miércoles, 24 de julio de 2013

Tips para pasantes en Economia

Internships in Economics – Lessons from an Economist!

written by Samridhi Shukla


Whether pursuing a bachelor’s degree in economics or having finished a PhD from a top university, at all stages of the academic pursuits and research careers, young economists have been engaged in the grueling process of finding internships with reputable organizations. While masters and bachelors students aim to gather work experience and transition into full time jobs, PhD candidates attempt to combine their research with the work of relevant organizations.
Having gone through the cumbersome process myself and having successfully crossed over into a “real job” after a tedious string of internships, here are a few lessons and tips I would like to share with you, no matter which part of the internship journey you are currently navigating through.
Lesson 1: Do what interests you!
It is important to go for an internship in a discipline that really interests you. In the long run companies will hire you for the skills you can offer them and this decision will not be based on the reputation of the company where you did your summer internship.  Work experience in a local unknown NGO in Congo is as valuable as an internship at the Big 4 consulting firms in New York. Bottom line, do something you are good at, pick out solid skills you can apply in life and don´t make a company´s reputation the top factor in your decision.
Lesson 2: Building expertise or versatility?
You can stick to the same area of interest as you proceed or you can be versatile in your choice of internships! There is no golden rule about what works.  However, anecdotal evidence suggests that sticking to one area of interest builds a certain credibility of expertise in that area and may lead to brownie points for you from recruiters who want specialists. Having said that, I firmly believe that while in university, one should have full freedom to taste different worlds and thereby realize with experience what they would ultimately like to do. As long as you can explain your path and give convincing reasons for the choices you made, no experience is inferior to another.
Lesson 3: The money will come as you get better!
I remember vividly how unpaid internships were looked down upon during my university days. People make you believe that you are selling yourself too low if a company where you intern does not offer you remuneration. Please do not believe this especially if you are at the start of your internship phase in university! As a natural progression, I can guarantee you that the money will come as you get better at what you do, i.e. chase excellence and not money and sooner or later, money will chase you for your excellence. In fact, sometimes the companies that offer you the best training and work experience do not have the budget to support interns. However, with what they teach you, your skills might be worth a lot once you do enter the real job market.
Lesson 4: Most important: Do not compare!
I am going to repeat here what granny said all along. Do not compare yourself with others! Though it sounds cliché, this is crucial.  While I was in love with Development Economics and not particularly fond of the mathematical methods of economics, I made myself go through several unnecessary and painful processes of applying for finance based positions in leading investment banks all over the world. Why? Peer-pressure in a top economics college of India where everyone blindly runs behind big brand names offering high salary packages! Of course, the outcome was repeated rejection- not good for one´s self esteem and also not worth it in the long term, as I can see today in retrospect.
In conclusion, I would like to say that what you make out of an internship experience and how much you leverage from the social network you make depends on you. Every experience contributes to who we are as people and professionals. Make sure you take time to dig into the details of what you want, what you learned from a given experience and share it with the recruiters in an authentic way as you go along. At the end of the day, recruiters want authentic people with authentic experiences and real life skills. Gather those and move ahead with confidence!
Good Luck.
 Image credit:  taniawillis

martes, 23 de julio de 2013

McDonald's no sabe explicar como hacen para vivir sus empleados con sus bajos salarios

McDonald's Can't Figure Out How Its Workers Survive On Minimum Wage

In a financial planning guide for its workers, the company accidentally illustrates precisely how impossible it is to scrape by making minimum wage.
The Atlantic
Well this is both embarrassing and deeply telling.
In what appears to have been a gesture of goodwill gone haywire, McDonald's recently teamed up with Visa to create a financial planning site for its low-pay workforce. Unfortunately, whoever wrote the thing seems to have been literally incapable of imagining of how a fast food employee could survive on a minimum wage income. As ThinkProgress and other outlets have reported, the site includes a sample budget that, among other laughable assumptions, presumes that workers will have a second job. 
As Jim Cook at Irregular Times notes, the $1,105 figure up top is roughly what the average McDonald's cashier earning $7.72 an hour would take home each month after payroll taxes, if they worked 40 hours a week. So this budget applies to someone just about working two full-time jobs at normal fast-food pay. (The federal minimum wage is just $7.25 an hour, by the way, but 19 states and DC set theirs higher). 



