió, para bajar el ajuste automático de las jubilaciones norteamericanas (el pago estatal de dichas jubilaciones equivale a dos veces y media el PBI argentino) ¡cambiar la forma de medir el IPC! Efectivamente, inventaron el ahora « famoso» en la Argentina Indice de Productos Sustitutos, que contempla que cuando sube el precio de algún producto, la gente no lo consume, sino que busca un sustituto más barato, y ése es el precio que se debe computar.

Con este cambio «metodológico», el gobierno de Estados Unidos se «ahorra», dicen los que saben, más de u$s 150.000 millones al año en su presupuesto. Obviamente, la Reserva Federal no toma en cuenta este índice para decidir su política antiinflacionaria. Y no lo toma en cuenta porque uno de los inventores de este índice trucho fue Alan Greenspan. Como reza el viejo dicho: «Haz lo que yo digo, pero no lo que yo hago». Vuelvo entonces a la Argentina.

El sistema presupuestario argentino, y no sólo por la cuestión de los jubilados, se ha convertido en una gran mentira que sólo soluciona el fuerte crecimiento económico, por un lado, o una gran inflación que permite, al menos por un tiempo, licuar a los perceptores de gasto menos combativos o que menos pueden generar problemas en la actividad económica, por el otro. «O ambas asimetrías a la vez.» Me parece, humildemente, que va siendo hora de buscar metodologías más permanentes y estables, con reformas profundas y sustentables, con fondos anticíclicos en serio, con debates abiertos y participativos, y con menos mentiras, estafas o videos para subir los costos laborales y, de paso, la recaudación previsional y sindical.

Let's Not Panic and Ruin the World

By BRIAN S. WESBURY
December 7, 2007

You can't move these days without bumping into an economic pessimist. "Recession in America looks increasingly likely," said the Economist magazine on Nov. 17. Two days later, in the International Herald Tribune, Nobel Prize winner Paul A. Samuelson brought up the specter of the Great Depression. And then, on Nov. 26, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers wrote in the Financial Times that, "the odds now favor a recession that slows growth significantly on a global basis."

The pressure on policy makers to do something is intense. Not only is there a desire to see the government get even more involved in the housing loan market -- witness the Bush administration's plan to freeze starter rates -- there is also tremendous pressure on the Fed to make another large 50 basis-point rate cut in attempt to alleviate credit-market problems.


This desire for government intervention to fix problems that grown adults have created for themselves is dangerous. Constantly counting on the government to save the economy undermines confidence in free markets, conditions people to believe they don't have to live with bad decisions, and creates a willingness to take imprudent risk. Actions to stabilize the economy in the short term can destabilize it in the longer term, and set the stage for even more intervention to fix the new problems at a later date.

Moreover, all this pessimism makes serious economic problems less likely. If it really happens, a recession in the next year could be the most anticipated ever. That fact alone makes it improbable. Recessions usually surprise the consensus. When a recession is expected, the odds of rapidly rising inventories, excessive investment, or a surprise drop in new orders are reduced.

In the past, when manufacturing was a larger share of the economy and inventory control was less exact, recessions often began abruptly, sometimes on the heels of very strong growth. Today, with services a larger share of the economy, and technology speeding up information flow, the economy tends to glide more gently into recession. Given this, all the doom and gloom seems unnecessary.

Real GDP in the U.S. grew 4.9% at an annual rate in the third quarter, and has averaged 4.4% in the past two quarters. While real growth in the current quarter will slow (our forecast is 1.5% to 2.0%), this is more of a payback for the past two quarters of strong growth than it is a new direction for the economy. Average annualized growth in real GDP from March to December will be roughly 3.5%.

In addition, nominal GDP, or total spending, has accelerated from a 3.6% annual growth rate in the second half of 2006 to 6.2% in the past two quarters. This is an excellent signal that Fed policy is still accommodating. When the Fed is tight, the growth rate of nominal GDP, or aggregate demand, does not accelerate.

