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Gypsy Jan
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It's Time to Ditch the Mexican Stereotypes
"I think that everyone will find this article by Richard Fisher, President and CEO of the Federal Reserve, Dallas, as informative and enlightening."
"On the fiscal front, Mexico ran a budget deficit of 2.5 per cent of gross domestic product in 2011, compared with 8.6 per cent for the US. National
debt in Mexico is stable at 27 per cent of GDP, while in the US it is 98 per cent and rising. There is a lesson for America here: Mexico passed a
balanced budget rule in 2006, which forced its government to hew to fiscal discipline.
Trade has boomed, too, affirming once again the importance of international agreements on tariffs. Since joining the General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade in 1986, and ratifying the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, average tariffs in Mexico fell from 27 per cent in 1982 to 1.3 per cent
in 2001, and the volume and composition of trade changed significantly. In 1980, trade as a percentage of GDP was only 17.5 per cent. Today exports
and imports represent 61 per cent of economic output. And about 80 per cent of Mexico's exports are now manufactured goods.
Certainly, Mexico still has many problems. Deregulation has met with mixed results. Declining crude oil production threatens the government's ability
to fund itself. Low high-school graduation rates contribute to low labor productivity and potentially greater social instability. Continuing violence
directly harms businesses and tests investor resolve, resulting in a capital and brain drain.
For many Americans, Mexico is seen through the lens of immigration or drug trafficking. This is a mistake: it is outperforming the US in many economic
areas and provides several important lessons for Washington policy makers that seem unable to make a start on ever more urgent reforms. Mexico has a
sound macroeconomic footing and is addressing the microeconomic problems still holding it back.
The same cannot be said for the US. Mexico recovered rapidly from the global financial crisis. Real gross domestic product grew 5.5 per cent in 2010
and 3.9 per cent in 2011 after plummeting 6.2 per cent in 2009. Economic output was back to its peak pre-recession level after 12 quarters, bettering
the US by nearly a year. Moreover, Mexico's industrial
Still, we should discard old stereotypes of Mexico and give credit to the country's fiscal and monetary authorities. The economic performance during
and after the global financial crisis should allay the fears of those who doubted Mexico's capability to reform.
The government has implemented greater fiscal discipline than the US, without hindering economic recovery. By comparison, US policy makers appear
incapable of fiscal reform. They have not created a budget that restores confidence, and encourages investment, job creation and risk-taking, while
also controlling long-term deficits and unfunded liabilities.
The US can also learn from Mexico on monetary matters. By constitutional amendment, Banco de Mexico became an independent central bank in 1993. In
2001, it formally adopted inflation targeting, whereas the Federal Reserve did not announce an explicit long-term inflation target until this year.
Monetary policy reforms have had a salutary effect on the Mexican economy. Before central bank independence, Mexico's annual inflation rate averaged
43 per cent. The rate has now dropped to 4.4 per cent.
The peso is now a store of value and no longer shunned. The central bank's commitment to low inflation has led to a peso-denominated bond market and
falling interest rates. Before 1995 the Mexican yield curve ran out to 27 days. In 1995 the Mexican government began building a yield curve by issuing
notes of up to one year in maturity. In 2000, five-year notes were issued; in 2004, 20-year bonds; and in 2006, 30-year bonds. Interest rates have
fallen on each successive issue. Credit default swaps market spreads assess a greater default possibility for French sovereign debt than for Mexico's
obligations.
Mexico's macroeconomic recovery shows that gains from reform are worth the pain. For both the US and Europe there are lessons to learn. Mexico's
achievements have come through both fiscal and monetary reforms. For this, Mexicans can be proud. And other nations should be inspired."
David Thompson
Co-Founder, JaltembaBayLife.com
[Edited on 5-27-2012 by Gypsy Jan]
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow mindedness.”
—Mark Twain
\"La vida es dura, el corazon es puro, y cantamos hasta la madrugada.” (Life is hard, the heart is pure and we sing until dawn.)
—Kirsty MacColl, Mambo de la Luna
\"Alea iacta est.\"
—Julius Caesar
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Hook
Elite Nomad
Posts: 9011
Registered: 3-13-2004
Location: Sonora
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Mood: Inquisitive
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I bet if we nationalized OUR oil industry and plowed the profits into running the government, we'd have a debt ratio even lower than Mexico. Bogus
comparison, IMO. Mexico funds 40% of their government operations from Pemex.
