Quiet Success in South America
With a combined population of only 10 million, and a combined GDP roughly equivalent to that of Ecuador, Uruguay and Paraguay don’t get much attention from foreign journalists or policymakers. Yet the two South American countries, though dwarfed in size and influence by their two massive neighbors (Brazil and Argentina), have quietly been growing at very fast rates, improving their economic stability, and boosting their credit ratings.
A year ago, Financial Times correspondent Jude Webber dubbed them “Latin America’s impressive little guys,” noting that both were “punching above their weight.” Uruguay is by far the richer and more developed nation. Its economy expanded by 8.5 percent last year, and it received 29 percent more foreign direct investment (FDI) in 2010 than in 2009, with total FDI surging to $1.6 billion. In January, a joint Chilean-Finnish venture announced that it would be constructing a $1.9 billion pulp mill in Uruguay, the single biggest private investment project in the country’s history. Unemployment has fallen to historic lows, and Uruguay is also experiencing a real-estate boom.
“Uruguay is likely to be viewed as one of the best-run countries in Latin America,” investment strategist Jim Barrineau told Reuters this past summer. “What debt it does have is not very actively traded because the fundamentals are so good that most managers buy and hold.” Within the last year, each of the Big Three credit-rating agencies — Moody’s, Fitch, and Standard & Poor’s — upgraded Uruguay’s status. “Uruguay’s external and fiscal vulnerabilities have reduced owing to improvements in its external and fiscal solvency ratios, strengthened external liquidity as well as better currency composition and maturity structure of government debt,” Fitch declared in July. “High GDP per capita income, strong social indicators, and a solid institutional framework underpin Uruguay’s creditworthiness.” As Bloomberg News recently reported, investors believe that Uruguay “is heading toward its first investment-grade rating since 2002.”
The Uruguayan economy depends heavily on exports — which grew by nearly 24 percent between 2009 and 2010 — particularly beef, grain, and soybean exports. Back in May, the U.S. agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland announced that it was building a new facility in the South American country: a massive grain export terminal with a storage capacity of 180,000 tons and an initial loading capacity of 2.8 million tons. Uruguay may also become one of the Western Hemisphere’s biggest gas exporters: The U.S. Energy Information Administration has projected that it is sitting on 20,580 billion cubic feet of natural-gas reserves.
Perfect timing.. Just last night read a blurb on Bolivia getting a satellite from and financed by China.. Major mental image contrast with the visuals from visiting Costa Rica in the early 90′s.. Almost everything my friend and I saw was dirt floored.. Nights were total lights out/black out at dark on the mountain tops.. We were told it was because resources were so sparse.. Sounds like things are really starting to move and shake down there..
That’s an area we don’t hear that much about. Interesting!
Well….having been infused with massive German immigration helped.
Having been “little Argentinas” in the belle epoch of beef helped.
Not having Juan and his whore eva Peron helped.
And being at the top of an otherwise stink-pile bunch of countries wins it all.
Maybe we can all immigrate to SA once Obama and the Democrats have finished turning America into a socialist tin-pot dictatorship. I’m sure they won’t mind a flood of North American immigrants.
On a serious note, however, I’m glad countries like Chile, Uraguay, and Brazil are having economic success – not only to serve as an example to clusterfarks like Mexico and Venezuela, but for America’s long-term economic prospects as well. Growing economies in SA will only benefit us in the long run – and we have more in common with their values than we do with the dying socialists in Europe.
“Growing economies in SA will only benefit us in the long run – and we have more in common with their values than we do with the dying socialists in Europe.”
I agree in both counts; I looked at the numbers a few months ago, and the U.S. export to Latin America almost as much as it does to the more prosperous countries of the EU; given that Latin America has more upside that Europe, this is a very advantageous situation for the U.S…. and those export numbers to Latin America is another thing with have to thank to that “evil” George W. Bush…
Great to see some positive news in South Amerca!
Paraguay is an insanely good place to grow soybeans. Flat as pandcakce. Great soil and it rains at the right time. Commodity boom and US decision to grow corn for ethanol has helped them immensely. If for some reason soybean prices fall, it could be trouble.
Uruguay also has a predictable legal system going for it. Nice beaches too.
To #6 SunsetDistrict,Inc
Organic, fermented soy is safe, such as miso. But for many people, unfermented soybeans are a curse, creating significant health problems, especially to the thyroid. Hypothyroidism, etc. Most soybeans are sprayed very heavily with pesticides and MOST soybeans are GENETICALLY MODIFIED. Very harmful. Read the following:
Jeffrey Smith The leading consumer advocate promoting healthier, non-GMO choices Posted on 3:39 pm August 25, 2011
10 Reasons to Avoid GMOs
1. GMOs are unhealthy.
The American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) urges doctors to prescribe non-GMO diets for all patients. They cite animal studies showing organ damage, gastrointestinal and immune system disorders, accelerated aging, and infertility. Human studies show how genetically modified (GM) food can leave material behind inside us, possibly causing long-term problems. Genes inserted into GM soy, for example, can transfer into the DNA of bacteria living inside us, and that the toxic insecticide produced by GM corn was found in the blood of pregnant women and their unborn fetuses.