A few of the other ridiculous conceits here: This hypothetical worker doesn't pay a heating bill. I guess some utilities are included in their $600 a month rent? (At the end of 2012, average rent in the U.S. was $1,048). Gas and groceries are bundled into $27 a day spending money. And this individual apparently has access to $20 a month healthcare. McDonald's, for its part, charges employees $12.58 a week for the company's most basic health plan. Well, that's if they've been with the company for a year. Otherwise, it's $14
Now, it's possible that McDonald's and Visa meant this sample budget to reflect a two-person household. That would be a tad more realistic, after all. Unfortunately, the brochure doesn't give any indication that's the case. Nor does it change the fact that most of these expenses would apply to a single person. 
Of course, minimum wage workers aren't really entirely on their own, especially if they have children. There are programs like food stamps, Medicaid, and the earned income tax credit to help them along. But that's sort of the point. When large companies make profits by paying their workers unlivable wages, we end up subsidizing their bottom lines. 

lunes, 22 de julio de 2013

Inflación (normal) en el mundo

Inflation (April 2013 Update)



Keeping actual and expected inflation under control is one of the key objectives of macroeconomic policy. The rate of inflation in the UK is calculated using the Consumer Price Index. For many years data on the Retail Price Index (RPI) has also been published but from March 2013, the RPI is no longer regarded as an official national economic statistic. Please be aware of this when writing your exam. This revision blog provides updated figures on the latest CPI data for a variety of countries - it reminds us that inflation rates vary quite a lot. Think about what persistent differences in inflation rates can have on macroeconomic stability and performance.
UK inflation, measured by the Consumer Prices Index (CPI), remained positive throughout the recession. Other major economies, including the US, France and Germany, saw deflation (negative inflation, or falling prices).
Latest inflation rates (February 2013):
  • UK 2.8%
  • Euro Zone 1.8%
  • Germany 1.8%
  • Greece 0.1%
  • Spain 2.9%
  • USA 1.7%
  • Japan: -0.6%
  • Brazil 6.3%
  • China 3.2%
  • India 12.1%
  • Russia 7.3%
Latest Bank of England Inflation Forecast


domingo, 21 de julio de 2013

La deuda americana fue estabilizada para los próximos 10 años

Sorry, Deficit Hawks: The Debt Crisis Ended Before It Could Begin

The debt has already been stabilized for the next 10 years.
BowlesSimpsonNew.jpg

Reuters

The debate is over, and the deficit hawks lost. After years of warnings about trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye could see, it turns out they just couldn't see far enough: the budget is moving quickly -- too quickly -- towards balance even without a "grand" bargain. 
In other words, we are not Greece. The debt doesn't need to be "fixed." And dancing to Gangnam Style (or the Harlem Shake) will not change this.
This isn't how it was supposed to be. There was supposed to be a fiscal crisis. That's what budget-cutting superfriends Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson said would happen in around two years time ... over two years ago. Salvation from our fiscal sins would only come if we repented and cut social insurance programs like professional deficit scold Pete Peterson has been saying we urgently need to, well, for decades now. Of course, revenues also needed to go up to make this a "bargain" both sides could support -- and that's where things fell apart. Republican anti-tax absolutism made any kind of actual deal impossible.
But deficit hawks dreamed a dream of a grand bargain, and don't want to admit it was just that -- a dream. Just look at the Washington Post editorial board's recent call for a renewed focus on the deficit. Now, replacing the sequester with a backloaded mix of spending cuts and tax hikes would be good policy, but the deficit itself is solved for now. As you can see in the chart below from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), we only need $900 billion more of savings to stabilize the debt over the next decade -- and that's assuming the sequester and its $1.1 trillion of additional cuts stop after this year.


Our $600 billion of new savings mean the debt is already stabilized. Wait, what $600 billion of new savings? Well, that's how much less the Congressional Budget Office figures we will spend on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid over the next decade compared to what it figured back in February. And that's how the $1.5 trillion of additional savings the CBPP said we needed half a year ago turned into $900 billion now.
In other words, we can definitely afford to wait. Now, it's true that even if we keep the sequester, the debt will start rising at the end of the decade as more Boomers hit their golden years. We're going to need some combination of tax increases, benefit cuts, or, when it comes to Medicare, price controls, to get the debt back on a downward trajectory. But we don't really know how we'll need to do to do so. Indeed, the big fiscal story of the past few years has been the slowdown in healthcare inflation -- and the big fiscal mystery is whether it will continue. If it does, Sarah Kliff of the Washington Post reports it could save us $2 trillion the next ten years. That's about as much as the Budget Control Act and the sequester saved together.
Sometimes kicking the can is the responsible thing to do.






