Economia

I Spy? Not Anymore
The National Security Council has ordered that the intelligence community downgrade China from a first to a second priority. It’s another victory for an American adversary.

By Michael Mazza

The Obama National Security Council has ordered the U.S. intelligence community to downgrade China as an intelligence collection priority. Though the president has made no secret of his desire to mend fences with America’s adversaries, this decision to “see no evil/hear no evil” from Beijing is cause for concern. The answer to any request to “please stop spying” should be simple: “No The decision to downgrade China as an intelligence collection target (first reported by Bill Gertz in The Washington Times) is wrongheaded for what should be reasons obvious to the Obama administration: Since the Soviet Union’s dissolution in 1991, Chinese military spending has nearly quadrupled. That spending has transformed what was once dismissed as an ineffective military force into a formidable and heavily armed one. China’s air force can now establish air dominance over the Taiwan Strait and possibly over Japan. Its missiles can strike U.S. bases as far away as Guam. Its navy has commissioned more than 30 new submarines since 2000 and is now pursuing an aircraft carrier fleet. And the People’s Liberation Army has conducted successful missile defense and anti-satellite weapon tests. In short, China is fielding a force designed to keep U.S. military assets out of the Asia-Pacific and that places special emphasis on attacking America where it is weak—in space and cyberspace.

The U.S. intelligence community recognizes the significance of the Chinese threat. In his National Intelligence Strategy (NIS), published last summer, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair names China as one of four countries that “have the ability to challenge U.S. interests in traditional (e.g., military force and espionage) and emerging (e.g., cyber operations) ways.” According to the Washington Times, the Chinese response to this document ironically served as an impetus for the White House decision to deemphasize China as a top intelligence priority. Following the strategy’s release, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman “urge[d] the United States to discard its Cold War mindset and prejudice, correct the mistakes in the [NIS] report and stop publishing wrong opinions about China which may mislead the American people and undermine the mutual trust between China and the United States.” Beijing objected to China’s inclusion in the report through diplomatic channels as well.

And now, over the objections of Blair and Director of Central Intelligence Leon Panetta, the National Security Council has ordered that the intelligence community downgrade China from a first to a second priority. Administration officials, Gertz writes, “said the new policy is part of the Obama administration’s larger effort to develop a more cooperative relationship with Beijing.”

A more cooperative relationship with Beijing may be something worth striving for, but reducing U.S. intelligence gathering efforts aimed at the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is no way to achieve that goal. A relationship requires transparency, understanding, and free-flowing dialogue. China’s political system and military are notoriously opaque and Beijing does little to explain its intentions to Washington. As such, we have a limited understanding of China’s decision-making process. This is precisely why intelligence on China is so important. Not until we really understand that country’s inner workings can we have a fruitful relationship, and absent aggressive and effective intelligence gathering efforts (or Chinese political liberalization), it is impossible for U.S. policy makers to gain such an understanding.

The threat from China is not simply military: Chinese intelligence agents are active here and the PRC’s cyber-spying now makes the news on a regular basis. Google is only the latest victim in an ongoing series of Chinese cyber-attacks, whose other targets have included Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and the Dalai Lama. Yet as government officials have increasingly discussed Chinese cyber-attacks in public over the past year, China has categorically denied that it engages in any such activities. Chinese espionage directed at the United States, however, has not dampened Washington’s desire to cooperate with Beijing on issues of mutual importance.

So why does the administration assume that the reverse is true—that China is less willing to cooperate due to U.S. spying? Why does the administration believe that easing our espionage in China will lead to greater Chinese cooperation? None of Obama’s concessions over the past year has encouraged Beijing to cooperate on Iran or climate change. Nor will this concession; indeed, it is likely to have the opposite effect. If anything, it will encourage Beijing to offer the illusion of greater cooperation while seeking additional concessions. And without good intelligence on Beijing, attempts to negotiate with it on these issues will be unproductive.

This recent decision makes sense only when considered in the context of the Obama administration’s operational worldview. Put simply, the world’s great powers—the United States, the European Union, China, and Russia—share a broad set of common interests. As long as we demonstrate to China and Russia that the United States is a friend, the thinking goes, they will join us in pursuing those interests.

