Chile's President Washes His Hands of Blame for Nation's Credit Downgrade
President Sebastian Pinera wanted to make one thing perfectly clear about Moody’s Investors Service’s decision to downgrade Chile’s credit rating: It’s not my fault.
“The reaction of the rating agency is due to things that happened in previous years,” Pinera, who took office March 11, told reporters Friday. “As you well know, our government is correcting those reasons.”
Moody’s reduced Chile’s senior unsecured debt ratings to A1 from Aa3, citing a gradual and broad-based deterioration in the country’s credit profile. Public debt has more than doubled to 23.6 percent of gross domestic product in the past eight years, while social pressures to improve education and health-care pose a “major challenge” to any attempt to restrain fiscal spending.
Despite those pressures, Pinera was adamant that Chile would stabilize debt levels.
Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-27/president-washes-his-hands-of-blame-for-chile-s-credit-downgrade
= new reply since forum marked as read
Both have much in common, from their big 1982 heists (Piñera's Bank of Talca S&L-style bust-out, and Macri's unloading a $125 million debt for the state to pay), to their fondness for their country's former dictators.
Piñera, however, turned out to be a talented businessman, parlaying his Talca loot (along with investments from other partners) into one of South America's biggest airlines: LAN Chile (now LATAM).
He's also, by most accounts, a competent president, and has respected the many reforms enacted since 1990, while keeping business conditions fairly good.
Macri 'business' credentials, on the other hand, consist of bankrupting the Argentine Postal Service in the late '90s, leaving a $300 million debt he refuses to pay - and has been using his presidency to try to welch out of.
Macri, who promised voters they'd "lose nothing" as far as their standard of living and the many new social reforms enacted during the Kirchner era, has instead been steadily dismantling the safety net (especially health coverage) and labor rights.
He's also passed along the cost of GOP-style tax cuts to the middle and working class (mostly by way of 1000% utility hikes) - all the while helping the wealthy ferret $54 billion out of the country, and sticking Argentina with $100 billion in new foreign debt.
Now that the (brief) bubble burst, he's reportedly planning to flee to Spain.
I wouldn't have voted for Piñera. But if I lived in either country, and had to be stuck with a right-winger, I'd much rather it be Piñera, than Mr. Macrisis. Chileans are indeed fortunate.
Piñera, Macri, and Trump: The (relatively) good, the bad, and the ugly.
As we know, there are still a lot of Chilean fascists still stumbling around, or goose-stepping, more likely.
So clever of Pinera to point out that any economic problems Chile has now are due to the previous progressive president, Michelle Bachelet, who also was a prisoner, and tortured by the US-supported Pinochet vicious regime which adored the "Chicago boys" and Milton Friedman.
Who can ever forget Pinochet's favorite torturer, Osvaldo Romo?
Osvaldo Romo, Pinochet's most well-known torturer.
Osvaldo Romo Mena (c. 1938 – July 4, 2007) was an agent of the Chilean Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA) from 1973 to 1990, during the rule of Augusto Pinochet. Involved in the forced disappearance of more than a hundred persons (among which the Spanish priest Antonio Llidó Mengual, member of Cristianos por el socialismo (Christians for Socialism) and MIR members Diana Aron Svigilsky, Manuel Cortez Joo and Ofelio Lazo), he was sentenced to life imprisonment, but several of these sentences were suspended by the Chilean Supreme Court.[1]
Life[edit]
Osvaldo Romo made himself known in working classes' neighborhoods before Pinochet's coup in 1973 as a leftist activist, member of the Partido Socialista Popular and sympathizant of the MIR.[1] Following the coup, he reappeared in these neighborhoods with a military uniform, arresting his friends and contacts. Left-wing circles still debate to know if he suddenly changed political orientation or if he always was a mole for the security services.[1]
Known as Guatón Romo ("Fatso Romo" ) or Comandante Raúl, he was one of DINA's most important torturers, operating among others centers in Villa Grimaldi.[1] On April 11, 1995, in an interview televised by Univisión, he commented in great detail, and evidently without remorse, on the techniques that had been used. These included the application of electricity to women's nipples and genitals, the use of dogs, and the insertion of rats into women's vaginas.[1]
More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osvaldo_Romo
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The Pinochet Affair: `I saw them herded to their death. I heard the gunfire as they died'
Adam Schesch, witness to Pinochet's worst atrocity, talking yesterday to `The Independent'
Andrew Buncombe
Wednesday 21 October 1998
"Just before they led the one line out into the stadium, they would start the extractor fans in the changing rooms just to make some noise," he said. "They did not want people to know what was happening. Then they would lead the line of people out of the changing rooms into the stadium."