¿Microsoft está cayendo en pedazos?

Microsoft Is Down 8.6% As The World Realizes The Windows Business Has Collapsed (And Probably Isn't Coming Back)



Microsoft is down 8.6% this morning. 
The stock has been doing worse and worse since the company released earnings. Initial reaction to the release sent the stock down 2.5%. Then it was 5%, then 6% ... and now it's down over 8%. 
Microsoft's Windows business is finally feeling the effect of the collapse of the PC industry, and the failure of Windows 8 to slow the iPad. 
The Windows division's operating income was down 55% on a year-over-year basis, which dragged down the company's EPS. It also took a $900 million charge on the Surface RT, its iPad-wannabe tablet. 
After posting earnings, Microsoft CFO Amy Hood told Dina Bass at Bloomberg, "it will take a long time" for Microsoft to make enough off tablets to erase the losses in the traditional PC market
Microsoft's enterprise businesses remain strong, but that's not enough to keep investors happy.


Business Insider 

Estableciendo un website de Economía: Una guía de principiante

Volume 15, Issue 1, 2002

Setting up an Economics Web Site: A Beginner's Guide

Martin Poulter
Economics LTSN
This article describes an attempt to create an online essay in economics (including equations, images and tables), using software that is available for free and involving the minimum of technical skills. The intended readership is students, teachers or researchers of economics who are inexperienced with Web authoring and have access to a Windows PC.
For researchers who want to put print-quality papers online, I recommend you use the PDF format. Elsewhere I have written an advice sheet on generating PDF files (Poulter (1999)). You may still need to follow the instructions below to make a home page with links to those files and with contact details.

Preparing to publish

The eventual aim is to create a group of interlinked pages of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML files, with the suffix .htm or .html) and accompanying images (.gif, .png or .jpg) on my desktop computer or a floppy disk and to transfer them to a server from which they will be publicly accessible.
First we need to sort out where the files are going and what their eventual Web address (URL) will be. Your internet service provider (ISP), whether a university or a commercial ISP, will have allocated a directory which is open to the Web. For instance, in my personal directory on my work server there is a directory called public_html. Any file put there can be requested by appending the filename to http://snowball.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/~plmlp/ .
If the URL specifies a directory but not a particular file, then the server will usually look for an index file. The file name it looks for depends on how the server is set up. Typing the above URL on its own, for example, will retrieve the "index.html" file from my public_html directory.
Uploading files can be done with an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) program such as WS_FTP. This allows you to log in to the server, then transfer the Web-ready files from your own computer to the public_html directory (or equivalent) on the server. Some servers might expect you to use Secure File Transfer, which is much the same as FTP except that your files and passwords are encrypted in transit. Yet another option, used by some commercial ISPs, is to upload files using a form on their site. Your institution or ISP should have a help page explaining which of these options you can use, and what file name you should use for index files.

Choosing Tools

Exporting from Office

Some people think that they already have the facility to create Web pages because their Microsoft Office programs have a "Save as HTML" function. If you create files this way and try to access them via a modem, you will see how much of an error this is. Such pages can be more than ten times bigger than they need to be, and you can wait a frustratingly long time for a basic page to download. Such pages also have poor compatibility with non-Microsoft software: Microsoft's tactics in this regard may be rational from their position as a near-monopoly, but are not in your interest if you want all Web users to make use of your site.
You can get programs which winnow out the useful HTML from files exported by Office. Arguably the best is the freeware HTML Tidy which is also good for correcting common errors in hand-created HTML. Even though this route might help you make some pages from existing Word files, you will still need some procedure for making minor edits and updates, so you need to consider one of the options below.

