Financial collapse brings back 'corralito' memories

[AlphaCentauri]

Source: NY Daily News

As the U.S. banking system crumbled in the past weeks, many Latin American immigrants felt a sense of déjà vu.

“We’ve already lived through this, only the names change,” says Irene Sosa, a Venezuelan filmmaker in her 50s.

“Here it is Lehman Brothers, there it was Banco Latino.”

In the mid-’90s, when Venezuela faced its own banking breakdown, the government had to step in with a $6 billion bailout of many of the nation’s biggest banks.

Much like the U.S. now, many Latin American countries lived through tremendous blows to their economies undone by a mix of excess and bad policies.

“This is going to affect me again,” says Luis Rosas, a 25-year-old Mexican shop clerk at Nivel Musical in Jackson Heights, which he said is being forced to close.

He’s thinking of Mexico’s own 1994 “Tequila Crisis,” when interest rates skyrocketed and created defaults on mortgages, which led to the government takeover of several banks and a bailout that cost taxpayers around $100 billion.

“When it happened in Mexico, the currency devalued, small businesses went down everything got really expensive,” Rosas says.

But those financial collapses were no match for what would happen in Argentina at the end of 2001.



Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/latino/2008/10/08/2008-10-08_financial_collapse_brings_back_corralito.html

[trthnd4jstc]

1. The Future appears to be rough for the Majority of US. We can work with each Other.

Call it Anarcho-Syndicalism, or call it Democratic Socialism, you may call it Collectivism, or Communitarianism, but whatever you call it We can work with one another and have a synergistic effect, better than toiling alone.

I heard a Mother who was on bed rest, and her neighbor came by, and assisted her, during which time another mother came by, and together the 3 women watched between 5 to 8 children, and helped each other out. Then the 1st neighbor was near term, and the 1st Mother I mentioned was able to assist her.

Cooperation is superior to Competition. The Republican Way is Evil and inferior, and the Democratic Way of Working together is superior.