Ideological Labels Are Fun: Colombia and Chile

Did you know that, despite simplistic labels to the contrary, the US' favorite client state actually is not the free-market paragon most people think? That's right, I'm talking about the supposedly "free-market" darling Colombia, which according to a new Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) working paper has been pursuing extensive industrial policies for quite some time.

The economic merits of these policies aside, this underscores that just because a country has a horrible human rights track record and is in the State Department's pocket, it doesn't necessarily mean it's also "neoliberal." In other words, the media (especially up north) likes to assume Colombia is "market-friendly" simply because it is US-friendly and has signed a handful of Free Trade Agreements. But in reality it has also been pursuing fairly heterodox policies for a while.

One obvious example of this is Colombia's long-running affair with capital controls. As maladjusted has pointed out before, Colombia's regulations on international capital flows are currently the highest in the region. During the 1990s, when South America regained access to international capital markets and all the cool kids on the block were liberalizing, Colombia had smart regulations in place to tax inflows. This helped reduce flow volatility, prevented excessive exchange rate appreciation and lengthened the maturity of foreign liabilities (which lowers the likelihood of experiencing a financial crisis).

In any case, the point is that when it comes to labeling a country's economic policy, what's accurate is seldom the same as what is politically sexy. The truth in South America has always been more nuanced than "neoliberal countries grow, leftist countries don't."

A natural parallel in this regard is the case of Chile, which to much fanfare staked out claims to first world status last year when it was officially admitted to the OECD. The conventional narrative holds that Allende's socialist policies were destroying the country before the free-market champion Pinochet took power and, with help from the Chicago boys, set the foundations for the country's future prosperity. But, of course, the reality isn't so simple.

Chile hasn't prospered because of pure neoliberalism. It has prospered because of resource nationalism (even Pinochet was smart enough to keep the state-owned copper company, CODELCO), the state promotion of exports (salmon, wine, and virtually every other major export success have received extensive gov. assistance) and, on the macroeconomic level, well devised capital controls (Chile is actually the paradigmatic example of success in this area).

Whatever.

Dichotomies challenged. Reality trumps ideological labeling. And I'm a closet post-modernist. The End.

Pinera's approval rating now 54%

Chile's Center for the Study of Contemporary Reality (CERC, for it's spanish initials) today released the results of it's new public opinion poll. It shows Piñera's approval rating at a solid 54%. Though not directly comparable, this is one point higher than the Adimark poll released last month.

Not surprisingly, Piñera's approval rating is significantly lower in the areas most affected by last February's earthquake, coming in at 48%.

On an interesting side note, the CERC poll also shows that while Piñera's approval is high, 68% still want Bachelet to be president again. This is the bizarre state of affairs of Chilean politics today. One of the most successful political coalitions in the history of Latin America is voted out of office and replaced by a centrist conservative pledging change...who then proceeds to behave exactly like the coalition he replaced while his predecessor remains as popular as ever.

The impact of large natural disasters on economic growth

In the aftermath of the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile it is natural to wonder what impact these two terrible events will have on these countries' future economic growth. Will the damage permanently lower output and burden future generations with the reconstruction bills? Or will the post-disaster construction boom and opportunity for structural change act as an economic stimulus, ushering in a new period of rapid growth?

Well, the folks over at the Inter-American Development Bank have clearly pondered these two questions more than I have. And their results are not exactly what one would expect.

Using a large comparative sample of severe natural disasters, the authors take advantage of the fact that natural disasters are a random event to tease out their causal effects on growth. In other words, the paper attempts to approximate a laboratory setting by also putting together a "synthetic" counterfactual of what would have happened in disaster countries if the natural disaster had never happened (they do this by grabbing a bunch of similar countries and weighting them to approximate the initial conditions of the disaster countries).

The results can basically be summarized with the graph below. It shows the path of real GDP per capita in actual disaster cases and in the counterfactual cases. Real GDP per capita is set to zero on the year of the crisis.