HTML and Text Editors

A Web page is basically just a text file which has been clearly structured according to certain rules. Hence, to have most control over the page it is advisable to use a text editor, manually inserting the simple codes that indicate what is a heading, what is in bold and so on. Plenty of Web pages are made using the simple Notepad text editor that comes with Windows.
All my work as a professional Web developer is done using EditPlus, a simple-to-use but very powerful text editor with a dedicated HTML toolbar. It also has colour-coding, which helps you spot errors. It's not free, but it is better for speeding up your work than any freeware editors that I've seen. The freeware package HTMLKit may be worth a try: it is a text editor designed for editing HTML code, with integral checking and advice.
If you take this route, you need to know the basics of HTML, perhaps availing yourself of a fine online tutorial such as Dave Raggett's and Jukka Korpela's guides (see References). A surprise for beginners is how little you have to do to a plain text file to make it into a Web page. A great way to advance your knowledge of HTML is to get in the habit of looking at the source of pages that you find on the Web: every browser has a function to do this.
For this project, I am going to take a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) approach, using an editor that works like a conventional word processor, showing an approximation of the finished page rather than the underlying code.
Some universities have institutional licences for HTML editor packages, so it is worth seeing what is available through the institution before downloading anything. In my search for an editor, I used download.com, which lists many thousands of software packages by purpose, by operating system and by licence as well as other attributes. With a few clicks, you can, say, view all HTML editors for Windows NT that are available as freeware. You get to see how many people have downloaded each and to read some user feedback. Being determined to do this project for free, but not finding much to impress amongst the currently-available freeware, I decided to use Netscape Composer, the editor built in to the Netscape Communicator browser. Activating it is just a matter of clicking on the pen-and-paper icon at the bottom right of the Netscape window.
Another option not considered here is CALNet, a free authoring tool aimed at educational use. It is idiosyncratic in that you make a site by entering data into a kind of database, but it facilitates the construction of some interactive pages and it can in principle be used without knowing HTML, although you would have to learn HTML to get the best out of it.

Creating a page

It is easy to forget that the page's content is what makes it interesting, and to get carried away choosing colour schemes and images. Time is better spent writing content that is worth sharing and is suited to an online audience. In reading an essay, you would expect to find within the first couple of paragraphs a good idea of what the essay is about, what it is going to argue and what approach it is going to take. On the Web, where readers' attention spans are tiny, it is perhaps even more important to help the reader decide if they want to continue reading.
In the present case, my content has been prepared in Microsoft Word. Copying text from the original document to the HTML editor can be done in just a couple of seconds if you know the quick way to cut and paste. Click-and-drag the mouse to select text in Word, hit Ctrl-c, select the HTML editor, click where you want the text to go, then paste in the text with Ctrl-v. You can also use this to rapidly transcribe quotes from a Web site (but remember of course to put in quotation marks and a citation). This process loses some formatting such as bold and italics, which I then have to re-add manually. Personally I find that having to consciously consider each use of emphasis helps to reinforce the modest, sober, academic style of writing.

Formatting text in Composer
When using a word processor or HTML editor, it is tempting to indicate headings by selecting the text, making it large and bold, changing the font and so on. I strongly advise against this: just mark headings as such, lists as such and so on. You can determine the appearance of these elements separately, using a style sheet. In the case of Web pages, a style sheet is a block of text with instructions in the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) language. This method keeps things quick and simple: to change the look of all your headings, you edit one line in the style sheet. It is also good from the point of view of accessibility, for more on which see Poulter (2001).
It is possible to have the style sheet in a separate file with a .css suffix, and to put a linking instruction in each HTML file. That way, the look of a whole site can be changed by editing that one file. See HTMLHelp (http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/css/) for more details. Some dedicated HTML Editors will have dedicated features to simplify the creation of style sheets.
Below is the style sheet I used on my site, containing my colour and font choices as well as some spacing instructions, including one to keep text away from the edges of the window. I advise using the fewest CSS instructions necessary to create a look that you are happy with: that way there is less to go wrong in terms of compatibility. (Compatibility is especially important with CSS because each browser version interprets it somewhat differently. For example, my first attempt to space out bullet points used a command which was incorrectly interpreted by Netscape).
<style type="text/css"><!--
body {margin-left:32pt;margin-right:32pt;background-color:white;color:black}
h1, h2 {font-family:Verdana,sans-serif;color:Purple}
h3 {font-family:Arial,sans-serif;color:Darkblue}
P {text-indent:.4in}
LI {line-height:1.5}
// -->
</style>
The style sheet is not recognised by Composer, so as a result the page does not look exactly the same when being edited as it will when finished. However, pressing Composer's "Preview" button opens a browser window, showing what the page looks like with the style sheet applied.
Since my essay is about decision theory, I am going to be making use of tables. These cannot just be copied from Word, so I have to make the table from scratch. Fortunately Netscape has a quick procedure for doing this. By default, the table width is set to 100% of the available page, which looks very wrong. Right-clicking on the table and bringing up its Properties menu allows me to change this. There is a "Delete Table" function in the Edit menu with which I can remove rows, columns or the whole table if things go wrong.

