Monthly Archives: July 2012

I seemed to be seeing the past and the future galloping head to head without end. A recent visit to India made me realize the so very dramatic contrast between two social and political realities that lie behind contrasting economic results. India and Mexico show that it is not only economic policy that determines growth: […]

The budget, said Schumpeter, is “the state stripped of ideological pretensions”. True to this principle, in Mexico public budgets serve private interests. Only a new federal-fiscal pact would correct this. Today’s budgets are not like those in the past. Until the mid-nineties, the federal government decided how to collect and how to distribute and spend […]

“The Prince”, wrote Machiavelli, “ought to be slow to believe and to act, nor should he himself show fear, but proceed in a temperate manner with prudence and humanity, so that too much confidence may not make him incautious and too much distrust render him intolerable”. President Calderón is a decent, responsible, and serious person […]

“Be careful what you wish for”, goes the old adage, “because it may come true”. The electorate as well as the new president-elect should meditate in these terms. The victory of Enrique Peña-Nieto was impeccable and indisputable. Viewed in retrospect, this electoral contest was a new watershed, similar to 2000. Now comes the good part. […]

For Bismarck, the great German chancellor, politicians“never lie as much as before elections, during a war, and after a hunt”. The citizen’s task on an election day such as today is to elucidate among the poses, proposals, images and… lies. Anything goes in an election and the one that ends today was no exception. Now […]