Piano, piano al Banco Central

Estimado Señor Director, Todos estamos de acuerdo en que la inflación es dañina para la economía, y cuando ésta se sale de rangos aceptables, aunque sea temporalmente, sobran las recomendaciones. Aquí le envío entonces una más, antes que continúe la escalada alcista en la tasa de interés de corto plazo por parte del Banco Central. […]

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Foreign energy independence and common defense policy: Chile’s option

Our present energy crisis has awoken Chile: as of year 2006, domestic energy production –essentially hydroelectricity – represented 24% of total domestic energy consumption, another 24% – natural gas – was supplied from Argentina, a neighboring country, and the rest – 52%- came from multiple foreign coal and oil producers. In that same year, this […]

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Comment sent to WSJ Forum “The Fannie Mae Gang, by Paul A. Gigot”

Dear Sir, Congratulations for your article and the effort to keep vigilant on this kind of inefficient and costly business behavior from a private and also social viewpoint. The big question is what could be recommended to do now. What if these GSE´s were already economically bankrupt? Then the issue from a public policy perspective […]

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Chile, competencia y fusiones. Presentación Universidad Adolfo Ibañez

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Chile: maybe next time

There has been an obvious loss of momentum in our economic growth, relative to our own past two decades and the rest of the emerging world. In figures, whereas in the 90’s and 2000’s Chile had an average annual growth rate of 6,37% and 4,34% respectively, the emerging and developing economies had equivalent growth rates […]

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Battling energy cartels

According to 2007 BP Statistical Review, 2006 world energy consumption amounted to 10.878 million tons oil equivalent – mtoe -, of which 36% corresponded to oil, 24% to natural gas, 28% to coal , 6% to nuclear energy and 6% to hydroelectricity, excluding solar, wind and other minor energy sources. The first two sources, which […]

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Campos de Hielo

Estimado Señor Director, A raíz del acuerdo entre Chile y Argentina de 1998 para precisar el recorrido del límite desde el monte Fitz Roy hasta el cerro Daudet, una distancia aproximada de 160 kms, ¿ pierde territorio nuestro país respecto del hasta ahora válido límite definido por el Laudo Arbitral de Su Majestad Británica de […]

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The king is naked, but healthy

Some useful lessons are going to be acknowledged after the present financial volatility period settles, particularly in the US. The most important one will be the divergence between the real economy and the perceived one, the dissociation between short and long term equilibrium values and Wall Street. Real activity in the US is certainly decelerating, […]

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Fusión DyS-Falabella: por qué no. Presentación al Tribunal de Defensa de la Libre Competencia (TDLC)

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Rome, 18th century England and present world: improving economic results

After the Second Punic War (218 BC to 201 BC), Rome replaced Carthage as the most important power in Western Mediterranean. Given that Macedonia and its Greek followers were also allied to the defeated party, Eastern Mediterranean was also delivered to Rome after a brief resistance. What is noticeable is that all these events occurred […]

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No más concentración empresarial: prudencia obliga

Recientemente se solicitó al Tribunal de la Libre Competencia la aprobación de la fusión accionaria entre Falabella y DyS, que daría origen a una entidad financiera y de retail con una valorización bursátil de US$ 16.000 millones, ventas por US$ 7.500 millones (80 por ciento en Chile) y utilidades por US$ 450 millones anuales (40 […]

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US roads: the hidden cost due to increased gas taxes

The continuing scarcity of cheap energy in the world, due mainly to an unexpected strong economic growth now going for almost 10 years, has not only ignited the search for new and more reliable sources, but also put again into the fore increasing gasoline taxes, particularly in the US. Have not you heard yet about […]

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Morning in Baghdad, cloudy noon in Sao Paulo, menacing night in Santiago

Intervention in Iraq in 2003 was a difficult and hard decision, but also unavoidable. Those who decried it did not offer credible and alternative solutions to a chronic Middle Eastern case of instability, poverty and human suffering, preferring to continue with the fiction of never ending verifications under a suspicious UN veil. It had to […]

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Chile, in search of lost growth

Looking at China and India growing at 10 per cent in annual rates in their quest for a developed status is certainly goods news, for their combined 2.500 million inhabitants and the rest of the world. Their per capita incomes, less than US$ 2.000, compared to US standards, over US$ 40.000, just reflect how important […]

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Iran – Russia energy axis?

The world will soon complete almost a decade with unprecedented growth relatively well distributed across it. But this process has been associated with an impressive wealth transfer from energy lacking areas to those that have a surplus. It so happens that an energy supply problem has been gradually evolving into a foreign policy one that […]

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A dollar economy from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego

Increasing world economic integration is a fact, as measured in goods trade and physical and human capital movements. But it tends to be deeper in surrounding countries – as it would equivalently happen at cities or neighborhoods levels -, basically because of communication and transportation costs that in essence determine efficient economic boundaries and in […]

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US monetary policy

For the last 12 months there has been an increasing pressure over the Federal Reserve to move into a more contractionary monetary policy than before. The basis for such a case has been the apparently low absolute values of the Fed Funds target rates being in place and some inflationary indexes that have been showing […]

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Dollarization in Chile: the next step forward, led by Walmart

After having systematically missed development opportunities during the first 3 quarters of the XX century, being on the verge of a civil war and military conflicts with neighboring countries in the 1970´s and having a successful transition to democratic governments in the 1990´s, Chile is again on the right track, almost irrespective of its political […]

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Pensions and cities in Chile: short term misjudgements, long term cries

In Chile, as it might possibly have happened in many other countries trying to close per capita income gaps with respect to developed countries, there have been two silent but impressive changes within the last 20 years that will have deep impacts in our economy: the fall – to stay – in “risk free” real […]

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Chile: wrong way

Last Wednesday night we could watch, for the last time, a restrictive debate between the two remaining candidates for next January 15th presidential election in Chile. It was, in fact, the debate between a president – Mr. Piñera – and a candidate – Mrs. Bachelet -. Restrictive debate ? Of course, when you are not […]

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