RES: Tariq Ali on Porto Alegre

Dennis Robert Redmond dredmond at efn.org
Sun Feb 11 14:53:46 PST 2001


On Sun, 11 Feb 2001, Alexandre Fenelon wrote:


> -Poland, Hungary, Slovenia and the Czechs are
> -putting up a pretty good fight against the neolibs.
>
> What does it means? I thought those countries didn´t offered any
> resistance against shock therapy. Am I wrong?

No, they reversed a lot of their early pro-market policies, i.e. reintroduced tariffs on imports, lowered interest rates, bailed out many of their industries, and preserved many aspects of their welfare state. Back in its nakedly monetarist days, the World Bank issued a 1995 report blasting Poland for not savaging pensions and thereby condemning 5 million people to starvation (starving people would, as any World Bank honcho with a six-figure salary will tell you, immediately turn around and invent world-class software code to feed themselves). Eastern Europe had help, of course: the EU renegotiated some of their loans, and is starting to fund infrastructure projects.

-- Dennis



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