But the world does not work that way. On many if not most issues, U.S. and Chinese interests are in fact divergent. Thus the administration’s acts of reassurance are bound to be fruitless. The United States could halt entirely its espionage efforts against China, and still Beijing would have no interest in sanctioning North Korea or Iran or agreeing to U.S. climate-control proposals.

This latest concession will not persuade China to cooperate more fully, but it will teach the People’s Republic an important lesson: namely, that complaining is effective, and that no quid pro quo is needed for the United States to alter national security policy to satisfy Chinese President Hu Jintao. It is a lesson that the Obama administration keeps driving home, and one which China is certainly taking to heart .

Michael Mazza is a research assistant at the American Enterprise Institute


Images by Darren Wamboldt/The Bergman Group

¿Por qué fracasa el ecologismo?

FORUM LIBERTAS EDITORIAL

¿Por qué fracasa el ecologismo? (no confundir con la ecología que constituye un ámbito de las ciencias de la naturaleza). El ecologismo como idea política lleva a sus espaldas muchísimos años de presencia pública. Ha recibido, además, una atención creciente por parte de los medios de comunicación en términos mayoritariamente favorables, pero a pesar de todo ello, es, según el país, una opción políticamente marginal o minoritaria.
La reflexión de este hecho no es un tema menor porque encierra un problema más profundo relacionado con la causa de por qué no consiguen articularse políticas que relacionen mejor la situación del medio ambiente con la actividad de la sociedad humana, incluida como es lógico la económica. En parte, la causa radica en las exageraciones de buena parte de grupos ecologistas, pero seria simplismo fiarlo todo a tal idea. La razón fundamental consiste en que los planteamientos políticos medioambientales hasta hace relativamente poco, y aún ahora de una manera insuficiente, no han integrado bien el concepto económico de la utilidad de un bien que se expresa con claridad en la paradoja entre el agua y los diamantes.

El agua es un recurso necesario para la vida, primordial; los diamantes no, pero a pesar de ello son estos últimos los que alcanzan un gran valor en el mercado. La razón radica en que el valor de un bien no se encuentra tanto en su utilidad como en la escasez que posee en relación a un determinado uso. El agua es necesaria pero muy abundante, los diamantes no. Este sería precisamente el punto flaco de las políticas ambientales. Aire, agua, tierra, bosques, aparecen en abundancia y por ello es difícil ver reflejado el valor monetario que posee su gran utilidad. Sólo cuando su escasez resulte amenazadora tendrá una mejor relación utilidad y valor económico. De acuerdo con este planteamiento, hasta entonces no serían abordadas con eficacia las políticas tendentes a preservarlos y mejorarlos.
 
El problema es evidente, de una manera digamos 'espontánea' la economía de mercado solo regulará estos bienes adecuadamente cuando la gran crisis se haya producido. Las alternativas a esta situación básicamente son dos: Un gran intervencionismo en relación a ellos, es decir situarlos prácticamente al margen del funcionamiento de la economía de mercado, lo cual generaría unas distorsiones difícilmente asumibles; o bien, el diseño de mecanismos de mercados que generen valor monetario a dichos bienes. Es lo que se ha hecho con las emisiones de CO2 después de Kyoto.
 
Estos procedimientos, que aun deben perfeccionarse y mucho, tendrían verdadera utilidad si pudieran aplicarse a escala mundial, lo cual resulta improblable porque los intereses de los países desarrollados y los que quieren serlo, son antagónicos, al menos en primera instancia. En cualquier caso, nuestras sociedades se encuentran ante un nudo gordiano que es urgente y necesario cortar.
 
El Génesis define perfectamente cuál es el papel del hombre en relación a lo creado por Dios. El nos dice reiteradamente que es buena y nos hace entrega de su titularidad. Nuestro deber como el buen administrador de la parábola es acrecentar esta bondad o, como mínimo, mantenerla. La práctica enseña que estamos haciendo de manera acelerada todo lo contrario. Existe un déficit de sensibilidad de demasiados cristianos en torno a la protección y mejora del medio ambiente, y por ello es una exigencia que también en este ámbito nos pongamos las pilas.

Q&A: How to Think About the U.S. Dollar
It has become fashionable to predict the imminent collapse of the dollar. What might really happen?

By Desmond Lachman

With the prospect of very large U.S. budget deficits for many years to come, it has become fashionable in academic and financial circles to predict the imminent collapse of the U.S. dollar. In answering a series of questions on the dollar, Desmond Lachman suggests that despite its very poor underlying fundamentals, at least in the next year or two it may strengthen, particularly against the euro, the world’s second most important international reserve currency.

