Below are the 6 most recent journal entries recorded in Ron's Blurty:

Thursday, November 5th, 2009
12:10 am	Salinas Success Salinas succeeded in making himself extremely popular with key international institutions such as the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank, and the IMF. The president developed strong working relationships with private financial institutions in the United States and elsewhere, and he received glowing reports from the Wall Street Journal. His relationships with U.S. presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton were referred to widely as the best that ever had existed between the two countries' top executives. His public opinion ratings were extremely high, whether contrasted with past presidents in Mexico or top executives worldwide. While an average Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth of less than 3 percent was certainly short of spectacular, it was also certainly a marked improvement over the macroeconomic stagnation and a loss of disposable income that probably averaged in the neighborhood of 30 to 40 percent over the course of the de la Madrid years. If you have many projects to do, buy custom Custom university essay service! Custom essays we write are authentic! And although the Zapatista rebellion in the southeastern state of Chiapas beginning in January 1994 sent a dramatic reminder that the neoliberal transition might not be quite as smooth as Salinas and his spin doctors had projected, both he and his policies were widely perceived on both international and domestic levels to be stable as he handed the reins of power to incoming President Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León in December 1994. What then occurred was one of the most dramatic turns of fortune to afflict a Mexican president. While recent history is replete with presidents leaving office quite unpopular, Salinas is notable both for the high approval ratings maintained throughout most of his administration and for the fact that his precipitous fall from grace began only after he stepped down from office. Whereas neoliberalism in Mexico was widely assumed to have become a fact of life in Mexico when President Salinas handed over power to President Zedillo on December 1, 1994, this assumption was badly shaken only a few weeks later as Mexico entered a financial crisis comparable to August 1982, when it had announced to the world its inability to make good on international debt obligations and thereby signaled the onslaught of the socalled Third World debt crisis. The economic collapse of 1995 and 1996 was put into motion by the decision to devalue the peso significantly on December 20, 1994. Many analysts since have noted that a significant devaluation and subsequent economic downturn was inevitable given the twin realities that, first, inflation in Mexico since 1989 had been much higher than the peso's loss of value vis-à-vis the U.S. dollar, and second, Mexico's current account deficit had been held in check only through the ability to maintain large capital inflows of dollars toward the stock market, and then increasingly toward treasury certificates, and finally to the proliferation of treasury bonds (tesobonos) denominated in pesos but indexed to the U.S. dollar. Despite such hindsight by many, and the warnings of some along the way, the fact remains that most Mexicans and the international community were not prepared for the severity of the shock that afflicted Mexico after December 1994. (Comment on this)
12:09 am	The Final Political Resource of the Salinas Neoliberalism The final political resource of the Salinas neoliberalism to be summarized here is the impressive degree of elite cohesion maintained throughout Salinas's six years in office (sexenio). Whereas neoliberal transitions often have been attempted in countries via elite coalitions with low degrees of internal cohesion, the deepening of the neoliberal program during the Salinas sexenio was implemented by a tightly knit group of political elites who maintained high degrees of allegiance to the president's decisions. As explained well by analysts such as Roderic Camp and Miguel Angel Centeno, the Salinas cabinet was composed of political technocrats with similar educations, social backgrounds, and ideology. Research papers done by done writers are original. Get research paper writers and we will write your research project from scratch! The relative homogeneity of top elites loyal to the president's program meant that neoliberalism could be pursued without the elite divisions that plague many other countries—a great advantage. Opposition to the Salinas reforms certainly existed, but for the most part it existed outside the administration itself. 1994-96 President Salinas left office having established himself as perhaps the world's premier neoliberal leader, sufficient to garner U.S. president Bill Clinton's initial support in the international competition to become the first director of the World Trade Organization affiliated with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). From the neoliberal perspective, his credentials often were interpreted as impressive. He had slashed state spending, overseen a massive privatization program, and used the proceeds to establish an antipoverty program that even critics had to agree was extremely successful in political terms. In October 1995 the journal The Economist reported that inflation had been reduced from 159 percent in 1987 to a remarkable 7 percent in 1994. Although critics were right to caution skepticism regarding such optimistic reports, and to stress that inflation had hit the bottom half of the population much harder than such macro numbers would suggest owing to the relatively high rate of inflation for basic necessities, most would agree that inflation rates and even purchasing power (inflation and wages) saw some limited improvement during the Salinas sexenio. (Comment on this)
