Autor: Maria

(Reuters) – Brazil believes the next head of the International Monetary Fund should come from a large emerging market country, but does not plan to pressure actively on the issue because Europe is likely to keep its «stranglehold» on the job, a senior government official told Reuters on Tuesday.

Hoy será un día clave para ver cómo el justicialismo reacomoda sus piezas tras el discurso que dio hace una semana Cristina Fernández, cuando realizó un fuerte llamado de atención a los sectores más intransigentes del sindicalismo. Por la tarde, en el edificio de la calle Azopardo, la cúpula de la CGT se reunirá para analizar una respuesta orgánica a las palabras de la Presidenta en José C. Paz. Un rato más tarde, en la residencia oficial de Daniel Scioli, en La Plata, se dará cita el Consejo Nacional del Partido Justicialista, que preside el gobernador bonaerense: allí se buscará unificar al partido detrás de la conducción de la mandataria, además de cumplir con una serie de pasos burocráticos de cara al cierre de listas, dentro de un mes.

Considered the Socialist party’s leading candidate for president of France, Mr. Strauss-Kahn identified three threats to his aspirations in an interview with the newspaper Libération, held on April 28 but published only this week. “Money, women and my Jewishness,” he said. “Yes, I like women,” he went on. “So what?”

Un ejemplo, si se quiere baladí pero elocuente, es la generalización del tuteo. Hoy, adolescentes recién salidos de la niñez tutean con total desaprensión a mayores desconocidos, de la misma manera que a la inversa, hasta señoras de pretendida alcurnia social, tutean naturalmente a personas que nunca vieron en su vida, como taximetristas, porteros de edificios, empleados de comercios, trabajadores en general.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund and likely rival of Nicolas Sarkozy in France’s presidential race next year, was arrested Saturday in New York and accused of …

The protests are an emblem of social discontent spreading across Europe in response to a new age of austerity. At a time when the United States is just beginning to consider deep spending cuts, countries such as Greece are coping with a fallout that has extended well beyond ordinary civil disobedience.

Perhaps most alarming, analysts here say, has been the resurgence of an anarchist movement, one with a long history in Europe. While militants have been disrupting life in Greece for years, authorities say that anger against the government has now given rise to dozens of new “amateur anarchist” groups, whose tactics include planting of gas canisters in mailboxes and destroying bank ATMs.

The Greek government (as well as those of Portugal, Ireland, and Spain) needs to shift this narrative toward the truth. One way to do this in practice is to confront the punishers. That is what the Argentine government did, and that is one reason it had popular support to take the big risks that it did, and ultimately to succeed. The more accurate narrative today is that Greece is bargaining with creditors, as well as the European authorities, who are pursuing their own interests in opposition to the interests and well-being of the vast majority of Greeks.  They have over a trillion dollars at their disposal and could easily “bail out” Greece with interest-free loans, and even a real (not Jamaican-style, as is currently being discussed) debt restructuring, that would allow for counter-cyclical fiscal policy and growth. But they have opted to punish Greece – for various reasons, including the creditors’ own interests in punishment, their ideology, imaginary fears of inflation, and to prevent other countries from also demanding a “growth option.”  They are sticking to this route even if it means an indefinite recession, and to force 50 billion Euros of privatizations that will very likely enrich some Europeans at the expense of Greek taxpayers.

You can be sure that the European authorities would offer Greece a better deal under a credible threat of leaving the euro zone. In fact, there are indications that they may have already moved in response to last week’s threat.

But the bottom line is that Greece cannot afford to settle for any deal that does not allow it to grow and make its way out of the recession. Loans that require what economists call “pro-cyclical” policies — cutting spending and raising taxes in the face of recession — should be off the table. The attempt to shrink Greece’s way out has failed. If that’s all that the European authorities have to offer, then it is time for Greece, and perhaps others, to say goodbye to the euro.

Mientras se define en estas horas quién encabezará la fórmula del Frente para la Victoria en la Capital, los precandidatos Daniel Filmus, Carlos Tomada y Amado Boudou se mostrarán juntos en un acto con todos los partidos aliados.

The fact is that what we’re experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. The policies that got us into this mess weren’t responses to public demand. They were, with few exceptions, policies championed by small groups of influential people — in many cases, the same people now lecturing the rest of us on the need to get serious. And by trying to shift the blame to the general populace, elites are ducking some much-needed reflection on their own catastrophic mistakes.

Gay people in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Columbia have more rights than gay people in the United States of America.

La importancia de llamarse honesto, El Tonto y los Sabios.