What determines the value of the U.S. dollar?
Up until the collapse of the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system, the dollar’s exchange rate against other currencies was essentially fixed by the government in concert with other International Monetary Fund (IMF) member countries. Since 1971, however, the dollar’s exchange rate has been allowed to float freely and to be determined by market forces with practically no official government intervention.
Like any other commodity, the dollar’s exchange rate against other currencies is now determined by demand and supply. If at any given exchange rate, there are more buyers than sellers, the dollar will strengthen. If the opposite is the case, the dollar will weaken.

What are the sources of dollar demand and supply?
There are two principal sources of demand and supply for U.S. dollars. The first relates to “current account” transactions associated with the export and import of goods and services. The second relates to “capital account” transactions associated with Americans investing in foreign financial markets and companies and with foreign investors doing the same in U.S. financial markets and companies. Such transactions would include the purchase and sale of foreign equities and bonds as well as the direct investment in foreign companies.
When an American company exports abroad, it will earn foreign currency that it will generally want to sell in the foreign exchange market for dollars. This will tend to strengthen the U.S. dollar since it will increase the demand for dollars. Conversely, when a U.S. company imports from abroad, it will generally need to buy foreign currency with dollars to pay for those imports, which will tend to weaken the U.S. dollar.
The same reasoning applies to U.S. investors needing to buy foreign currency to invest in foreign financial markets or companies; that tends to weaken the U.S. dollar. The same applies to foreign investors needing to buy dollars, which tends to strengthen the U.S. dollar.

How strong are the dollar’s external fundamentals?
By most measures, the U.S. conditions underpinning the dollar’s value are poor and are unlikely to improve very much in the medium term. In the past 15 years, there has been a progressive deterioration in the U.S. external current account deficit mainly as a result of a concurrent precipitous decline in savings by American households. From a position of near balance in the early 1990s, the U.S. external current account deficit has progressively widened to reach around US$800 billion, or around 6 percent of U.S. GDP in 2008.
 
Looking ahead, one should not expect much improvement in the U.S. external current account balance. It is true that U.S. households are very likely to increase their savings rate appreciably in response to the housing and equity market busts. However, this increased private-sector savings effort will almost certainly be largely offset by increased spending by the government. The Congressional Budget Office now expects that the U.S. budget deficit will widen to around 12 percent of GDP in 2009 and it will remain at around US$1 trillion a year between 2010 and 2019.
A disturbing aspect of the U.S. external position has been the United States’ move from being the world’s largest creditor nation in the mid-1980s to the world’s largest debtor nation at present. Currently, the U.S. gross external debt position is around 120 percent of GDP while its net external debt position is more than 20 percent of GDP and rising.
 
It is also of concern that most of the U.S. external current account deficit is now being financed by central banks, particularly in the OPEC countries and China, rather than by private investors. Foreign central bank dollar holdings now exceed US$6 trillion, of which more than one-quarter is held by the Chinese central bank. Earlier this month, the Chinese premier expressed his unease about China’s very large exposure to changes in the value of the U.S. dollar that was posed by China’s holdings of U.S. government bonds.
 
Is the collapse of the dollar inevitable?
The very weak U.S. external fundamentals would suggest that the U.S. dollar must continue its downward slide that has been in evidence since 2002. However, for the U.S. dollar to depreciate, it has to depreciate against another currency. So the real question for the U.S. dollar is whether the U.S. external fundamentals, as bad as they might be, are materially worse than those of Europe and Japan, whose currencies would be those that pose the greatest threat to the U.S. dollar.
Europe’s economy is presently in the grips of a recession as severe as that in the United States, and its banks are beset by the same sort of loan losses as American ones. Further complicating the European banks’ situation is their US$1.5 trillion exposure to Europe’s troubled Eastern periphery. It is now widely expected that as a response to Europe’s difficult economic and financial situation, the European Central Bank will soon be forced to cut interest to the same very low levels as in the United States. This would remove the positive interest-rate differential presently favoring the euro.
Worse still for the euro is the growing perception in the markets that Europe’s Mediterranean countries and Ireland might experience increased difficulty managing their present problems within the straitjacket of Euro-zone membership. This perception is being reflected in the much higher interest rates that these countries have to pay on the debt that their government issues.
 