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Cypress
Elite Nomad
Posts: 7641
Registered: 3-12-2006
Location: on the bayou
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Our oil industry is taxed to the max. The govt. makes more per gallon than the oil companies and all the govt. does is tax it. No investment, no
research, no exploration, no nothing. Just slap a tax on it. And the silly crowd blames "Big Oil" for ripping 'em off.
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DavidE
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 3814
Registered: 12-1-2003
Location: Baja California México
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Mood: 'At home we demand facts and get them. In Mexico one subsists on rumor and never demands anything.' Charles Flandrau,
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http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1374/is_n2_v55/ai_170...
A Lot To See And A Lot To Do
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J.P.
Super Nomad
Posts: 1673
Registered: 7-8-2010
Location: Punta Banda
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Mood: Easy Does It
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| Quote: | Originally posted by Cypress
Our oil industry is taxed to the max. The govt. makes more per gallon than the oil companies and all the govt. does is tax it. No investment, no
research, no exploration, no nothing. Just slap a tax on it. And the silly crowd blames "Big Oil" for ripping 'em off. |
B.S. When Skeeter and I went to school in Texas the state didnt have a School tax The tax on oil funded the Schools and Texas had the best schools
in the nation. and Gasoline was around 18cents a gallon.
[Edited on 5-27-2012 by J.P.]
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vgabndo
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 3461
Registered: 12-8-2003
Location: Mt. Shasta, CA
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Mood: Checking-off my bucket list.
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David...the 17 year old story is somehow relevant???
Undoubtedly, there are people who cannot afford to give the anchor of sanity even the slightest tug. Sam Harris
"The situation is far too dire for pessimism."
Bill Kauth
Carl Sagan said, "We are a way for the cosmos to know itself."
PEACE, LOVE AND FISH TACOS
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Pescador
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 3587
Registered: 10-17-2002
Location: Baja California Sur
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Well, it will be really interesting to see what happens in the next six years under Nieto the PRI Presidential candidate. Hopefully they will keep
headed in the right direction. They did not get hoodwinked into thinking that everyone deserved a house and change their lending strategies to
reflect the socialistic thinking that sent our market crashing down. The mexican stock exhange did not burp either and has consistently produced a
profit for the last 10 years even amid fears about another peso devaluation.
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DENNIS
Platinum Nomad
Posts: 29510
Registered: 9-2-2006
Location: Punta Banda
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Yeah....let's get rid of all those senseless stereotypes and stay with the factual, documentary illustrations that present the clear picture of
Mexico....like this:
http://images.clipartof.com/small/214246-Royalty-Free-RF-Cli...
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DavidE
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 3814
Registered: 12-1-2003
Location: Baja California México
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Mood: 'At home we demand facts and get them. In Mexico one subsists on rumor and never demands anything.' Charles Flandrau,
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WHOA! DENNIS! EASY HOSS!
That's ME in that caricatura.
Seventeen year old stories reveal the same level of unknowledge about the Mexican finance system of 2012 as in 1929 revealed the house of cards built
on margin trading on Wall Street. Take a good look at the level of trading done, daily, in the Mexican Stock Market.
My whining and complaining is totally about how the very few exalted ultra wealthy in Mexico abandon ship at the first sign of trouble and send untold
billions of dollars worth of pesos out of the country leaving the poor (and now the middle class) to take it in the shorts. After 5 decades of
watching this I am sick of it.
IMHO the most honest president Mexico has had in my lifetime is humble Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon. He actually weakened the presidency, the powers
of the chief executive. But the PRI holds a majority of states and in essence the bases of power in both houses. When they take control, things are
going to get mighty interesting.
Please keep in mind, I am merely a student of these things. Nothing more, nothing less.
A Lot To See And A Lot To Do
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MitchMan
Super Nomad
Posts: 1856
Registered: 3-9-2009
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| Quote: | Originally posted by Pescador
They did not get hoodwinked into thinking that everyone deserved a house and change their lending strategies to reflect the socialistic thinking that
sent our market crashing down. |
You need to do better research on what caused the crash in 2007/2008.
Don't blame the CRA interdiction against redlining in lending for the crisis...very naive, very illinformed. Don't drink that cool aid.
The bad loans were a direct result of lenders wantonly and deliberately failing to do proper loan underwriting in order to make more loans in a
shorter time, sell them off as fast as they could, and then use the sales proceeds to make more deliberately bad loans. The money that paid for the
loans that were bought from the originating lenders came from an inexhaustible supply of money from the offshore unregulated shadow banking system.
