More on Guatemala

This is a great country with a lot going on. Nevertheless, I am still amazed with the behaviour of the business class and the ideological content of public debate. Today an influential talk show quoted the Heritage Foundation and criticized a small expansion of public debt... in the midst of the crisis!

From Guatemala

My wife and I travelled yesterday to Guatemala where I will visit friends, give a three day workshop and do some interviews. It is an exciting opportunity to learn more about Central America?s current (difficult) situation. I was strike by how conservative business leaders are in this country! A couple of them were yesterday on TV claiming that the government had already distributed enough land because it had given 240 plots in the last ten years! Amazing!

"Tele-Golpe" in Honduras

The Costa Rican newspaper La Nacion has an interest article on the way in which anti-coup groups are disseminating the information. They have a link to a video that is worth seeing--check here.

Honduras

My colleague and friend Salvador Marti and I just published an Op-Ed on the coup in Honduras We believe that we need to pay less attention to Chavez and more attention to the quality of democracy and development in Central America!

Coup in Honduras

It is sad to see the army acting illegally and breaking the Constitutiona order in Latin America again. Yet the reaction of Costa Rica, the OEA and other countries has been impressive and hopefully will reverse this historical regression...

Public programs do not make as lazy at the end...

Conservative ideologues observers, keep insisting that unemployment insurance and a generous welfare state reduce people´s incentives to work hard and succeed. Yet new evidence shows that this may not be the case as Scandinavians are more committed to their jobs than British or Americans. Will certain myths ever be overcome?

More and more signs of the crisis

There are more and more signs of the unprecedented extent of the crisis and the impact that it can have on trade and investment (and thus on the external shock for developing countries). Air freight decreased in 2008 by 22.6, more than after September 11. Is this all bad? Will it result in a shift in trade towards services? Will it shift US imports from far places (US) to closer suppliers (Central America)?