12:09 am	National Solidarity Program (PRONASOL) Salinas announced PRONASOL to the nation as his first official act on the second day of his administration in December 1988. Through it, he sought to assure the nation that the poor would not be forgotten in Mexico's rush to neoliberal modernity. PRONASOL would address the needs of those poor not yet able to secure new market advantages by financing grassroots development projects such as roads, health care centers, and schools. College students! If you need online dissertation editing service, you may buy Dissertation Editing right now! Such projects were appealing because they represented a certain willingness to redistribute some of the proceeds of neoliberal economic growth while at the same time putting in place infrastructure and institutions that would enable the poor to take advantage of the new capitalism in the medium and long term. While in reality PRONASOL was certainly not all new money (a number of preexisting programs were disbanded and relocated to the PRONASOL banner), the president and his top assistants worked diligently and effectively to publicize the notion that PRONASOL was being funded in large part through the privatization of state-owned enterprises; according to administration statements, the sale of state properties would be used to finance programs for the poor, while at the same time the government would cut general subsidies that could no longer be afforded nor were deemed to be efficient under the neoliberal economic regime of smaller government. While the political gains of PRONASOL were certainly directed at those rural and especially urban areas in which Salinas had lost or done poorly in the 1988 elections, the program was also intended to assure the middle class and capital (domestic and foreign) that the new president was sensitive to the fact that the country's continued impoverishment and the appearance of technocratic isolation by Mexico's top political leaders endangered the success of neoliberal reform under existing political arrangements. Equally or more important from the president's perspective was the need to undermine the support Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas had received from opposition popular organizations under the political umbrella of the National Democratic Front (FDN) in 1988. Salinas responded to this threat by channeling substantial amounts of PRONASOL funding through these organizations. Most important, these organizations were not required to join or affiliate with PRIista institutions as a prerequisite for receiving public financing, as was the corporatist tradition, although an analysis of their behavior does reveal evidence that they generally refrained from frontal attacks on the president and his neoliberal programs and that they began a distancing from the Cárdenista camp. (Comment on this)
12:08 am	Salinas Neoliberalism One of the defining characteristics of the Salinas neoliberalism was the deftness with which the group in power utilized and in some cases "repaired" the advantages of the Mexican institutions. There were two critical elements to this political work. First, the Salinas administration built upon the considerable degree of relative autonomy the Mexican state historically has enjoyed vis-à-vis both domestic and international actors (including, but not limited to, capital and organized labor; private and public financial institutions both within and outside Mexico; and opposition parties, movements, and groups of various types). The Mexican political regime has long been known for its powerful executive. While many believed that the office of the presidency would be weakened as a result of lost political capital during the de la Madrid administration and the fragile conditions under which Salinas assumed office, the new president took steps early on to establish his credentials as jefe méximo (a "maximum chief," or kingmaker whose influence would continue even after he had left office), and he continued to sustain such actions throughout his term. The early actions included the arrest of dissident labor leaders and other political and economic elites considered to be either disloyal to the president or liabilities to his authority. Great essay samples: review Sample admission essays prepared from scratch by educated admission essay writers! Salinas also moved aggressively to form a legislative alliance with the Partido de Acción Nacional ( PAN, or National Action Party). This alliance was useful to the Salinas neoliberalism for a variety of reasons, not least of all because the new president's strategy included constitutional amendments that required legislative super majorities of two-thirds to pass. The second element of the Salinas institutional strategy was to recognize that existing corporatist relationships were inadequate and required creative "repair." In brief, Mexican political stability had been maintained in part through the institutionalization of hierarchical relations with organized labor, the peasantry, and the so-called urban popular sectors during the 1930s. The major lines of political bargaining and patronage were run through separate institutions of the PRI for each of these three social sectors. The economic crisis from 1982 to 1988 had made it extremely difficult to maintain these relationships: the patronage systems that exchanged votes and other forms of regime support in exchange for programs and services to leaders and rank-andfile members had been seriously undermined by insufficient cash flow. President Salinas recognized the danger of this deterioration, and he developed a number of mechanisms for bolstering hierarchical patronage relationships to both traditional actors and to those new on the scene and previously "unincorporated." The most important of his actions was the National Solidarity Program (PRONASOL). (Comment on this)