Numerous health problems increased after GMOs were introduced in 1996. The percentage of Americans with three or more chronic illnesses jumped from 7% to 13% in just 9 years; food allergies skyrocketed, and disorders such as autism, reproductive disorders, digestive problems, and others are on the rise. Although there is not sufficient research to confirm that GMOs are a contributing factor, doctors groups such as the AAEM tell us not to wait before we start protecting ourselves, and especially our children who are most at risk.
The American Public Health Association and American Nurses Association are among many medical groups that condemn the use of GM bovine growth hormone, because the milk from treated cows has more of the hormone IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor 1)―which is linked to cancer.
2. GMOs contaminate―forever.
GMOs cross pollinate and their seeds can travel. It is impossible to fully clean up our contaminated gene pool. Self-propagating GMO pollution will outlast the effects of global warming and nuclear waste. The potential impact is huge, threatening the health of future generations. GMO contamination has also caused economic losses for organic and non-GMO farmers who often struggle to keep their crops pure.
3. GMOs increase herbicide use.
Most GM crops are engineered to be “herbicide tolerant”―they deadly weed killer. Monsanto, for example, sells Roundup Ready crops, designed to survive applications of their Roundup herbicide.
Between 1996 and 2008, US farmers sprayed an extra 383 million pounds of herbicide on GMOs. Overuse of Roundup results in “superweeds,” resistant to the herbicide. This is causing farmers to use even more toxic herbicides every year. Not only does this create environmental harm, GM foods contain higher residues of toxic herbicides. Roundup, for example, is linked with sterility, hormone disruption, birth defects, and cancer.
4. Genetic engineering creates dangerous side effects.
By mixing genes from totally unrelated species, genetic engineering unleashes a host of unpredictable side effects. Moreover, irrespective of the type of genes that are inserted, the very process of creating a GM plant can result in massive collateral damage that produces new toxins, allergens, carcinogens, and nutritional deficiencies.
5. Government oversight is dangerously lax.
Most of the health and environmental risks of GMOs are ignored by governments’ superficial regulations and safety assessments. The reason for this tragedy is largely political. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), for example, doesn’t require a single safety study, does not mandate labeling of GMOs, and allows companies to put their GM foods onto the market without even notifying the agency. Their justification was the claim that they had no information showing that GM foods were substantially different. But this was a lie. Secret agency memos made public by a lawsuit show that the overwhelming consensus even among the FDA’s own scientists was that GMOs can create unpredictable, hard-to-detect side effects. They urged long-term safety studies. But the White House had instructed the FDA to promote biotechnology, and the agency official in charge of policy was Michael Taylor, Monsanto’s former attorney, later their vice president. He’s now the US Food Safety Czar.
6. The biotech industry uses “tobacco science” to claim product safety.
Biotech companies like Monsanto told us that Agent Orange, PCBs, and DDT were safe. They are now using the same type of superficial, rigged research to try and convince us that GMOs are safe. Independent scientists, however, have caught the spin-masters red-handed, demonstrating without doubt how industry-funded research is designed to avoid finding problems, and how adverse findings are distorted or denied.
7. Independent research and reporting is attacked and suppressed.
Scientists who discover problems with GMOs have been attacked, gagged, fired, threatened, and denied funding. The journal Nature acknowledged that a “large block of scientists . . . denigrate research by other legitimate scientists in a knee-jerk, partisan, emotional way that is not helpful in advancing knowledge.” Attempts by media to expose problems are also often censored.
8. GMOs harm the environment.
GM crops and their associated herbicides can harm birds, insects, amphibians, marine ecosystems, and soil organisms. They reduce bio-diversity, pollute water resources, and are unsustainable. For example, GM crops are eliminating habitat for monarch butterflies, whose populations are down 50% in the US. Roundup herbicide has been shown to cause birth defects in amphibians, embryonic deaths and endocrine disruptions, and organ damage in animals even at very low doses. GM canola has been found growing wild in North Dakota and California, threatening to pass on its herbicide tolerant genes on to weeds.
9. GMOs do not increase yields, and work against feeding a hungry world.
Whereas sustainable non-GMO agricultural methods used in developing countries have conclusively resulted in yield increases of 79% and higher, GMOs do not, on average, increase yields at all. This was evident in the Union of Concerned Scientists’ 2009 report Failure to Yield―the definitive study to date on GM crops and yield.
The International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) report, authored by more than 400 scientists and backed by 58 governments, stated that GM crop yields were “highly variable” and in some cases, “yields declined.” The report noted, “Assessment of the technology lags behind its development, information is anecdotal and contradictory, and uncertainty about possible benefits and damage is unavoidable.” They determined that the current GMOs have nothing to offer the goals of reducing hunger and poverty, improving nutrition, health and rural livelihoods, and facilitating social and environmental sustainability.
On the contrary, GMOs divert money and resources that would otherwise be spent on more safe, reliable, and appropriate technologies.
http://www.responsibletechnology.org/blog/1619
Linda, with love in my heart I suggest you show you 3 posts to a loved one, priest, rabbi, minister.