Equations and images

Given that the Web was created in 1989 with the purpose of sharing papers in physics, you might expect that quality graphs and equations are easy to incorporate. Alas, things haven't worked out that way. There are official standard formats for each, but they are both relatively new additions and most browsers do not understand them. With the present state of the Web we have to treat these things as images. For some things like Greek letters and superscripts, there are simple work-arounds, for which see Poulter (1999).
The image editor I'm using is Paint Shop Pro (not strictly free software, but the evaluation version lasts a long time, especially if you use version 3, which some sites still have for download). This package has a "Capture" function which allows me to take an area of the screen (in this case from Word) and save it as an image. GIF or PNG format are both appropriate, with GIF being somewhat more widely compatible.

Step 1: Editing an equation in Word

Step 2: Capture in Paint Shop Pro

Step 3: Inserting using Composer
To link successive pages, I could have just used a text link, but I chose to use a small "next" image. To get fun, colourful images quickly, I used Free Buttons which is free to non-commercial users.

Promoting your site

If you want the wider Web to know about your site, you need to get it indexed by the major search engines such as Google, AltaVista and MSN. There are plenty of services that try to add your page to the search engines' indexes, but getting listed on even one can take months. One site worth trying to add your URL to is the Mozilla Open Directory. This is a human-generated catalogue, edited by volunteers, whose categorised database of sites is used by many major internet gateways, including the current market leader, Google. The Open Directory claim that they will look at your site within three weeks, which is very quick in this business.
There is a less frustrating approach to publicity which depends on the principal way that search engines get their content. If there is a link to your site, then the search engines will find it and index it as they trawl through the Web. The more links to you they find, and the more popular the sites you are linked from, the earlier your site will appear in search results. Hence an essential tool of site promotion is the friendly email to another webmaster, complimenting them on their site, mentioning that the site you have just created links to theirs, and inviting them to return the favour.
Another way to get links to your site is by participating in a relevant discussion forum. These come in various categories:
  • Mailing lists which deliver posts to your inbox. Go to Topica to browse a database of these or even to start your own.
  • Usenet discussion groups, which you can access through http://groups.google.com/ . Usenet is an internet-wide format that predates the Web and still has a lot of the more interesting discussion.
  • Web-based moderated discussion boards attached to a particular topic. Plastic is an example where political and cultural matters are debated daily.
  • Guestbooks attached to individual sites. The International Economics Study Centre has one of these as well as some discussion boards for economics topics
When you join any of these discussions, a very short "signature" is included in each of your messages. This can be the URL and one-line description of your site. Someone who joins a discussion will quickly become unpopular if all they do is promote their site, however, and this is especially the case with academic mailing lists.
Remember that the title of your page will appear in search engine results, and will be visible in the "Favourites" or "Bookmarks" lists of users who bookmark the page. This is why it is unwise to use uninformative titles like "Welcome" or "New Web Page". My working titles for my pages were just "Page 1", "Page 2" and so on but I had to make sure that these were changed to something meaningful before publishing the pages.

Onward and Upward

HTML is not a programming language, just a way of structuring text. For this reason, 1) you should not be intimidated when you try to learn HTML 2) you should laugh when you see companies advertising for an "HTML programmer". However, Web sites can be generated by programs or can even contain programs. This is the key, for example, to the online bookshop sites that recommend books based on your previous purchases.

Computation

Thanks to a language called JavaScript, Web pages can detect activities by the user, perform numerical computations and change in response. In this way, one can make interactive educational materials such as quizzes. I hope to write more on this is a future CHEER but for now, I just have a couple of recommendations.
  • On the following page, I've listed pages that use JavaScript in a way related to economics, such as an exchange rate convertor.
    http://www.economics.ltsn.ac.uk/formats/javascript.htm
  • This online toolbox lets you create some interactive JavaScript features for your site without having to know any JavaScript. You can save the resulting pages and incorporate them into your own site, editing them to add whatever links and additional text you like.