12:07 am	Neoliberalism: 1988-1994 Carlos Salinas de Gortari was elected by the narrowest margin of any post-Revolutionary president. His most significant challenger, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, ran in direct opposition to neoliberalism and proposed a national populist alternative, and it was widely believed that Salinas had won the presidential contest only after corrupt manipulation of the voting results. The austerity measures and technocratic governing style of President de la Madrid had undermined the credibility of the Mexican political regime. The election of Salinas was followed by massive protest demonstrations, and even (as it turned out, temporary) displays of unity among all the opposition candidates for president. Many, including a few seasoned observers, wondered aloud and in print about the future of both neoliberalism and the postRevolutionary regime. While President Salinas never wavered far from his commitment to continue the neoliberal transformation he had been so instrumental in developing as secretary for planning and budget under de la Madrid, he also realized that continuing and even deepening the pace of these reforms would require attention to the political liabilities associated with economic restructuring. Online writing services are professional writing service. Pay for reliable writing help with essay writing at cheap price! Thus, in Mexico, neoliberalism came to mean not only changes in economic policy, both domestic and international, but careful attention to political restructuring so as to discourage the popular appeal of alternative proposals for Mexico's present and future economic development model. President Salinas was assisted greatly by the fact that the worst of the stabilization appeared to be over. The Economic Pact finally brought runaway inflation back under control. During his first year in office, Salinas was able to sign an agreement under the Brady Plan, which allowed some debt relief. Salinas's twin 1990 decision to reprivatize the banks (they had been nationalized as one of López Portillo's last acts of office in a desperate attempt to stop capital flight) and pursue a free trade agreement with the United States translated into large capital flows that boosted an economy starved for cash. It was no surprise that both these decisions were greeted by warm applause from substantial portions of the international and domestic business communities. The fact that Mexico was in economic recovery, combined with Salinas's considerable political talents, translated into considerable public support as well, as measured by public opinion polls and by the ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional's ( PRI's, or Institutional Revolutionary Party's) substantial comeback in the 1991 midterm elections and continued electoral success in 1994. How did they do it? In addition to improved economic conditions and international relations beginning in 1989 and persisting through the end of the Salinas term, there were a number of key domestic political elements to Salinas's neoliberalism. First, and perhaps most fundamental, was the official decision not to repeat what was widely perceived within the Salinas inner circle to be the great mistake of Mikhail Gorbachev's modernization program in the Soviet Union: simultaneous pursuit of democratic political reform (glasnost) and socioeconomic reform (perestroika). (Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009
5:50 pm	Neoliberalism: 1982-88 Mexico's neoliberal transformation began with macroeconomic stabilization and structural adjustment programs undertaken during the administration of President Miguel la Madrid (1982-88). Research papers done by written writers are authentic. Buy Research Paper Service and we will write your research project today! The president and his top economic advisers utilized the crisis to put into practice reforms that many neoliberal economists long had advocated but that had been blocked by those groups who had for decades benefited from state-led capitalist development. While the initial reason given for the new reforms was the debt crisis and the conditionality of IMF stabilization programs, midway through the de la Madrid administration it became clear that lasting changes were underway. During the initial years of the administration, internal conflict within the administration resulted in only halting efforts at structural reform. While consensus was achieved on the need to reduce the large fiscal deficit inherited by the oil boom spending and to devalue the overpriced peso, sharp differences remained between those who believed these corrections to be adequate and those who argued that the crisis was much deeper. According to the latter group, conditions demanded a total rejection of protectionist ISI policies and the associated economic system that rewarded political loyalty more than entrepreneurial initiative. The advocates of such deeper reforms were able to overcome political resistance only after policies limited to price stabilization (mainly through fiscal and monetary retrenchment) failed to produce the desired results. From 1985 to 1987, the administration undertook a number of structural adjustments, the most important being substantial reforms in the direction of free trade and liberalization of foreign investment laws. The announcement of the Economic Solidarity Pact in December 1987 clearly defined the changes underway in Mexico to be neoliberal in nature. Trade liberalization was accelerated: the maximum tariff was cut in half from 40 percent to 20 percent, official import prices were eliminated, and import permits were eliminated for most items. The state moved aggressively in the direction of privatization of state-owned holdings and the deregulation of the private sector. (Comment on this)