The mortaged back securities got AAA ratings from the unregulated rating agencies that paved the way for wild mad over trading of these securities
here and abroad. The motivation for such behavior was greed and self interest, just the opposite of anything "socialistic" in nature.
The loans reflected in the CRA addressed only conforming loans, not subprimes. Furthermore, the loans made under compliance to the CRA had a normal
delinquency rate, not the bad delinquency rates experienced with the subprimes.
The act of not doing proper loan underwriting, fraudulently granting AAA ratings, and the economically disastrous and under regulated off shore
banking together with unregualted derivatives are among the major causal factors of the near collapse of our financial structure and the Great
Recession of 2008 .... not "socialistic thinking". That statement reflects a serious lack of knowledge on even the basics of the issue and is 180
degrees from the truth. Not even close quantitatively or qualitatively.
[Edited on 5-27-2012 by MitchMan]
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desertcpl
Super Nomad
Posts: 2405
Registered: 10-26-2008
Location: yuma,az
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Well said Mitch
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DavidE
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 3814
Registered: 12-1-2003
Location: Baja California México
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Mood: 'At home we demand facts and get them. In Mexico one subsists on rumor and never demands anything.' Charles Flandrau,
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X 2
Greed versus ethics. The problem is one of regaining trust. I have never seen any time in my lengthening life, a concerted aversion to social
responsibility. Both sides of the aisle seem to focus only on themselves and their pet projects. Is not the tax burden less now than it was in the
sixties or seventies?
A Lot To See And A Lot To Do
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desertcpl
Super Nomad
Posts: 2405
Registered: 10-26-2008
Location: yuma,az
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I agree David
my car that I bought that was made in Detroit,, the speedometer goes up to 120 MPH
would I drive at that speed thru a school zone,, NO I drive
responsible and the older I get even more so
the banks and wall street acted irresponsibly. there is alot of blame to go around, but this is where it comes down to
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djh
Senior Nomad
Posts: 936
Registered: 1-2-2005
Location: Earth mostly. Loreto, N. ID, Big Island
Member Is Offline
Mood: Mellow fellow, plays a yellow cello...
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| Quote: |
Our oil industry is taxed to the max. The govt. makes more per gallon than the oil companies and all the govt. does is tax it. No investment, no
research, no exploration, no nothing. Just slap a tax on it. And the silly crowd blames "Big Oil" for ripping 'em off. |
Exxon Mobile's (do you know just how HUGE they are $?)... record shattering profits - even during the "biggesteconomicdump" in decades - are made even
more rediculous by the massive tax BREAKS they receive from the US Govt.
Big oil doesn't pay a penny of taxes on oil of course..... (But they DO receive tons of corporate welfare...) YOU AND I DO (and every other consumer)
. . . And YES, BIG OIL is ripping us off - their profits are so far over the top, it is beyond rediculous.... The devestation from the "Horizon
Deepwater" ... The Exxon Valdez... and all of the other fiascos around the globe are another shining example of socializing and diluting the
responsability for loss of life, livelihood, resource loss.
I suggest reading "A Century of War" by Engdahl.... An imperfect and incomplete history of oil in the world, but one that will revealmany of the
mysteries about "how the H-E-doublehockeysticks" we got to this point...
STOP corporate entitlement and good-ol-boy corporate welfare. THAT will be a huge step towards cutting the deficit spending that we all pretty much
agree is sinking America. but that would require taking the corrupting influence of $ out of US politics, and the US Supreme Court has done exactly
the opposite with Citizen United... Even to the point of overstepping states rights (Montana et al. current action)...
ONE of the biggest jokes in our lifetime is that we somehow live in a democratic, capitalistic system in the US... Bush's TARP bailout (and all of
the "bailouts" since) are a fine example of privatizing profits and socializing debt.
I also see MitchMan just saved me part two of my intended post.
Its all just stuff and some numbers.
A day spent sailing isn\'t deducted from one\'s life.
Peace, Love, and Music
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Pescador
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 3587
Registered: 10-17-2002
Location: Baja California Sur
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| Quote: | Originally posted by MitchMan
You need to do better research on what caused the crash in 2007/2008. Don't blame the CRA interdiction against redlining in lending for the
crisis...very naive, very illinformed. Don't drink that cool aid.