So what does this tell us? Well, disasters appear to have no effect on per capita income. In fact, the path of real GDP per capita following disasters perfectly mirrors the counterfactual index.

There were, however, two exceptions to the rule:

"Contrary to previous work, we find that natural disasters, even when we focus only on the effects of the largest events, do not have any significant effect on subsequent economic growth. Indeed, the only two cases where we found that truly large natural disasters were followed by an important decline in GDP per capita were cases where the natural disaster was followed, though in one case not immediately, by radical political revolution, which severely affected the institutional organization of society. Thus, we conclude that unless a natural disaster triggers a radical political revolution, it is unlikely to affect economic growth."

So there you have it. From the perspective of GDP per capita, a profoundly flawed but nevertheless indispensable measure of economic welfare, even the most severe natural disasters do not have an effect. So what's the moral of the story here? Is this a tale about human resilience in the face of calamity? Or is it another sobering lesson in the perils of statistical abstraction?

Chile's new ambassador to Argentina

Last week maladusted brought you the controversy surrounding the idiotic and neanderthal comments made by Chile's now former ambassador to Argentina. Long story short, Mr. Otero told people the Pinochet dictatorship wasn't a big deal or anything, cuz, you know, "most chileans didn't feel its impact."

Piñera proceeded to fire his ass and now hired a new guy named Adolfo Zaldívar. Well, courtesy of the always irreverent The Clinic, here's what Zaldívar had to say about his new boss late last year:

"Sebastian Piñera is the purest expression of the concentration of wealth and speculative capital that rules the world. He is not in a position to guarantee a behavior in line with what Chile needs from its head of state."

Awkward. Awkward indeed.

Chile: Another Public Relations Victory

Before his election last December, many commentators on the left expressed concern at the possibility of a Piñera presidency. And yet, despite it all, Piñera's first few months in office haven't turned out all that bad as he has largely stuck to Concertación policies. Robert Funk quite poignantly commented that Piñera's State of the Union address to Congress even sounded more like a fifth Concertación government than the return of the right.

So then why the concern before Piñera's election?

Well, because he's surrounded by people who say things like this:

"The majority of Chile didn't feel the impact of the dictatorship. On the contrary, they were relieved. Because before you couldn't buy anything imported, you had to pay for what was produced in Chile--expensive and bad. Over night, you started to find out what was missing. The people won. Then the streets were cleaned and people started to have jobs."

And who's the dumbass who said that? It's Miguel Otero, Chile's ambassador to Argentina and Renovación Nacional insider. Maladjusted has argued before that Piñera and his government lack a certain sensistivity when it comes to human rights and addressing the dictatorship's legacy, but this is just too much.

Will Piñera act with the same swiftness as in past scandals and fire Otero? Let's hope so.

Update:

Otto at IKN has the scoop: Piñera has booted Otero out of his post as ambassador. Props are definitely in order.

Adimark poll: Piñera's approval rating goes up

Last Friday the Chilean polling company Adimark released its latest monthly government performance poll. It shows Piñera's approval at its highest level since he took office, with 53% up from 50% last month. The overall gov.'s approval rating also went up 4 points, from 51% to 55% after having dropped sharply from 60% in April.

Also, there are no surprises here when it comes to the income demographics of Piñera's approval rating. The highest income groups, "ABC1" below, still supports him the most. And there's a clear downward trend down the income ladder.

Piñera's honeymoon coming to an end

It seems Piñera's honeymoon is ending. Yesterday the polling company Adimark released it's monthly government approval poll, showing a small two point decline in Piñera's approval rating. Of course, this decrease is within the 3 point margin of error, but Piñera's rate of disapproval has shot up 13 points since last month, reaching 31 percent.

One odd result from last month's poll was that the overall government received a much higher approval rating than Piñera personally, 60 percent vs. 52 percent respectively. This result was in part attributed to public perceptions regarding his, at the time, unresolved conflict of interest due to the delayed sale of his LanChile shares. Well now, however, the approval rating for the government as a whole has dropped 9 points to 51 percent, more or less matching Piñera's own rating.