Dynamic sites

Sometimes when you request a page from a server you activate a program which builds up a page on the fly, for example with information read from a database. This might be an HTML page which has some commands embedded (a so-called Active Server Page) or a self-contained program. As far as the reader's computer is concerned, it is just receiving normal HTML: all the clever stuff is done by the server. To create such a page you really need to learn a proper programming language, and to have additional knowledge about your server and how it is configured. There is no single standard language, just a basket of different languages with different strengths. If you feel confident enough, inquire if your Web server supports CGI, PHP or ASPs and read up on such subjects through sites like Internet Related Technologies.
In my finished site, I have made use of some JavaScript to add interactive exercises. It deals with my own gradual learning of microeconomics and its address ishttp://www.economics.ltsn.ac.uk/archive/poulter/ . At Economics LTSN we are always keen to hear of new attempts to explain economics on the Web, and you can tell us how you get on via email at econ-network@bristol.ac.uk .
Sidebar: Ten Top Tips

References

Korpela, J. (1997) "Getting Started with HTML"
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/html-primer.html
Poulter, M. L. (1999) "How do I put mathematical symbols and expressions into Web pages?" An Economics LTSN Advice Sheet
Poulter, M. L. (2000) "PDF files: A Quick Guide for Economists" An Economics LTSN Advice Sheet
Poulter, M. L. (2001) "Designing for Disabled Users: Principles and Pitfalls of Web Site Accessibility"interact, University of Bristol

Raggett, D. (2000) "Getting started with HTML", World Wide Web Consortium

sábado, 20 de julio de 2013

Déficit de oferta de tomates prevista

Piden reducir el consumo de tomate, ante una posible escasez

La secretaría de Comercio Interior sugirió que la propuesta se mantenga durante 60 días. TN




ALTERNATIVAS. El Gobierno sugirió no consumir tomates, ante una posible escasez.
ALTERNATIVAS. El Gobierno sugirió no consumir tomates, ante una posible escasez.

A través de un comunicado, la secretaría de Comercio Interior, junto al Mercado Central de Buenos Aires, pidieron la reducción del consumo de este producto y alertaron sobre su posible escasez, dado al período de baja estacionalidad que sufre su producción.
"Por motivos estacionales, que implican una rotación de las zonas de cultivo, la Corporación del Mercado Central de Buenos Aires informa a la población sobre una posible escasez de tomate. Por tal motivo, y por un lapso aproximado de sesenta días, se sugiere el consumo de productos alternativos", indica el escrito.
El organismo liderado por Guillermo Moreno explicó que el tomate atraviesa "un período de baja estacionalidad ", por lo que sugirió "buscar alternativas para su reemplazo en la alimentación cotidiana", y agregó: "Existe una excelente provisión del resto de los treinta y cinco productos frutihortícolas que integran la canasta básica".
De acuerdo al  comunicado, pasado el período de 60 días indicados se prevé "el ingreso de la producción de la zona de la provincia de Corrientes", lo que permitirá la "normalización del abastecimiento".

Leña del árbol caído: Por $39 te comprás una casa en Detroit

15 Houses In Detroit You Can Buy For Less Than $500

Business Insider 


Detroit's fallen on hard times.
But we know you're familiar with that chestnut about crisis and opportunity.
Via Realtor.com, here are 15 properties that are on sale for $500 or less.

8234 Normile St., $39

3 beds, 2 baths, home size 1,300 sq. ft., lot size 4350

13545 Fleming St, $70

3 beds, 1 bath, home size 830 sq ft., lot size 3,000 sq ft.

18710 Caldwell, $100

3 beds, 1 bath, home size 930 sq ft , 3900 sq. ft. lot size

14678 Mapleridge, $100

$100 2 Bd 1 Ba 672 Sq Ft 5,662 Sq Ft Lot

4688 Marlborough St, $500

3 Beds, 1 bath, home size 704 sq. ft., lot size 3,000 sq. ft.

9361 Appoline, $500

3 beds, 1 bath, house size 1,300 sq. ft., lot size 4,356 sq. ft.

12309 Roselawn, $450

3 beds, 1 bath, home size 1,100 sq. ft.

3798 Montgomery, $300

3 beds, 2 bath, house size 1,400 sq. ft., lot size 3,900 sq. ft.

8419 Thaddeus $300

1 Bed, 1 bath, house size 600 sq. ft., lot size 3,000 sq. ft.

9333 Ravenswood, $300

3 beds, 1 bath, house size 1,400 sq. ft., lot size 3,400 sq. ft.

