Chile Forum

john wrote:Laura,

Could greed be the opium of the super rich? In the immortal words ( ) of Karl Marx: "... capitalists will sell you the rope to hang them with ..."

John

Yes, the greed is too transparent I think. So-called capitalists don't seem to see long term health/profits anymore-they just want all they can get right now.

On the English, I think it is important to learn English as a second language and many Chileans are averse to it. Economically, English connects people to the world (access to better websites, competition in goods and services) and English is the language of business (I knew one English student who was taking English classes paid for by her boss so she could talk to...Japanese business people!). Pinera knows this, Bachelet has made many moves toward encouraging English learning-it will be interesting to see if Pinera continues this, especially in light of LAN(as EEUU said) dropping their English site. You would think with the state of tourism, the #1 airline in Chile would really have a full English usability factor.

In the distant past,

The CHILE LAN SITE had an English version. This was pulled back in the mid 2000s. I thought it quite ironic as this was the same time the English Open Doors program was being widely publicized.

More than anyone would possibly want to know about copper:
http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/6307

The thread that never dies is back ... with economic crisis round 2:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/fina ... Ashes.html

James.

What crisis? Just because trillions of dollars of loans were made to people who can never repay them, how is that a crisis? What's that you say, they can't even pay the interest as it comes due? No problem, we have the IMF (25% funded by the USA) and they will step in to "fix" things. Now move along citizen, there is nothing to see here.

Seems like the IMF isn't big enough to cover this one... (someone will need to print more money).

IMF's biggest backers are Japan and the US. Given the state of their public finances, that's reassuring indeed!

It's hard to time markets ups and downs, and harder to time when a ponzi scheme crashes. You just know that at some point the music will stop. The question is, who gets to keep a chair when it does?

Unless some highly disruptive (in a good way) new tech suddenly pops in out of the blue to fuel a renewed, genuine boom (say to the extent of what PCs+Internet+mobile phones combined have been contributing and enabling over the past 30 years), at the very least middle classes in industrialized countries are in for severe belt tightening (who else is going to pay the bills eventually?)

Anyone noticing this is looking like the latter half of 2008?

Everything being sold, major deleveraging going on but this time because of the EU.

Look at copper and of course even G&S being hit probably because of the ETFs.

Suerte.

eeuunikkeiexpat wrote:Look at copper and of course even G&S being hit probably because of the ETFs.

Still waiting for the final dip in gold you speculated about . Then I can probably afford one half-groat before we start trading chickens.

James.

China's housing bubble deflating - latimes.com

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-c ... 9813.story

Negative implications for Chilean exports?