But what accounts for the precipitous drop? As can be seen below, much of it is explained by public perception of the government's handling of the earthquake. The left side shows approval to the government's help towards earthquake victims and the right shows approval of the reconstruction effort.

[Independently of your political orientation, do you approve or disapprove of the way Sebastian Piñera and his government are handing the following problems related to the earthquake?]

An interesting thing has also happened during the last month regarding the income demographics of his support: it has fallen among the wealthiest and registered a small increase among the poorest (though the latter is within the margin of error).

Now, all in all these results are still obviously quite good, reflecting the fact that so far Piñera has actually done a pretty decent job all things considered, contrary to the left's fears. Obviously, experiencing one of the largest earthquakes on record might change your political agenda slightly and prompt some to govern more pragmatically. But nevertheless, Piñera the consummate businessman deserves some credit. Who would've expected the business presidency to talk about increasing mining royalties, raise corporate taxes and raid the military's trust fund, even if it's to pay for the reconstruction?

Noriega is "sick"

According to a lawyer representing Noriega, the former dictator of Panama is not in the best physical health. As maladjusted's readers probably already know, Noriega was extradited to France a couple days ago after serving a 17 year sentence in Miami. He now faces money laundering charges for allegedly using drug money to buy luxury apartments in Paris (Noriega's defense is, quite plausibly, that he paid for those apartments with CIA cash instead).

Pardon my cynicism--yes, Noriega probably is an ailing old man--but it looks like his defense team is gonna try to pull a "Pinochet in London" and attempt to have him released on humanitarian grounds. As some of you may recall, Pinochet was arrested back in 1999 while he was in London getting medical treatment because of an extradition request from Spain. Long story short, after a protracted legal battle, it was determined that Chile's ex-dictator was unfit to stand trial due to his ailing health condition.

Well, just watch the video below to see how that one turned out. Upon returning to Chile, Pinochet--supposedly too sick to stand trial--surprised his welcoming crowd by immediately standing up from his wheelchair and proceeding to practically dance the damn cueca (Chile's national folk dance).



Ok, so maybe I exaggerated a bit on that last one. But the point is that the supposedly ailing dictator was certainly in far better health than it appeared. And, more importantly, putting on that little act allowed him to avoid prosecution for human rights abuses.

Now, this little blast from the past aside, if his defense succeeds in having his case thrown out in France, Noriega will probably face extradition back to Panama to serve more time there. But should we care where Noriega goes to jail next? Unlike in France, if extradited to Panama Noriega would have a chance of serving his sentence under house arrest. On the other hand, it seems more fitting for an ex-dictator to serve his sentence in his own country where he committed his crimes.

Paul Schäfer--nazi, pedophile, murderer--was buried today

Chile's La Nación today reported on Paul Schäfer's humble funeral in Santiago's parque del recuerdo cemetary. For those of you who don't know about Schäfer's comic book villain level of evil and the dystopian nazi cult community he ruled with an iron fist in the south of Chile, Colonia Dignidad (dignity colony), I recommend this great article.

Schäfer's story is so over the top and bizarre it's hard to convey without sounding made up. Long story short, he founded the Colonia Dignidad in 1961 after he was forced to flee his native Germany due to child molestation charges against him. The colony became a utopian German enclave isolated from the rest of Chilean society. It's members, known as colonos, dressed in traditional bavarian peasant garbs (no joke) and were completely beholden to Schäfer's rule.

Rumors of strange happenings, including rampant child abuse, have been common throughout the colony's history but it became most infamous during the Pinochet dictatorship. Schäfer gave the DINA (Pinochet's secret police) access to the colony's facilities to torture and murder political dissidents. According to victims who claim to have been tortured in the colony, Schäfer himself sometimes participated in the torturing and even trained the DINA in interrogation techniques.