13548 Gallagher St, $299

3 beds, 1 bath, home size 870 sq. ft.>

9938 Iris St.$280

2 beds, 1 bath, home size 700 sq. ft., lot size 4,300 sq. ft.

19618 Anvil St, $280

2 beds, 1 bath, home size 380 sq. ft., lot size 4,300 sq. ft.

3750 Moore Pl, $250

1 bed, 1 bath, home size 1,200 sq. ft., lot size 4,300 sq. ft.

12115 Woodmont Ave $200

3 beds, 1 bath, home size 690 sq. ft., lot size 4,350 sq. ft.

Argentina: Resumen de las crisis argentinas



Por Nicolás Litvinoff
    
Pánico financiero de 1907, burbuja inmobiliaria de Florida en 1920, la crisis del 30, el crash del 87, el efecto Tequila de 1995, la crisis de los Tigres Asiáticos en 1997, la burbuja financiera del Nasadaq y la burbuja financiera de las hipotecas.

Las crisis económicas existieron siempre en la historia de la humanidad, aunque hay determinados países (como el nuestro) que suelen tenerlas más seguido.

Como crisis económica se entiende a la fase más depresiva de la evolución de un proceso económico recesivo. Por recesión se entiende el movimiento cíclico descendente de la economía, que comprende, al menos, dos trimestres de continua disminución del PBI real.

Como crisis económica se entiende a la fase más depresiva de la evolución de un proceso económico recesivo
La Argentina ha tenido, a lo largo de su historia, varios ciclos recesivos y quizá los más importantes se han concentrado en las últimas cuatro décadas.

Nadie duda que nuestro país cuenta con grandes posibilidades: tierras fértiles, costas, agua y otros recursos naturales clave para el mundo. Podría autoabastecerse y ser exportador líder en alimentos y energía. También tiene poca población en un extenso territorio y mano de obra bien calificada. Si nos basamos en los recursos naturales, la Argentina tiene el potencial necesario para posicionarse en un lugar clave a nivel mundial.

No obstante, el Rodrigazo, la hiperinflación y el corralito se clavan como un cuchillo filoso en nuestra memoria reciente y producen que, ante cada cimbronazo de origen externo o interno, se cree una sensación de vivir en una economía frágil y vulnerable que en cualquier momento podría entrar en un caos como los que ya conocemos, con la gente agolpada en las puertas de los bancos reclamando por su dinero.

Repasemos brevemente los aspectos más importantes de las últimas crisis económicas argentinas para llegar luego a las conclusiones de la situación actual y lo que nos espera.

EL RODRIGAZO EN 1975

Fuertemente afectada por la crisis mundial de 1973, después de once años de constante crecimiento, la Argentina experimenta en 1975 el famoso Rodrigazo, producto del paquete de medidas económicas propuesto por el entonces ministro de Economía, Celestino Rodrigo.

El contexto internacional estaba cada vez más complicado. La crisis del petróleo se había desatado y castigaba a todo el mundo, haciendo que los principales países europeos asuman un giro proteccionista, lo que redujo (tanto en precios como en cantidad) gran parte de las exportaciones argentinas. A su vez, el tipo de cambio artificialmente bajo y un altísimo déficit fiscal (14% del PBI) hicieron que a fines de 1974, el país haya perdido casi 2/3 de sus reservas internacionales.

Ante esta situación, el 4 de Junio de 1975 se dispuso una medida de ajuste que duplicó los precios de la economía bajo la presidencia de Isabel Perón: el desdoblamiento cambiario sumado a la una fuerte devaluación (160% para el cambio comercial y 100% para el cambio financiero) dispararon la tasa de inflación anual a los 3 dígitos.

Esta situación produjo desabastecimiento de alimentos, combustibles y otros insumos de primera necesidad.

Las medidas buscaban "corregir" los desequilibrios macroeconómicos provocados los años anteriores y eliminar las fuertes distorsiones de precios relativos, y al mismo tiempo reducir el enorme déficit público existente y aumentar la productividad de las empresas vía devaluación del peso.

Pero las subas mencionadas no se replicaron de manera igual en el salario de los trabajadores: el aumento fue de "tan solo" 45%.

¿Consecuencias? El poder de compra de los trabajadores cayó significativamente y las movilizaciones sociales se exacerbaron.

Esta situación dio lugar al primer paro contra un gobierno peronista y finalmente se acordó un posterior aumento del 180% en los salarios, que fue licuado en gran parte por la inflación.