Despite all of this, many believe that credit-markets problems have increased economic risk dramatically. Mr. Summers argues that "levels of the federal-funds rate that were neutral when the financial system was working normally are quite contractionary today." "Speculative markets will not stabilize themselves," wrote Paul Samuelson. For Messrs. Summers and Samuelson, only Fed action can save the world.

But this argument confuses money and credit. It is increases in the money supply that drive total spending (or aggregate demand), not increases in credit. Many people confuse the idea of a "money multiplier" with money creation. They believe banks can create money. This is not true: The Fed is the only entity in the world that creates new dollars.

In a fractional reserve banking system, the money multiplier works as banks lend out part of their deposits and keep some in reserve. Then the next bank, which receives deposits as a result of the first bank's loan, lends out part of the money again. This is repeated over and over so that every dollar of the monetary base is "multiplied" into many more dollars of lending or credit.

Despite problems at many major financial institutions, this process is not breaking down. The Fed is not behind the curve. When the Fed buys bonds to inject new liquidity into the banking system, that money doesn't go into a black hole. Even if a bank has had its capital eroded by large write-downs, it must invest the new cash. Some banks are putting the cash right back into Treasury bonds, which is one reason Treasury yields are so low. Banks need less capital to hold Treasury bonds than they need to hold loans to the private sector.

But, contrary to popular belief, when a bank buys Treasuries, the money mechanism does not stop. For every debit there must be a credit, and this continues endlessly. In fact, it may be that banks are buying those Treasury bonds from foreign holders, say the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, which just made a huge investment in Citibank. In this case, the money came right back into the U.S. banking system.

There are an infinite number of paths that the monetary transmission mechanism can take. The only time it breaks down is when investors expect deflation, as in the Great Depression. This is when hording cash makes sense. But this is not the case today. Consumer prices are up 3.5% versus last year. As a result, as long as the Fed is accommodative, money will find its way into the financial system and the multiplier process will continue.

This does not require massive money center banks such as Citibank. It can happen through any well-capitalized institution. For example, tens of thousands of community and regional banks made few or no subprime loans and have large amounts of excess capital. They are in fantastic shape. However, because the cost of funds for banks does not fall quickly, and adjustable rate loans reset immediately, a rate cut can hurt these banks' earnings. In addition, with uncertainty about the economy elevated, forcing banks to lend at lower rates doesn't make sense. Widening spreads between Treasury and private-sector bond yields are a signal that the federal-funds rate is too low, not too high. This helps explain why many regional Federal Reserve Bank presidents sound hawkish.

Hedge funds, private equity firms and nonfinancial corporations also have trillions in cash that is already being put to work. Citadel, a hedge fund, bought at-risk loan pools from E*Trade, and increased its investment stake by $2.5 billion. The French parent of CIFG Services Inc., a major bond insurer, injected $1.5 billion of new capital to shore up its balance sheet. Bank of America invested in Countrywide and HSBC brought its high-risk loans back onto its balance sheet.

The only real problem is that these "fixes" are not cheap. Citibank is paying 11% to Abu Dhabi. E*Trade reportedly sold its problem loans to Citadel for 27 cents on the dollar, a price many think is well below the true value. Institutions with cash and capital will make huge profits in this environment, while those without these two things will fight to survive. While not everyone is happy about it, the market is healing itself.

Some say that we can't risk a spillover of credit problems into the economy as a whole, but that ignores two things. First, outside of housing-related businesses and financial institutions that invested in subprime securities, the economy is in good shape. Despite many months of fearful forecasts and an erosion in consumer confidence, the economy remains resilient. Early holiday shopping data have been strong, car and truck sales rose in November and manufacturing continues to expand.

Second, more Fed rate cuts risk a weaker dollar, rising inflationary pressures and a new round of lax lending standards. Don't forget that similar arguments were used between 2001 and 2004 to justify a 1% federal-funds rate that was designed to ward off the significant and serious risk of deflation. That policy helped create the subprime lending crisis in the first place.

To top it off, as long as the Fed allows the market to believe more rate cuts are coming, the greater the incentive to put off business activity. An investor who wants to buy distressed property or debt, a potential home buyer, or a hedge fund looking to make a leveraged investment may choose to wait for lower interest rates before taking action. This delays the self-healing process of the marketplace.