At the time of his death, last saturday, Schäfer was serving a 20-year sentence for child molestation. However, charges related to kidnappings, arms trafficking and human rights abuses were pending. To this president Sebastian Piñera commented:

"The death of Paul Schäfer prevents the continuation of penal prosecution, because there isn't penal persecution in this world for the dead. However, we all know that there's a justice that never ends, and that's divine justice."

Well put. And this is certainly one of those times when I wish I believed in divine justice.

IMF backpedals its endorsement of capital controls

Maladjusted's readers may know that after being snubbed by developing countries because of its horrible policy advise, the IMF had a midlife crisis and was forced to do a little soul searching. But right when it was on the brink of utter irrelevance, the global financial crisis hit and the ailing institution was given a new lease on life. In the process, headed by french "socialist" DSK, the IMF began reevaluating many of its long held dogmas.

Most recently, the IMF came out in favor of using short-term controls on capital inflows. This was considered a BIG FUCKING DEAL, and rightly so, but the details of how this would translate into actual policy were anything but clear. So now it shouldn't exactly come as a surprise that the IMF seems to be softening it's support for capital controls--that is, taxes and restrictions on moving capital across national borders.

A little background might be in order.

Throughout the '80s and '90s, the IMF encouraged developing countries to liberalize their financial markets and to do it fast. Free market types basically believed that doing this would promote the efficiency of financial markets, channeling funds to where they were needed most and thus leading to better economic growth.

Well, at the beginning of the '90s many developing countries began to liberalize and, due to a combination factors, were faced with massive inflows of foreign capital. To simplify, the US Fed had pushed interest rates down to help the US recover from a recession, prompting investors to look elsewhere for places with higher rates. At the time, Latin America was just such a place. Moreover, apart from having high interest rates, most countries in the region had spent the last decade--the lost one--pursuing neoliberal reforms that investors perceived favorably.

In any case, countries that had been cutoff from international capital markets for years suddenly experienced a huge surge of foreign capital inflows. The problem, however, was that when it comes to capital flows you really can have too much of a good thing. It quickly became apparent that these large flows of foreign capital carried significant risks and posed a challenge to macroeconomic management.

One side effect of capital inflows is that it puts pressure on your currency to appreciate and for many of these countries, which were pursuing an export-led development strategy, this was a big problem.

Many of these countries were also concerned with a loss of monetary policy independence, meaning that the abundance of foreign money was pushing interest rates down despite the wishes of central banks to keep them high in order to fight inflation.

Policy makers were also concerned that these large inflows could make countries more vulnerable to financial crises. In particular, Latin American banks took advantage of all this cheap foreign money and borrowed excessively short-term and in foreign currencies, which put them at risk if the inflows were to stop and the currency to collapse.

The point of this story is that one country in particular managed to juggle all these problems quite well and it did so using capital controls. This country also happens to be the free market darling Chile (Colombia and Brazil have used similar controls with varying degrees of success).

Another famous success story comes from Southeast Asia during the Asian financial crisis. Facing massive capital flight, Malaysia broke with the IMF and imposed temporary controls on capital outflows to prevent it's economy from collapsing. Its economy proceeded to recover rapidly.

Whatever. So now, in spite of mounting evidence and it's own endorsement, the IMF is warning that capital controls could cause significant distortions:

"Since the use of capital controls is advisable only to deal with temporary inflows, in particular those generated by external factors, they can be useful even if their effectiveness diminishes over time... However, the decision to implement capital controls should consider their distortionary effects not just on the individual country, but also on the global economy in the event their use were to become widespread."

To be fair, there's nothing wrong with this statement. Controls on capital inflows shouldn't be used as an excuse to avoid pursuing meaningful macroeconomic adjustments and if controls become widespread they might slow global recovery (a rather large claim backed by little evidence). But it's clear that there are actors within the IMF trying to prevent capital controls from becoming standard policy. So before we rush to the conclusion that the IMF is seriously reconsidering it's long-held policy stances, we should wait to see how it's endorsement of capital controls translates into actual policy.