Ask them what they think.
I think you might be a little crazy.
I think she might be well-informed.
Alas, she does seem to have have one major defect.
She has not drunk the Monsanto kool-aid.
To #6 SunsetDistrict,Inc
UK DAILY MAIL: The GM genocide: Thousands of Indian farmers are committing suicide after using genetically modified crops
By Andrew Malone
3rd November 2008
When Prince Charles claimed thousands of Indian farmers were killing themselves after using GM crops, he was branded a scaremonger. In fact, as this chilling dispatch reveals, it’s even WORSE than he feared.
The children were inconsolable. Mute with shock and fighting back tears, they huddled beside their mother as friends and neighbours prepared their father’s body for cremation on a blazing bonfire built on the cracked, barren fields near their home.
As flames consumed the corpse, Ganjanan, 12, and Kalpana, 14, faced a grim future. While Shankara Mandaukar had hoped his son and daughter would have a better life under India’s economic boom, they now face working as slave labour for a few pence a day. Landless and homeless, they will be the lowest of the low.
Shankara, respected farmer, loving husband and father, had taken his own life. Less than 24 hours earlier, facing the loss of his land due to debt, he drank a cupful of chemical insecticide.
Shankara’s crop had failed – twice. Of course, famine and pestilence are part of India’s ancient story.
But the death of this respected farmer has been blamed on something far more modern and sinister: genetically modified crops.
Shankara, like millions of other Indian farmers, had been promised previously unheard of harvests and income if he switched from farming with traditional seeds to planting GM seeds instead.
Beguiled by the promise of future riches, he borrowed money in order to buy the GM seeds. But when the harvests failed, he was left with spiralling debts – and no income.
So Shankara became one of an estimated 125,000 farmers to take their own life as a result of the ruthless drive to use India as a testing ground for genetically modified crops…
‘the truly appalling and tragic rate of small farmer suicides in India, stemming… from the failure of many GM crop varieties’.
The price difference is staggering: £10 for 100 grams of GM seed, compared with less than £10 for 1,000 times more traditional seeds.
But GM salesmen and government officials had promised farmers that these were ‘magic seeds’ – with better crops that would be free from parasites and insects.
Far from being ‘magic seeds’, GM pest-proof ‘breeds’ of cotton have been devastated by bollworms, a voracious parasite.
Nor were the farmers told that these seeds require double the amount of water. This has proved a matter of life and death.
When crops failed in the past, farmers could still save seeds and replant them the following year.
But with GM seeds they cannot do this. That’s because GM seeds contain so- called ‘terminator technology’, meaning that they have been genetically modified so that the resulting crops do not produce viable seeds of their own.
As a result, farmers have to buy new seeds each year at the same punitive prices. For some, that means the difference between life and death.
They sell us the seeds, saying they will not need expensive pesticides but they do. We have to buy the same seeds from the same company every year. It is killing us. Please tell the world what is happening here.’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1082559/The-GM-genocide-Thousands-Indian-farmers-committing-suicide-using-genetically-modified-crops.html
This article is from 2008. Many more desperate Indian farmers have committed suicide since then. G-D help them.
Soybeans are very bad news for any country. There are so many problems; including people who live close to where the soy is grown becoming terribly ill from the pesticides sprayed on the soybeans. The following is from an article on Brazil’s Amazon:
Last of the Amazon
In the time it takes to read this article, an area of Brazil’s rain forest larger than 200 football fields will have been destroyed.
Now, industrial-scale soybean producers are joining loggers and cattle ranchers in the land grab, speeding up destruction and further fragmenting the great Brazilian wilderness.
http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/habitats/last-of-amazon/
Uruguay benefits a great deal by Brazilian tourism, sacoleiros (shopping baggers), and its casinos.
Brazilian Reals are readily accepted and exchanged because of massive Brazilian tourism in Uruguay. One suspects this has to have some economic impact on Uruguay’s GDP, since it’s populace is too small to have such a good (desempenho) economic result.
Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul state is right next door. Most Gauchos (natives of this part of Brazil), prefer to take a short drive to neighboring Uruguay to “get away from it all.” Service sector of Uruguay’s economy benefits enormously from this “cross country travel.”
As for Paraguay, this is China’s backdoor to Brazil’s lucrative underground economy. Every falsified piece of merchandise ever produced in China finds it way across Brazil/Paraguay’s porous border.Truck loads of items cross many border check points 24/7 all year long.
Then there is Latin America’s drug cartels, american mafia, and related illicit drug activites. Paraguay is the world’s haven for every illicit operation imagined under the sun (sex slaves, child slavery, illegal aliens, drug mules, drugs and prostitution). Drug mules are interesting…these are dirt poor Paraguayan’s and Brazilians who for a pittance will willingly swallow up to 40 or 70 small condom wrapped bags of cocaine and walk across open fields to some delivery destination in Brazil. Innumerable bodies of these drug mules have been collected on either side of Paraguay’s frontier with Brazil…all John/Jane Does.
Yes, two booming economies, Uruguay and Paraguay. Just depends on what is defined as “booming.”