Moments later, Mr Schesch would hear the unmistakable sound of machine- gun fire.
"There was a concrete wall between where I was being held and the stadium but I could hear everything, said Mr Schesch. "On one occasion my wife heard the people in the stadium singing `the Internationale'. Then the machine-guns started.
"The gunfire would last for 45 seconds, maybe a minute, and then there was no sound. Then someone would come back in and turn off the fans."
Twenty-five years later, Mr Schesch, 55, is remarried with a grown-up son and working as researcher for the State of Wisconsin. But the arrest in London last week of General Pinochet - the alleged architect of the massacre in the stadium - has stirred memories he will never forget.
~snip~
In 1991, when a number of graves of coup victims were dug up, it was revealed that many of the bodies had broken arms and legs, indicating torture.
It was also revealed that many victims were buried two-to-a coffin. "What a great saving," General Pinochet is reported to have said. "I congratulate the diggers."
Such comments add to Mr Schesch's conviction that Britain has a duty not to give in now to Chile's demands for the release of General Pinochet. He believes even at the age of 82 he should be handed over to the Spanish judges requesting his extradition and tried for war crimes.
"It was not genocide but `politicide' what he was doing. He was trying to wipe out the leadership of a whole generation of the working class," he said.
More:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/the-pinochet-affair-i-saw-them-herded-to-their-death-i-heard-the-gunfire-as-they-died-1179543.html
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Gen. Augusto Pinochet, 1915-2006
A Chilean Dictator's Dark Legacy
By Monte Reel and J.Y. Smith
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, December 11, 2006
Gen. Augusto Pinochet, 91, the former Chilean dictator whose government murdered and tortured thousands during his repressive 17-year rule, died yesterday at a Santiago military hospital of complications from a heart attack, leaving incomplete numerous court cases that had sought to bring him to justice.
Pinochet assumed power on Sept. 11, 1973, in a bloody coup supported by the United States that toppled the elected government of Salvador Allende, a Marxist who had pledged to lead his country "down the democratic road to socialism."
First as head of a four-man military junta and then as president, Pinochet served until 1990, leaving a legacy of abuse that took successive governments years to catalogue. According to a government report that included testimony from more than 30,000 people, his government killed at least 3,197 people and tortured about 29,000. Two-thirds of the cases listed in the report happened in 1973.
~snip~
But legal actions against Pinochet had gathered momentum in the two years preceding his death, as courts locked several of his key subordinates behind bars and raised hopes among victims' families that Pinochet would meet a similar fate. He had been placed under house arrest in Santiago five times, most recently last month in connection with the murders of two of Allende's bodyguards.
Throughout his later years, Pinochet retained loyal supporters, who credited his government with instituting a fiscal discipline that helped make Chile's economy the region's strongest. But he lost many of those backers after multiple probes in recent years revealed financial corruption, including the discovery of millions of dollars in state funds held in numerous secret overseas accounts, among them several at the former Riggs Bank in Washington. As recently as October, Chilean investigators announced the discovery of 10 tons of gold, worth an estimated $160 million, in Pinochet's name in a Hong Kong bank.
~snip~
On July 2, during a general strike, an army patrol seized Rodrigo Rojas, an 18-year-old photographer who lived in Washington, and Carmen Gloria Quintana, 19, and set them on fire. Rojas died four days later, but Quintana survived and was blessed by Pope John Paul II, who visited Chile in 1987. The army at first denied responsibility, but a judge in 1989 sentenced an army captain to 300 days in prison for the attack.
More:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/10/AR2006121000302.html
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Video, interview of Osvaldo Romo.
Any real human being who hasn't heard far more than he or she can stand of this blood feast from the pit of hell, if you still harbor any question concerning what kind of government the monster Pinochet ran in Chile, PLEASE do plunge right in and start researching the subject. Your REAL answers will be fully illuminated in no time whatsoever. The truth is always harder to find as wicked people go to so much trouble to hide it. You just have to look for it when you realize nothing else matters.