Greece and Italy have very poor public finances, and Greece, Portugal, and Spain all have external current account deficits in excess of 10 percent of GDP. The rating agencies have already downgraded the government bonds of Greece, Ireland, and Spain and they have warned that further downgrades are possible unless there is improvement in these countries’ economic outlooks.
For its part, Japan is experiencing a decline in GDP at an annualized rate approaching 12 percent, while the real threat of deflation is again surfacing. This is likely to preclude any real improvement in Japan’s seriously impaired public finances as reflected in a public debt-to-GDP ratio of around 180 percent.

How has the dollar performed in recent years?
Between 2002 and mid-2008, the U.S. dollar lost approximately one-third of its value as investors focused on the large U.S. external current account deficit.
 
Since mid-2008, however, there has been around a 15 percent effective appreciation of the U.S. dollar. The U.S. dollar has come to be viewed as a safe haven currency in the global economic and financial crisis. The dollar’s movements against the euro have been equally dramatic: After approximately halving in value from 2002 to mid-2008, the dollar has since recovered to around 130 U.S. cents to the euro.
 
What can the government do to influence the value of the dollar?
The only way that the government can beneficially influence the value of the dollar on a sustained basis is by pursuing policies that strengthen the country’s external fundamentals. More specifically, the government could strengthen the dollar by implementing policies that increased the domestic savings rate, that kept inflation low, and that improved the attractiveness of the United States as a place in which to invest and do business.
Viewed through this lens, the present policy mix in the United States must raise fundamental questions about the dollar’s longer run prospects. The Obama administration’s fiscal stimulus package will compromise U.S. savings for many years to come, and the Federal Reserve’s zero interest rate policy and its massive liquidity injections into the banking system raise the prospect of higher inflation once an economic recovery gets underway. At the same time, the lack of decisive policy action to restore the financial system undermines the attractiveness of the United States as a place in which to invest.

Is there a role for direct intervention in the exchange market?
Many failed attempts at intervention have taught policymakers that direct government intervention in the exchange market has at best only a very transitory impact on the dollar’s value. This is because with the free movement of capital across international borders, the foreign exchange market has become too large in relation to the amounts of intervention that the government is prepared to undertake. As a result, the U.S. Treasury very seldom engages in foreign exchange intervention and when it does so it is strictly in response to “disorderly conditions” in the market.
In place of direct foreign exchange intervention, over the past 15 years the United States has engaged in verbal intervention by frequently espousing that the U.S. government believes in “a strong dollar policy.” Whatever the merits of such pronouncements by the U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin might have been when he originally made them in the 1990s, they now ring hollow particularly in face of the decline in the dollar’s value since 2002. Markets respond much better to concrete policy actions aimed at strengthening the U.S. economy’s external fundamentals than they do to statements of intent not backed by specific policy measures.

Is China manipulating its exchange rate?
In written congressional testimony, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner asserted that “President Obama—backed by the conclusions of a broad range of economists—believes that China is manipulating its currency.”
There can be little doubt that China has been manipulating its currency for competitive advantage. It has been doing so by heavily intervening in its foreign exchange market to prevent its currency from appreciating under the weight of a persistently large external current account surplus. Indeed, over the past two years, China has been accumulating international reserves at an annual rate of around $400 billion. This has boosted China’s international reserve holding to over $2 trillion, or to a level far in excess of what China reasonably might need as a currency cushion for a rainy day.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the IMF Managing Director, has repeatedly expressed the view that on a fundamental basis the Chinese currency is “significantly undervalued.” Supporting Strauss-Kahn’s view, China is presently running the world’s largest external current account surplus—close to 10 percent of its GDP—and it shows little sign of decreasing anytime soon.
It is questionable whether a confrontational approach toward China on the currency issue is the best strategy to deal with this problem, especially given that the United States is so dependent on China for financing its gaping budget deficit. With total U.S. dollar holdings in excess of $1.3 trillion, China is already the world’s largest holder of American government and agency bonds.
China is not known to be a country that responds well to external threats. Indeed, one might expect China to respond to any serious U.S. threat about redressing the currency issue by significantly reducing its purchase of U.S. government bonds. Any such reaction by China could have very unpleasant consequences—for American financial markets in general and for the dollar in particular—at a time when the U.S. government needs to sell more than $1 trillion of its bonds each year for many years to come.