El efecto más importante fue una enorme regresividad en el ingreso de la población, que nunca volvió a ser lo que fue.

HIPERINFLACIÓN DEL 89

Afortunadamente, la hiperinflación del 89 fue la única vivida por el país. Diversos factores influyeron: estancamiento económico, fuerte endeudamiento, falta de inversión o desinversión en infraestructura y bienes de capital y desequilibrios fiscales y comerciales.

En los 15 meses de gestión del ministro de Economía Bernardo Grinspun la inflación fue del 626 %.

En este contexto, los precios actuaron en consecuencia. En un intento de política de shock al aumento de precios, se implementó el Plan Austral como medida de estabilización monetaria que sustituía el peso argentino.

De una inflación del 30% mensual se pasó a un tercio: durante los primeros 25 meses del Plan Austral la inflación fue del 215 % y el dólar se incrementó un 163 %.

Pero el "cambio de figuritas" solo tuvo un efecto paliativo y, en 1988, ante un rebrote inflacionario, se creó un nuevo programa, conocido como Plan Primavera, que no lograría evitar la hiperinflación del 89 y el aumento de precios desmedido en los productos que devoraba los salarios.

El 6 de febrero de 1989 se anunció que no había reservas disponibles para satisfacer la demanda de dólares, al mismo tiempo que se aceleraba la depreciación del Austral.

Carlos Menem asumió, de manera anticipada, el 8 de julio de 1989. Ese mes, los precios subieron 197% y las tarifas de servicios públicos 700%.

La inflación total de 1989 fue del 1923 % y el dólar, que había comenzado el año a 24,3 australes, terminó el año a 1950.

La hiperinflación llevó la pobreza de 25% a comienzos de 1989, al récord histórico de 47,3 % en octubre del mismo año

LA CONVERTIBILIDAD

Luego de 10 años de convertibilidad que lograron frenar un proceso inflacionario de casi 20 años de continuidad en la Argentina, en 2001 se desató en el país una grave crisis financiera que desembocó en el famoso "corralito" y la posterior renuncia a la presidencia de Fernando de la Rúa.

Tal cual lo había prometido en su campaña electoral para llegar a la presidencia, De la Rúa dispuso continuar con la ley de convertibilidad fijada 10 años atrás, que implicaba la paridad de la moneda argentina al dólar estadounidense en 1 a 1, pese a que era notable la necesidad de discontinuarla debido a su insostenibilidad financiera.

El marco económico financiero argentino se tornó insostenible, pues no se podía sostener esa paridad, teniendo que tomarse medidas como el blindaje o el megacanje que implicaban constante endeudamiento exterior, y su correlato en materia política con los constantes cambios de ministro de Economía.

Cerrando el año 2001, el sistema bancario colapsó cuando inversionistas comenzaron a retirar sus depósitos monetarios de los bancos provocando una fuerte fuga de capitales.

El contexto internacional terminó de complicar las cosas: luego del ataque a las Torres Gemelas en septiembre de 2001, el mundo entró en recesión y se cerró la "canilla" de capitales para los países emergentes, entre los cuales estaba la Argentina.

El FMI se negó a refinanciar la deuda y conceder un rescate, y el entonces ministro de Economía Domingo Cavallo dispuso el famoso corralito, que trajo aparejado protestas sociales, saqueos a supermercados y una crisis política grave.

Conclusión

Del repaso de lo expuesto, podemos ver cómo la inflación fue un denominador común en 2 de las 3 crisis estudiadas.

En el siguiente cuadro se puede apreciar la inflación histórica de los últimos 33 años, sabiendo que la inflación real se "divorcia" de la cifras del Indec en los últimos años.




El presente nos trae una inflación del 25% (mayor al promedio histórico), pero un nivel de reservas aceptable (a pesar de una aceleración en la baja de las mismas durante el primer semestre de este año) y una tasa de desempleo baja.

¿Qué factores deberíamos seguir con atención? La crisis de la eurozona y un potencial freno de la economía brasileña (principal socio comercial de la Argentina) podrían complicar el panorama, al restringirse las exportaciones y mermar con ello la entrada de reservas.

Pero al menos hasta las elecciones de octubre no se esperan cambios importantes. Luego veremos lo que sucede en el día a día: el respeto a nuestra (desgraciada) inercia histórica de crisis financieras de las últimas décadas así lo exige.

lanacion.com