The bad loans were a direct result of lenders wantonly and deliberately failing to do proper loan underwriting in order to make more loans in a
shorter time, sell them off as fast as they could, and then use the sales proceeds to make more deliberately bad loans.
[Edited on 5-27-2012 by MitchMan] |
Talk about drinking cool-aid but somehow this seems to be MSNBC brand cool-aid. You conveniently leave out the whole part about what happened with
Freddie and Fannie. Let us not get the cart in front of the horse. Without that in place the legalized gambling over sub-prime mortgages would not
have been a possiblity.
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DavidE
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 3814
Registered: 12-1-2003
Location: Baja California México
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Mood: 'At home we demand facts and get them. In Mexico one subsists on rumor and never demands anything.' Charles Flandrau,
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Every Body wants to be a (insert one) million, billion, trillion:
aire
No matter what it takes. Nero Burns While Rome Fiddles. Burn The Furniture. Outsource. Revoke citizenship, whatever it takes...
But no one got punished in the USA, except crooks that screwed other crooks like Unka Bernie. With all of the geniuses, all of the PhD economists, and
think tanks at hand, who ran around before the fiasco yelling the Sky Was Going To Fall? They were discredited because there was too much money to be
made and Americans are far too immersed in their own cares and worries to have had time to stop and listen.
Now the hew and cry is "Screw Everyone I Come First". This only works if you are the largest hog at the trough with the longest tusks. Anger is
building in inner cities, only the most careless ignore the warning signs. The housing crash and failing job market are a breeding ground for trouble,
the kind of which you can see for fifty miles on the horizon at night.
And it was all, one hundred percent, caused by greed.
A Lot To See And A Lot To Do
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DavidE
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 3814
Registered: 12-1-2003
Location: Baja California México
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Mood: 'At home we demand facts and get them. In Mexico one subsists on rumor and never demands anything.' Charles Flandrau,
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I wonder, how many GS-15 workers it takes, how many megawatts of electricity is burned, how many billions of taxpayer dollars are collected, just to
do this...?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2150281/REVEALED-Hun...
A Lot To See And A Lot To Do
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MitchMan
Super Nomad
Posts: 1856
Registered: 3-9-2009
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| Quote: | Originally posted by Pescador
Talk about drinking cool-aid but somehow this seems to be MSNBC brand cool-aid. You conveniently leave out the whole part about what happened with
Freddie and Fannie. Let us not get the cart in front of the horse. Without that in place the legalized gambling over sub-prime mortgages would not
have been a possiblity. |
Wow, Pescador, your attempt at feeble deflection reveals a mind-blowing lack of knowledge of actual recent history.
Freddie and Fannie’s participation in sub primes came after the fact and later into the sub prime wave. The brain child of sub prime lending was
created, started, and uncontrollably pursued by private industry commercial banks and Wall Street investment banks such as Citigroup, Merrill Lynch,
Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, et al. Fannie and Freddie (F & F) only started buying sub primes after they started loosing significant market
share to sub prime loans. The type of sub prime-like loans that they bought were not nearly as toxic as the vast majority of nonconforming toxic sub
primes in existence promulgated by the private investment banks. F&F were always trailing the market with regard to sub primes, not leading it as
you would falsely have us believe.
Your statement that legalized gambling over sub-prime mortgages would not have been possible without F&F is just plain stupid. Sub primes were
the brainchild of private industry (commercial banks and investment banks) and were going full steam ahead by the time F&F got into the mix.
Also, it was the commercial lenders/originators that pressured and blackmailed F&F into easing their credit requirements for the loans that they
were willing to buy so that said lenders could sell their sub primes to F&F, not the other way around as you would falsely have us infer. It was
the growth of such unregulated private label securitization (MBS’s) that led to unstable over funding the housing market bubble. F&F weren’t
initially allowed to participate in non-conforming very risky sub prime loans. Later, they did engage significantly in a milder form of sub
prime-like loans (to a specified proportion), but not into a type of non-conforming jumbo loan that was the prime and principal constituency of the
more toxic and prevalent troubled private label securities.
BTW, you do know that Fannie Mae was privatized in 1968, taken off the government’s books by stock ownership offered over the NYSE and privately
managed, right? It was George Bush that put it under conservatorship by the federal government in 2008 because it was performing dangerously poor as
it was discovered that the CEO and his executives lied about their faulty accounting and fraudulent reporting of the true composition and risky
condition of the loan and MBS portfolios. Yet another example of the greed and self-interest I mentioned in my earlier post.