Sorry Neruda

Would you rather name your international airport after some unknown military asshole, or would you rather name it after a Nobel prize winning world renowned poet?

Well, apparently Chile's right prefers the former. Today Chile's Congress voted down a proposal from 2004 to rename Santiago's international airport after the one and only Pablo Neruda. Ok, so I know that as representatives of the right you can't vote to rename the airport after a communist priest. But I mean, COME ON, this is THE Pablo Neruda we're talking about.

Anyway, sorry Neruda. But maladjusted is still with you and in your honor I'll deviate slightly from our usual content to provide our dear readers with my favorite poem of yours:

Walking Around
From: ‘Residencia en la tierra II’

It so happens I’m tired of being a man.

It so happens I enter clothes shops and movie-houses,

withered, impenetrable, like a swan made of felt

sailing the water of ashes and origins.

The smell of a hairdresser’s has me crying and wailing.

I only want release from being stone or wool.

I only want not to see gardens and businesses,

merchandise, spectacles, lifts.

It so happens I’m tired of my feet and toenails,

my hair and my shadow.

It so happens I’m tired of being a man.

Still it would be a pleasure

to scare a lawyer with a severed lily

or deal death to a nun with a poke in the ear.

It would be good

to go through the streets with an emerald knife

and shout out till I died of cold.

I don’t want to go on being just a root in the shadows,

vacillating, extended, shivering with dream,

down in the damp bowels of earth,

absorbing it, thinking it, eating it every day.

I don’t want to be so much misfortune,

I don’t want to go on as a root or a tomb,

a subterranean tunnel, just a cellar of death,

frozen, dying in pain.

This is why, Monday, the day, is burning like petrol,

when it sees me arrive with my prison features,

and it screeches going by like a scorched tire

and its footsteps tread hot with blood towards night.

And it drives me to certain street corners, certain damp houses,

towards hospitals where skeletons leap from the window,

to certain cobbler’s shops stinking of vinegar,

to alleyways awful as abysses.

There are sulphur-coloured birds and repulsive intestines,

hanging from doorways of houses I hate,

there are lost dentures in coffee pots

there are mirrors

that ought to have cried out from horror and shame,

there are umbrellas everywhere, poisons and navels.

I pass by calmly, with eyes and shoes,

with anger, oblivion,

pass by, cross through offices, orthopaedic stores,

and yards where clothes hang down from wires:

underpants, towels, and shirts, that cry

slow guilty tears.

The Count: a budding friday tradition

8,758...

...is the number of workers fired in Chile after the earthquake through a "force majeure" or "catastrophe" clause in the labor code.

Following the Feb. 27 earthquake businesses have been taking advantage of Article 159, N°6 of the labor code. This article allows employers to fire employees without paying severance packages by invoking force majeure reasons (acts of God) or catastrophes.

Now, obviously this type of policy makes sense and certainly many small businesses were completely decimated by the earthquake. But it is becoming clear that in many cases it has been abused and some businesses are simply using the earthquake as an excuse to get around labor standards.

These types of abuse have been limited in well unionized firms, but firms with weaker or no unions have essentially been able to do whatever they want. For instance, in some cases employers have fired workers through the force majeure clause only to rehire them with lower salaries.

CIPER has compiled another list of shame. This time it lists all the companies that have fired employees through Article 159. One revelation is that the company that has fired the most, 938, is owned by the Mayor of Santiago, Fernando Echeverría. As our readers may recall, Echeverría also owns a construction company responsible for a few of the buildings damaged during the earthquake and is a long time business buddy of president Piñera.

Chile's La Nación reported one of the more bizarre examples coming from the southern island of Chiloe, where one company actually went as far as to declare 90 of its workers dead as a pretext to fire them!