Why is China proposing the introduction of a new reserve currency and what are the prospects for its early introduction?
Ahead of the London G-20 Summit on April 2, China is now proposing the introduction of a new international reserve currency through the substantial increase of the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights. It is proposing this idea since it would like to have a stable international reserve currency for its substantial international reserve holdings that are presently mainly held in U.S. dollars.
The chances of China’s proposal making much progress in the foreseeable future are minimal. Treasury Secretary Geithner has indicated that this proposal would not be supported by the United States. For the proposal to advance, U.S. support is crucial since the United States has an effective veto at the IMF.

Desmond Lachman is a resident fellow at the AEI.


Images by Dianna Ingram/Darren Wamboldt/The Bergman Group

Putin’s Dangerous Games
How will a domestic economic crisis affect Russian foreign policy?

By Jaime Daremblum, Costa Rica’s former ambassador to the United States,
director of the Center for Latin American Studies at the Hudson Institute.

It is discouraging, though not at all surprising, that Moscow has once again resorted to energy blackmail—having Gazprom, a state-run Russian monopoly, cut off natural gas shipments to neighboring Ukraine—in hopes of bullying a pro-Western democracy and frightening the European Union, which gets roughly one-quarter of its gas supplies from Russia. Vladimir Putin may now be the Russian “prime minister” and not its formal president, but he is still the head honcho. For several years now, Putin has pursued a multipronged strategy aimed at reestablishing his country as a global power. He has sought to bring Russia’s former Soviet-era possessions back within its sphere of influence, intimidate the West, and bolster anti-American regimes around the world, including the governments of Iran and Venezuela.
While implementing these policies abroad, Putin has gradually but dramatically rolled back the institutions of democracy at home. Through it all, he has boasted sky-high approval ratings, thanks mainly to Russia’s oil-fueled economic boom, his control of the domestic media, and his skillful manipulation of Russian nationalism. Putin’s game seemed to be working well when commodity prices were shooting through the roof and the Kremlin’s coffers were bulging with cash. But now that energy prices have fallen substantially and the financial crisis has spread, Moscow may soon face a full-blown economic meltdown, which would inevitably have an impact on its foreign policy behavior.
Now that energy prices have fallen substantially and the financial crisis has spread, Moscow may soon face a full-blown economic meltdown.
Just over a year ago, economist and British House of Lords member Robert Skidelsky wrote that, “A resurgent Russia is the world’s foremost revisionist power, rejecting a status quo predicated on the notion that the West won the Cold War.” Putin, who once called the Soviet Union’s demise “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,” has made clear Moscow’s intent to dominate former Soviet republics such as Ukraine and Georgia and draw them into a pro-Russian, anti-Western orbit. Both of those countries wish to join the NATO alliance and the European Union. The Kremlin has responded with various forms of bullying, including bellicose rhetoric, energy blackmail (witness its current gas war with Ukraine), and, this past August, a full-scale military invasion of Georgia following a lengthy dispute over two separatist provinces backed by Moscow.
The week that Russia invaded Georgia, crude oil prices opened at over $125 a barrel and closed at over $115 a barrel. A month earlier, they had hit a record high of over $147 a barrel. Oil revenues have been the indispensable underpinning of Putinomics. They have also been a prime catalyst of Russia’s recent foreign policy assertiveness, which goes well beyond Ukraine and Georgia.
In 2005, Moscow agreed to sell Iran more than $700 million worth of military air-defense systems. In September 2008, as The Times of London reported, “The head of the [Russian] state arms exporter said that he was negotiating to sell anti-aircraft systems to Iran despite American objections.” Russia has also been building Iran’s $1 billion Bushehr nuclear power plant, which is apparently near completion.
Meanwhile, this past August, when Bashar Assad visited Moscow, there were reports that the Syrian leader wanted to purchase “advanced weaponry” from the Russians. “Although Russian officials remained noncommittal about specific weapons sales, analysts said closer Russian-Syrian military cooperation going forward was a very real possibility for a variety of reasons,” The Los Angeles Times noted. In 2005, the Kremlin forgave a large majority (nearly three-quarters) of Syria’s outstanding debt to the former Soviet Union.
In Latin America, Moscow has embraced Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez, who has purchased more than $4 billion worth of Russian weapons over the past few years, including submarines and fighter jets. In late September, as The New York Times reported, the two countries “agreed to form a Russian-Venezuelan energy consortium that would share resources to produce and sell oil and gas. Russian companies are already at work exploring oil fields in Venezuela, but the agreement will allow them to expand their reach into more areas, including fields in Ecuador and Bolivia.” In late November, Russia agreed to help Venezuela build a nuclear reactor.
A Chávez regime with nuclear technology would be dangerous enough; compounding this danger is the fact that Venezuela—like Russia—enjoys warm relations with the Iranian theocracy. Shortly after Russian and Venezuela signed the nuclear pact, their respective naval forces commenced military exercises in the Caribbean (exercises that included a Russian nuclear warship).
Speaking of the Caribbean, Moscow has also moved closer to Communist Cuba, rekindling ties with its old Soviet-era client and seeking to boost both economic and military relations. Last month, as Reuters reported, “A Russian warship sailed into Havana Bay…for the first time since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.” Russian president Dmitry Medvedev visited the island nation in late November and met with both Castro brothers.
Over the past half decade, Russia’s aggressive foreign policy has been propelled by its unprecedented oil wealth. But after the recent plunge in energy prices, the fundamental weakness of the Russian economy is becoming ever more obvious. “With current commodity prices,” writes economist Anders Aslund, “the country’s exports [in 2009] could plummet by some 40 percent in current dollars, or by $200 billion. Budget and current account surpluses will quickly turn into deficits.”
As Aslund notes, tumbling commodity prices and the global credit crunch are not the only causes of Russia’s current economic woes. Putin has also made a hash of things by promoting corrupt and inefficient state-owned corporations, embracing a policy of resource nationalism that has hindered the Russian energy sector, and “systematically” reducing economic transparency. Corruption has become pervasive.
The Kremlin’s volatile and belligerent foreign policy hasn’t helped, either. Even when oil prices were well over $100 a barrel, investors were fleeing from Russia, spooked by the brief war with Georgia and concerns over political instability. Russian troops invaded Georgia on August 7. According to central bank data, Russia lost around $16.4 billion in foreign exchange reserves during the week of August 8-15.
When you combine Putin’s mismanagement with the major drop in commodity prices and the global economic downturn, Russia could be in for severe turmoil. The recent protests in Vladivostok, which were brutally suppressed by Russian police, could be a harbinger of things to come. The Kremlin is hoping that energy prices will spike again before the unrest spreads. But what if they don’t?
A weakened Russia will have less money to shower on rogue governments. On the other hand, if Russia’s economy collapses and the stability of the regime is seriously threatened, it may provoke a new foreign policy crisis to distract attention. Indeed, Moscow may orchestrate a crisis (say, in Venezuela) and then use that crisis to demand something from the United States (perhaps a pledge to stop the deployment of missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic). One thing seems clear: In 2009, Vladimir Putin will be causing plenty of headaches for the incoming Obama administration.


