AMLO; so far from Roosevelt and so close to Williamson | Article

Alberto Vizcarra Ozana

Although it has been warned since the founding of Christianity that not everyone who says Lord, Lord, usually does the will of the father, for some it is enough that the president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador mention such historical figures as Franklin D Roosevelt, declare it “Roosevelt”. It is true that the President does not hesitate to remember important historical figures. He leans into their shadow as if they served as a safe-conduct to go down in history. The President’s problem is not to call them out, his problem is that he has shown neither the courage nor the moral strength to emulate them.

Many times Lopez Obrador reflected on the figure of the President of North America, who removed USA belonging Great Depression of the late 1920swith a series of monetary and financial reforms that restored to the state the constitutional authority to regulate unbridled speculation in the banking sector and to pursue a vigorous policy of public investment and credit, which in a few years turned North America into world economic power.

One of the directions of such a policy was focused on saving Agriculture, creating a set of tools to revitalize farms, many of which were abandoned by the crisis or died due to the usurious practices of banks. The Roosevelt government began in March 1933, the same month and year that the German Parliament succumbed to Hitler’s dictatorship. War was considered inevitable, and the United States was busy building up its economic power in a consistent and sound food policy.

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The impact of the Great Depression on North American agriculture was enormous, not too different from what is happening today with the impact that the fall in the prices of basic grains inflicted on dependent or peripheral countries such as Mexico. When the stock market panic of 1929 occurs, there is a sharp fall in the agricultural price index of more than 65 percent, while the prices of everything that farmers require continued to rise or with a minimal fall, causing growing losses in terms of trade. From the time of his election campaign to the beginning of his administration, Roosevelt recognized the need government intervention rebuild agriculture, recognizing that it cannot remain aloof from supply and demand, which is dominated commercial and financial corporate structures.

In his campaign speech in Topeka, Kansas on September 14, 1932, Roosevelt sketched in advance what would become Agricultural Regulation Law(AAA, Agricultural Adjustment Act), and raises the need for a national planning program that sets production targets, promulgates a policy of significant price increases for agricultural products (price guarantees or parity prices), together with the opening of a credit system and restructuring of all agricultural mortgages who drowned the American village. In November of that year, he summarized what was proposed in Topeka and defined it as “a complete national plan for the restoration of agriculture until it takes its proper place in the country.”

The priority that President Roosevelt gave to the restoration of agriculture was inscribed in a reform package, the cornerstone of which was a commemorative Glass-Steagall lawinstrument that empowered the presidency of the United States intervene in the banking system and to draw a strict separation between savings and loan banking and so-called (speculative) investment banking. The government has taken responsibility for rebuilding the physical economy, pension systems, education and health care, and launched a massive program to create millions of jobs in a matter of weeks. The state is not responsible for the debt burden received as a result of speculative activities.

Having abandoned the Mexican producers of basic grains, in the midst of a deafening falling world prices for wheat, corn and sorghumPresident Andrés Manuel López Obrador kept very far from his laudatory recollections of the historical figure Roosevelt, as he did throughout his government, and with the broad lines that guided his failed economic policies, fundamentally adjusted to the neoliberal orthodoxy, defined as Washington Consensus economist John Williamson. All the macroeconomic precepts of this policy have been literally carried out by President López Obrador: fiscal discipline that does not allow public spending to function as an inhibitor of economic growth, systematic reduction of public spending, increasing liberalization of the banking system, blind orientation towards the external sector of the economy, deregulation and indiscriminate opening of business, and a monetary policy that is completely unrelated to the needs of national economic growth, carried out with the statement of state autonomy. Bank of Mexico.

With this match we have President López Obrador far from the historical figure of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Mexican president’s contempt for agricultural producers puts him in opposition to Roosevelt and doctrinally brings it closer to John Williamson.

Ciudad Obregon, Sonora, July 18, 2023

Source: Aristegui Noticias

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