All of this argues for a much more laissez-faire approach. Attempting to offset the problems caused by a few (i.e., a bailout), actually creates larger risks for the economy as a whole. The very act of saving the world puts it at greater risk.

Mr. Wesbury is chief economist for First Trust Portfolios, L.P.

Claremont, California - Noviembre 2007

The Science of Gore's Nobel

December 5, 2007 - WSJ
By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR.

The Nobel Committee might as well have called it Al Gore's Inner Peace Prize, given the way it seems designed to help him disown his lifelong ambition to become president in favor of a higher calling, as savior of a planet.


The media will be tempted to blur the fact that his medal, which Mr. Gore will collect on Monday in Oslo, isn't for "science." In fact, a Nobel has never been awarded for the science of global warming. Even Svante Arrhenius, who first described the "greenhouse" effect, won his for something else in 1903. Yet now one has been awarded for promoting belief in manmade global warming as a crisis.

How this honor has befallen the former Veep could perhaps be explained by another Nobel, awarded in 2002 to Daniel Kahneman for work he and the late Amos Tversky did on "availability bias," roughly the human propensity to judge the validity of a proposition by how easily it comes to mind.

Their insight has been fruitful and multiplied: "Availability cascade" has been coined for the way a proposition can become irresistible simply by the media repeating it; "informational cascade" for the tendency to replace our beliefs with the crowd's beliefs; and "reputational cascade" for the rational incentive to do so.

Mr. Gore clearly understands the game he's playing, judging by his resort to such nondispositive arguments as: "The people who dispute the international consensus on global warming are in the same category now with the people who think the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona."

Here's exactly the problem that availability cascades pose: What if the heads being counted to certify an alleged "consensus" arrived at their positions by counting heads?

It may seem strange that scientists would participate in such a phenomenon. It shouldn't. Scientists are human; they do not wait for proof; many devote their professional lives to seeking evidence for hypotheses (especially well-funded hypotheses) they've chosen to believe.

Less surprising is the readiness of many prominent journalists to embrace the role of enforcer of an orthodoxy simply because it is the orthodoxy. For them, a consensus apparently suffices as proof of itself.

With politicians and lobbyists, of course, you are dealing with sophisticated people versed in the ways of public opinion whose very prosperity depends on positioning themselves via such cascades. Their reactions tend to be, for that reason, on a higher intellectual level.

Take John Dingell. He told an environmental publication last year that the "world . . . is great at having consensuses that are in great error." Yet he turned around a few months later and introduced a sweeping carbon tax bill, which would confront Congress more frontally than Congress cares to be confronted with a rational approach to climate change if Congress really believes human activity is responsible.

Mr. Dingell is no fool. Is he merely trying to embarrass those who offer fake cures for climate change at the expense of out-of-favor industries such as Mr. Dingell's beloved Detroit?

Take Vinod Khosla, a venture capitalist working with Kleiner Perkins, a firm Mr. Gore joined last month to promote alternative energy investments. Mr. Khosla told a recent Senate hearing: "One does not need to believe in climate change to support climate change legislation. . . . Many executives would prefer to deal with known legislation even if unwarranted."

Mr. Khosla is no fool either. His argument is that the cascade itself is a reason that politicians can gain comfort by getting aboard his agenda.

Now let's suppose a most improbable, rhapsodic lobbying success for Mr. Gore, Mr. Khosla and folks on their side of the table -- say, a government mandate to replace half the gasoline consumed in the U.S. with a carbon-neutral alternative. This would represent a monumental, $400 billion-a-year business opportunity for the green energy lobby. The impact on global carbon emissions? Four percent -- less than China's predicted emissions growth over the next three or four years.

Don't doubt that this is precisely the chasm that keeps Mr. Gore from running for president. He could neither win the office nor govern on the basis of imposing the kinds of costs supposedly necessary to deal with an impending "climate crisis." Yet his credibility would become laughable if he failed to insist on such costs. How much more practical, then, to cash in on the crowd-pleasing role of angry prophet, without having to take responsibility for policies that the public will eventually discover to be fraudulent.