Image by Darren Wamboldt/The Bergman Group

Finance crisis: in graphics
It is shaping up to be one of the most tumultuous times on record in the global financial markets.

By BBC Business

The financial landscape is going through a period of upheaval with some major firms folding, other operations merging and a limited number of companies in both the Europe and the US, being rescued at a governmental level.

Will Oil Really Hit $200 a Barrel?
Oil prices cannot keep rising forever, despite what many of today’s market participants seem to think

By Michael Barone

Americans' views of macroeconomic trends are increasingly a product of their political leanings, writes MICHAEL BARONE.

di Flavio Morani 

 Scrivo oggi questo articolo, che chiude anche il sondaggio sul caro vita. L'esito delle votazioni dei lettori sembra inequivocabilmente mettere in evidenza le lacune dell'esecutivo Prodi, reo colpevole forse non tanto dei prezzi di latte e pane, quanto dell'oppressione caricata sui cittadini attraverso l'impressionante aumento della pressione fiscale a livello nazionale e locale, sulle imprese e sui cittadini, e dell'aumento del costo di tutti i servizi a domanda individuale, come gli asili nido i treni ecc...

by Diana Furchtgott-Roth 

de Isabel Ordonez 

 El peso de las hipotecas ha hecho crecer la deuda de los hogares españoles sobre la renta disponible en un 56,1 por ciento en el período 1999-2005 y la ha situado en el 103 por ciento de los ingresos.