Long story short, the company first tried to fire them invoking force majeur. The problem was, however, that Chiloe was barely hurt by the earthquake at all, making the move somewhat suspicious. So, in a brilliantly sneaky move the company instead decided to claim that the 90 workers were dead.

But how could this possibly backfire? Well, a lawyer representing the 90 workers who lost their jobs had this to say:

"The workers are alive and kicking, so much so that they all accompanied me to the Labor Tribunal to file a complaint against the company."

We can only hope that this particularly shameless company will get what's coming to it.

The Count

18...

...Is the percent of lost GDP in Chile due to last month's earthquake. Today Chile's new Interior Minister gave the reconstruction effort a hefty $30 billion price tag, 3.6 to 4 billion of which will go to repairing the 14 hospitals across the country that were destroyed by the earthquake. The government also announced a revised tally of the earthquake and subsequent tsunami's casualties, which has reached 452 dead and 97 missing.

Yes indeed, much remains to be done and the debates over how to fund the reconstruction effort as well as holding construction companies accountable for damaged properties is in full force. The gov. is currently considering a proposal to pay for the reconstruction effort by raising royalty fees on mining companies. That's right, Piñera is contemplating going against his campaign promises in the interest of... common sense! And, of course, raising royalties on extractive industries pretty much makes him Evo Morales' BFF even more, no?

On a more serious note, Mr. Lorenzo "tower of pisa" Constans, the president of the Chilean Chamber of Construction (CCC), has issued a (sorta) mea culpa on behalf of Chile's construction companies for maybe kinda sorta possibly violating building codes:

"I'm not ruling out that at some stage, during the geological survey or during calculations or even the construction phase, there could've probably been an error."

Meanwhile, the CCC has signed an agreement with the metropolitan authorities of Santiago to provide the city with technicians to evaluate the damaged buildings and assess possible building code violations. In other words, under this agreement the same construction companies facing lawsuits will provide the city with experts in order to evaluate their own shitty collapsed buildings. What's more, as the excellent CIPER has dug up, the Mayor of Santiago, Fernando Echeverría, owns one of the construction companies in question, Echeverría Izquierdo, which built at least 3 of the damaged buildings. BEST. CONFLICT OF INTEREST. EVER.

Piñera's first "uh oh" on Human Rights

Greg over at Two Weeks Notice reports that the Valech report, an important document on torture during the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, has gone missing from the Ministry of Interior's website. It's not immediately clear why the new Piñera administration decided to remove such an important document from the Ministry's website but it has certainly angered the Association of the Families of the Disappeared, who referred to the removal as an "unacceptable aggression" and a "step backwards on human rights."

This type of insensitivy concerning human rights isn't exactly a shocker. As some might recall, last year during the presidential campaign Piñera was caught assuring retired army generals that human rights trials would come to an end under his government. In his words (my translation):

"In our government we're going to make sure that justice is applied to all our citizens, including those who are in active service or have retired, promptly and fairly, without perpetuating processes ad aeternum that never end."

Yes, that was a bit redundant. But more to the point, this speech behind closed doors to a room full of retired generals was met with outrage in Chile, prompting one senator to accuse Piñera of facilitating impunity in the country.

To be fair, and I'm no Piñera fan, this statement and the removal of the Valech report fits neatly into the right's discourse of moving forward and leaving the past alone. And yes, that has it's merits but, nevertheless, moving forward and pursuing reconciliation is different from forgetting and any government that is serious about human rights should be able to openly talk about them, especially when its members are perceived to have ties to a history of abuses.

Solidarity Fútbol

Yesterday Chile's new president Sebastian Piñera and Bolivia's Evo Morales played a "solidarity" game of fútbol. The speedy Otto over at IncaKola beat me to the scoop and also posted a great video of the whole affair. So go check it out, here.

On a completely unrelated note, Chile was hit by a 7.2 richter scale aftershock during the beginning of Piñera's presidential inauguration ceremony. Let's hope this isn't some sort of bad omen.

