| Mexico
deserves to be called one of the top notch countries in the world for exploring
and mining silver. Mexico actually enjoys a five hundred year history
in mining. My current home turf currently produces about one hundred million
ounces of silver every year.
In the early
1990’s Mexico revamped its mining law. The purpose of the exercise has
been to attract foreign direct investment in the mining sector. As far
as yours truly can get a handle on the situation, that effort has been
blessed with success. During that period virtually all government holdings
in the Mexican mining sector were privatised. You can imagine what my opinion
is about that sort of thing. One of my favourite quips by Ronald Reagan
is:”We’re a nation that has a government, not the other way around”.
Even though
I can’t claim to be an exploration geologist, it looks as if discoveries
continue to be made. Just look at more or less recent discoveries, and
you see what I’m rambling about. Completely new ore zones have been discovered
– among others – in Concepcion del Oro (1996, 2001), Dolores (1996) and
San Martin – Sabinas (1996). Completely new districts have been discovered
– among others – in San Sebastian – Saladillo (1996) and Platosa (2001).
In a nutshell,
Mexico still looks like fertile ground for investing in silver exploration.
Latin America
And The IMF
Even though
I don’t tend to read the Wall Street Journal, a while ago I stumbled across
an article in the Wall Street Journal that’s worth chatting about. The
article deals primarily with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and
its economic prescriptions for Latin America. According to that article,
the IMF reckons that Latin America needs to strenghten financial regulation
(including insulating central banks from political pressure) to improve
economic growth.
Joseph Stiglitz,
who won the Nobel Prize in economics and was the World Bank’s chief economist
in the late 1990’s retorts to these IMF proposals:”What a whitewash....the
IMF was part of the problem”. When I read Joseph’s remarks I was wondering
along the lines “what problem”. Eventually I found the answer in
Fortune, which I usually don’t read either. According to what I read there,
more than fifty percent of the less developed countries borrowing from
the IMF between 1965 and 1995 were no better off than when they started
with the IMF. About thirty percent were worse off. Most of these countries
were more indebted.
All this makes
me wonder now whether the world really needs an outfit with that sort of
underwhelming track record. Everybody may be better off if the IMF is going
to be abolished. Now wait a second. I’m not saying that everybody is better
off with the IMF abolished. I’m only saying may be. We better leave the
issue open here.
On the other
hand, the former German executive director for the World Bank, Fritz Fischer,
has come up with a different idea. His idea boils down to merging the IMF
and the World Bank. His main argument for a merger is that both Bretton
Woods institutions provide financial resources to the same sort of clients,
developing countries and countries in transition.
.
However, yours
truly tends to have a few serious doubts about that idea from my valued
fellow countryman. First, the mandates of both outfits are completely different.
While the World Bank focuses on fighting poverty by helping people help
themselves, the IMF focuses on financial stability and sustainable economic
growth. In a nutshell, the World Bank is a development organisation, the
IMF ain’t. Second, while the World Bank is into long term projects, the
IMF is into short term projects. That conflict of interest will almost
certainly result in clashes after a merger. Third, the World Bank employs
about ten thousand staff, the IMF about three thousand. A merger of that
sort of magnitude will create a second Titanic, not a speed boat that can
quickly change direction when necessary.
In my humble
opinion, we better forget about merging the two Bretton Woods institutions.
In case mankind really needs the IMF – which I’m not entirely convinced
of – a few changes at that outfit may be worth mulling over. These changes
may reduce the rate of unnecessary casulties in the less developed world.
The following
is a list of articles written by Jurgen for the magazine:
To contact Jurgen
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