You need to break out of your siesta, get out of the cart, and take another look at the horse. Oh yeah, wouldn’t hurt for you to stop guzzling from
the Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh cool aid trough either.
[Edited on 5-28-2012 by MitchMan]
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Pescador
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 3587
Registered: 10-17-2002
Location: Baja California Sur
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| Quote: | Originally posted by MitchMan
Wow, Pescador, your attempt at feeble deflection reveals a mind-blowing lack of knowledge of actual recent history.
Freddie and Fannie’s participation in sub primes came after the fact and later into the sub prime wave. The brain child of sub prime lending was
created, started, and uncontrollably pursued by private industry commercial banks and Wall Street investment banks such as Citigroup, Merrill Lynch,
Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, et al. Fannie and Freddie (F & F) only started buying sub primes after they started loosing significant market
share to sub prime loans. The type of sub prime-like loans that they bought were not nearly as toxic as the vast majority of nonconforming toxic sub
primes in existence promulgated by the private investment banks. F&F were always trailing the market with regard to sub primes, not leading it as
you would falsely have us believe.
Your statement that legalized gambling over sub-prime mortgages would not have been possible without F&F is just plain stupid. Sub primes were
the brainchild of private industry (commercial banks and investment banks) and were going full steam ahead by the time F&F got into the mix.
Also, it was the commercial lenders/originators that pressured and blackmailed F&F into easing their credit requirements for the loans that they
were willing to buy so that said lenders could sell their sub primes to F&F, not the other way around as you would falsely have us infer. It was
the growth of such unregulated private label securitization (MBS’s) that led to unstable over funding the housing market bubble. F&F weren’t
initially allowed to participate in non-conforming very risky sub prime loans. Later, they did engage significantly in a milder form of sub
prime-like loans (to a specified proportion), but not into a type of non-conforming jumbo loan that was the prime and principal constituency of the
more toxic and prevalent troubled private label securities.
BTW, you do know that Fannie Mae was privatized in 1968, taken off the government’s books by stock ownership offered over the NYSE and privately
managed, right? It was George Bush that put it under conservatorship by the federal government in 2008 because it was performing dangerously poor as
it was discovered that the CEO and his executives lied about their faulty accounting and fraudulent reporting of the true composition and risky
condition of the loan and MBS portfolios. Yet another example of the greed and self-interest I mentioned in my earlier post.
You need to break out of your siesta, get out of the cart, and take another look at the horse. Oh yeah, wouldn’t hurt for you to stop guzzling from
the Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh cool aid trough either.
[Edited on 5-28-2012 by MitchMan] |
Well, the really interesting thing is the way you communicate. Whenever someone does not agree with your totally liberal agenda, then you bring out
the name calling and really negative attitude. I was having a little fun by pointing out some of the inconsistencies in your thought process, but had
no intention of trying to get you to think in another direction, but never did I have to resort to getting angry and making disparaging remarks about
your position. You, on the other hand, seem to immediately jump to the negative sterotypical negativity that one witnesses when tuning in to the
"Occupy Crowd".
I respectfully disagree with your take on what was the causation of the sub-prime lending debacle and have taken the time to research out and
understand what probably took place, but was in no way trying to get you to look differently at another way of looking at the situation. You can be
happy to know that according to all of the recent polls that your perception is in the minority (hence the anger displayed by your comments) but I
will defend your right to think the way you choose.
Sometimes when you are in a really reflective mood you might want to think why the people like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly have
such a large audience and the really small smattering of people who feed at the trough of MSNBC and the like are dwindling in numbers. But, if my
suspicions are correct, you will just get stronger in your denial and your accusations and wonder why everyone does not see things in the same way you
do.
Kinda reminds me of a friend I brought to Mexico one time who visited a small indian village just south of Puerto Libertad. When he asked one of the
children if they wanted an "el orangeo" and the kids looked at him with a look of bewilderment and non-understanding, he just hollered louder with an
undertone of anger in his voice, "YOU WANTO EL ORANGEO?"
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wessongroup
Platinum Nomad
Posts: 21152
Registered: 8-9-2009
Location: Mission Viejo
Member Is Offline
Mood: Suicide Hot line ... please hold
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Mitch.. the only thing I would change... "toxic loans" to "chit loans"... as that was what they were ... chit loans... and the government bought them
all... that b US !!!
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