Adimark poll: Bachelet remains popular after earthquake

Today the polling company Adimark reports that president Bachelet's approval rating remains at an impressively high 84% percent, despite cries that the government mismanaged the emergency relief effort. This poll provides a unique opportunity to determine the impact of government handling of the crisis on its approval rating since it was originally completed on Feb. 24, right before the earthquake. Instead of releasing the report on March 1 as originally scheduled, Adimark decided to a second round of polling to capture the public's response to the earthquake.

The report provides a breakdown of the data by social strata, showing that Bachelet's approval rating has taken a hit among the wealthy (group ABC1, below) even though this is the group presumably less affected by the earthquake--all those images of looting and populous rage following the earthquake must have really done a number on them.

[Independently of your political orientation, do you approve or disapprove of the way Michelle Bachelet is conducting her government?]

Interestingly, Bachelet's approval was the highest among the least wealthy, C3 and D/E, where her approval rating actually increased. Adimark also reports that, predictably, that Bachelet's approval rating was significantly lower in the areas most heavily affected by the earthquake (although the sample size for each area was too small to be worth reporting independently).

Significantly, Bachelet's handling of the emergency, though lower than her general approval rating, was also quite high at 75%. Now this takes me to my next point...

Who's this above you might ask? That's Alf Landon, the 33rd president of the United States, or at least according to the now defunct Literary Digest, whose infamous poll wrongly predicted Roosevelt's electoral defeat in 1936. Instead of losing the 1936 election, as Literary Digest predicted, Roosevelt defeated Landon by a landslide. The reason for this epic polling fail? Literary Digest conducted its poll by consulting mostly it's own readers, who were primarily wealthy, and through telephone interviews, which also biased the results.

But what does this classic textbook example of sample selection bias have to do with Chile's earthquake and Bachelet's handling of the emergency response?

Adimark's poll is based on phone interviews. Now, although Adimark is a reputable polling company and assures us that the results were corrected for "the level of telephone penetration in each region," I can't help but wonder if it properly accounts for the views of the most affected by the earthquake who, presumably, are in no position to complete a phone survey.

Of course, we shouldn't completely disregard the results of this poll and overstate the potential effect of this bias. It's just that a one sentence explanation of the methodology used in the report isn't exactly reassuring...just saying. In my opinion Bachelet has done a decent job and has exuded confidence throughout both the financial crisis and now the earthquake. It is also possible that there are widespread negative reactions to the government response but that these are limited to other members of the administration and simply haven't stuck to Bachelet herself. Whatever the case, it seems the voices on the Right predicting that the emergency response will forever stain Bachelet's legacy have been silenced for now.

CIPER Chile on the earthquake aftermath

Great coverage of the earthquake aftermath coming from CIPER Chile (Center for Information and Investigative Journalism). CIPER has put together a list of shame of all the construction companies whose new buildings, some of which still have for sale signs in front, collapsed after the earthquake because they cut corners on safety standards. Sorry but no English link on this one but as a consolation prize I linked to CIPER's excellent photo-gallery of the earthquake/tsunami devastated south.

Chile: Public Relations Victory

Last Saturday's earthquake in Chile has left much of the country in shambles and countless recent homeowners are angry at the poor construction quality of their homes and apartments, many of which have been rendered uninhabitable by the earthquake. It is increasingly starting to look like building standards were an until now unnoticed casualty of Chile's economic boom during the last 20 years. Many new buildings, presumably well equipped to withstand a major earthquake, will now likely need to be demolished for safety reasons, leaving many appalled homeowners demanding answers and accountability.

In this context, the president of the Chilean Chamber of Construction, Lorenzo Constans, had this to say on the matter:

"There are many buildings that are tilted, the most obvious example being the leaning tower of pisa which has remained that way for centuries without falling over."

Thanks dumbass! I'm sure all the people who lost their homes thanks to construction companies' negligence and greed will find this very comforting and informative.