Chile: Robbing Peter to pay for reconstruction?

A parody of one of Sebastián Piñera’s campaign posters. The caption reads: “Reducing everyone’s salaries. This is not how we want Chile!”

I said this man would try to run Chile like a business, and sure enough, he’s gonna do just that. The question is, what kind of business will it be? Read this, and see if you can tell me…

The president of Chile, Sebastián Piñera, said on Monday that eventually, some state companies could be privatized in order to finance the process of reconstruction after February’s earthquake.

According to a Chilean television interview, printed today in the daily La Nación, the president admitted that the early days of his government have been “difficult and hard.”

He remarked that the catastrophe will cost Chile some $30 billion, a sum equivalent to 17% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Piñera announced that the financing of the plan to recuperate the country will consider, among other things, fiscal austerity, reassignment of resources from programs which are not priorities, the use of Chilean savings in foreign banks, and even “adjustments in tax matters”.

Translation mine.

And now, I think I know why he doesn’t regret having boogied with Dictator Pinochet, and why he’s all testy and defensive whenever anyone challenges him on it. It’s because he thinks the economic catastrophe that the latter unleashed, back in his day–more than the equivalent of this earthquake in wreckage, both materially and morally–was not only acceptable, but the right thing to do.

This man appears to be hellbent on destroying the country in order to “save” it. A veritable economic My Lai in the making.

Oy vey.