Public opinion cascades are powerful but also fragile -- liable to be overturned in an instant when new information comes along. The current age of global warming politics will certainly end with a whimper once a few consecutive years of cooling are recorded. Why should we expect such cooling? Because the forces that caused warming and cooling in the past, before the advent of industrial civilization, are still at work.

No, this wouldn't prove or disprove a human role in warming, only that climate is variable and subject to complicated influences. But it would also eliminate the large incentive for politicians to traffic in doom-laden predictions -- because such predictions would no longer command media assent and would cease to function as levers to redistribute resources.

Mr. Gore would have to find a new job.

Tiempo de eclipse del jacobinismo caribeño

Tiempo de eclipse del jacobinismo caribeño

Por: Andrés Cisneros (*)
Ámbito Financiero

El Proyecto Bolivariano ya estaba perdido el día mismo en que Chávez convocó a estas votaciones: todo el mundo sabía que iban a resultar parejas y uno no puede ni soñar en introducir cambios de semejante importancia si no cuenta con mayorías abrumadoras.

Cuando el fin de la Guerra Fría descongeló la vida política de todo el planeta, América latina resultó inmediatamente sacudida por una crisis terminal de sus sistemas de partidos, como expresión del fracaso histórico de sus clases políticas para conducir a sus países, al mismo tiempo, a la modernidad y la justicia.

# División

Los vacíos que produjo ese fenómeno alentaron la aparición de nuevos liderazgos personales -ya casi no partidarios-, en los que la gente depositó sus renovadas esperanzas. Afuera, según se viera, la globalización sonaba como una enorme oportunidad o como la más moderna reencarnación de todos los males.

El referendo del domingo encontró a América del Sur claramente dividida en dos tipos de conducciones. Una, la de Cardoso, Lula, Lagos, Sanguinetti, Vázquez, Uribe, Alan García, Alfonsín o Menem. Otra, la de Fidel Castro, Evo Morales, Ollanta Humala, Correa o Noriega. Los primeros procuran consolidar la constitución y las instituciones republicanas, mejoras sociales estructurales y un desarrollo conectado con el mundo. Los segundos producen distribucionismos paternalistas, reforman la constitución y las instituciones en procura de aumentar su poder personal, a veces hasta el paroxismo, persiguen el continuismo en el poder y se distancian con medio mundo, especialmente de sus vecinos, generando un aislamiento funcional a su entero proyecto personal.

Este contraste no representa necesariamente el fin de Chávez. Sí representa el final de un período de jacobinismo caribeño protosocialista que procuraba cambios tan radicales que la opinión pública venezolana, que en otros temas lo apoyaba masivamente, le aplicó un parate sonoro como la cachetada de Gilda: comparado con la última elección, perdió 11% de sus votos.

# Giro

A partir del domingo ya se sabe que por lo menos la mitad de los venezolanos no quieren el país que les proponía Chávez. ¿Querrán, en cambio, al otro modelo, el de Lula, Lagos o Sanguinetti? Y si así fuera, ¿estará Chávez en condiciones o en voluntad de pilotear semejante giro? Le quedan cinco años de mandato. Nadie puede afirmar hoy hacia dónde rumbeará, pero después del domingo lo único cierto es que ya no puede continuar con la zarzuela bolivariana original: esas naves están quemadas. El 14 de diciembre, Evo Morales puede afrontar el mismo panorama.

Los personajes a observar son el general Raúl Baduel y los nuevos líderes surgidos de esta contienda electoral, muchos provenientes de las universidades y la prensa, varios de ellos militantes originarios del chavismo. Nadie imagina que sobrevendrá el regreso de los políticos tradicionales hoy desacreditados. Como toda América latina, Venezuela necesita rechazar a los delirantes tanto como encontrar una clase política nueva que en muchas latitudes todavía está en veremos. Es hora de definiciones en todo el continente. En la Argentina, por ejemplo, acaban de confirmar al canciller.