Saturday, January 05, 2013

Nuevo Congreso, las mismas viejas divisiones

Or, "New Congress, " a chance to talk to my friend Carolina Alvarez.  (gated, free registration, in Spanish)

Excerpt:

El nuevo Congreso mantuvo el balance de poder e incluso a sus líderes. Y con eso consolidó las divisiones que causaron una parális política en los últimos años, mientras enfrenta los mismos temas urgentes sobre los que no hay acuerdo: si elevar el techo de la deuda del país (que llega a US$ 16,4 billones) y qué hacer con los recortes en los gastos militares y programas domésticos (por US$ 109 mil millones) que el pacto sellado esta semana pospuso apenas por dos meses...

"Será lo mismo. Esperar hasta el último minuto, llegar a un falso acuerdo, pretender que todos sacrificaron algo y después todos irán a la reelección. Es una 'danza kabuki', el estilizado teatro japonés de sombras, sin sustancia", señaló a "El Mercurio" Michael Munger, profesor de política y economía de la Universidad de Duke. 

Or, in my awful Spanish-to-English translation:  

The new Congress maintained the balance of power and even kept the same leaders. And that cemented the divisions that caused political paralysis in recent years, as it faces the same urgent issues on which no agreement: whether to raise the debt ceiling in the country (which reached U.S. $ 16.4 trillion) and what to do with the cuts in military spending and domestic programs (U.S. $ 109 billion) to seal the deal this week postponed for two months only...

"It will be the same. Wait until the last minute, reach a fake agreement, pretend that everybody sacrificed something and then everyone goes home and gets re-elected.'s A 'kabuki dance,' the stylized Japanese theater of shadows, without substance," said Michael Munger, professor of politics and economics at Duke University. 

Heh heh.  Heh.  He said "Kabuki."

UPDATE:  Typos corrected, as suggested in comments.



2 comments:

Zachary said...

You meant 16.4 Trillion, not billion
And
Home, not ome

I mention it because I care [about the quality of this blog] :-)

Tom said...

In the U.S., "billion" means the ninth order; in England (outside the BBC), it means the twelfth order. Have I learned something about Chile?

And "mil millones"? It feels like "thousand millions". That can't be right.