Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Peru loves financial crises, official


News from the "four legs good, two legs better" whacky world of Peruvian economics. FinMin Luis Miguel Valdivieso (that's him above.......err.........probably) now says that a world economic crisis is good for Peru. In his words (via OttoTrans):

"This crisis has helped us to achieve a more ordered growth."


You cannot make this shit up, really. Who is this joker trying to fool? Seriously, he either trying to impress the great unwashed masses who don't give a damn about his high falutin' economics things or he's trying to convince the chattering class who won't buy this crap in a million years.

What's the point in spouting crap like this? If you consider the alternative, is it possible that the gov't would say "Oh, we don't like all this growth. Wouldn't it be great to have a world crisis to help us out here?" if there were no crisis and Peru kept on whacking out GDP growth figures of 8% and 9% per annum (that help its population 0%, but who's countin' huh?).

Luismi goes on to explain that of the U$35Bn in investments planned for between now and 2011, the gov't expects U$30Bn to go ahead as scheduled. ROFL!!!! I laugh because I checked, and what I found is that U$15Bn of those proposed investments are base metals projects....y'know, copper and iron ore and their friends. I can sit here and confidently predict that previously fast-tracked projects will be deferred and be subjected to "further studies" until the cows come home. There is no way under the good Lord's heaven that Las Bambas (and all the satellite projects around it), Galeno, the Antamina expansion, the iron ore pies-in-sky proposed by Van Alphen and his band of serial pumpers and any and all of the other projects move ahead. The only one that will happen is Toromocho because the unfortunate Chinese involved fully committed just before the bottom fell out of copper. So let's call abut $3Bn of that 15 as in the realms of reality. The rest is in politicoeconomic cloud cuckoo land.


If you ever needed proof that an IMF lackey like Valdivieso is a outright liar that leads whole countries down the garden path on the behest of his controllers, today's the day.