On June 5, Ministers of Defense and Foreign Relations from South American countries met in Asunción, Paraguay  to discuss the future of the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti – or  MINUSTAH. Ten of the twelve countries in the regional group known as UNASUR – the Union of South American Nations - contribute troops to MINUSTAH and make up nearly 50 percent of the entire force. As we have described in other posts, there has been quite a bit of debate regarding  MINUSTAH in troop-contributing countries, especially Brazil, the largest contributor.

Since last summer, there has also been a wave of civil society opposition to the ongoing presence of foreign military troops in Haiti, as attested by separate letters addressed to Latin American presidents and the UN Secretary General and signed by prominent intellectuals and human rights defenders from throughout Latin America. This opposition has been bolstered by a string of recent sexual abuse cases, including more than one involving troops from UNASUR member country Uruguay, as well as the overwhelming evidence suggesting that MINUSTAH bears responsibility for introducing cholera into Haiti.

As the Telesur correspondent in Paraguay, Amanda Huerta explained, there were two competing positions among UNASUR countries: those that favored a rapid reduction of troops and a shift in focus to reconstruction and humanitarian activities and those who favored maintaining current troop levels until 2014. The final declaration on MINUSTAH noted the need to develop a policy of sustained cooperation which “respects the sovereignty and the self-determination of the Haitian people”. Further, ministers agreed to form a working group “for the purposes of elaborating a scheme on the strategy, form, conditions, stages, and timeline of a Plan of Reduction of Contingents of the Military Component of the Mission.” Given the large role South American countries play in MINUSTAH (an importance clearly recognized by the United States), any decision made on reducing troops would have a tremendous impact on MINUSTAH’s future in Haiti.

Dean Baker
Yahoo! Finance, June 19, 2012

Dean Baker
The Guardian Unlimited, June 18, 2012

Dean Baker
Truthout, June 18, 2012

Last Friday, the IMF released a Public Information Notice on the Executive Board’s discussion of Jamaica’s Article IV consultation, an annual report in which the IMF assesses member countries’ economic programs. Of course, the timing was perfect, released just one day after the conclusion of the Jamaican parliamentary debate on its 2012/13 budget.  The Article IV discussion clearly shows which way the IMF’s Executive Board—or at least 62.5 percent of it— wants Jamaica to go: further fiscal austerity.

The Jamaican Finance Minister had told Parliament that there were no pre-conditions that had to be met before securing a new IMF loan. Nonetheless, Jamaica’s new “creditor’s budget” is explicitly designed to placate the IMF after the previous loan agreement veered off track over a year ago, when the Jamaican government defied the IMF by paying out back wages and giving already agreed-upon raises to public sector workers. The new budget for 2012/13 cuts non-interest expenditure by two percentage points of GDP—this despite the fact that GDP remains below its 2007 level and per capita GDP is not projected to reach its 2007 level until after 2017.

The IMF praised the cuts, as the Executive Directors “welcomed the authorities’ efforts to increase the primary surplus in this fiscal year.” In addition, “[t]hey were generally of the view that a strong upfront fiscal adjustment would provide credibility to the program.” But not all of the 24 Executive Directors agreed. In a rarely seen move, the IMF press release notes that a “number of Directors, however, supported a balanced pace of adjustment to safeguard the fragile recovery and social cohesion.” Flipping to the convenient “Qualifiers Used in Summings Up of Executive Board Meetings,” one finds that a “number” of Directors means from six to nine. In other words, over a quarter of the Executive Board cautioned against such front-loaded fiscal austerity.

That's what he told us in a column that purported to show why Obamacare is bad for the economy. While he gave a list of reasons as to why the bill is bad policy, since his list doesn't hold much water, we are primarily left with the conclusion that Samuelson simply doesn't like the bill.

Reason #1 is that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) "increases uncertainty and decreases confidence when recovery from the Great Recession requires certainty and confidence."

I know this is a Republican talking point, but I really don't have a clue what it means. Employers who currently offer insurance are in a situation where insurers can raise costs by almost any amount for the following year or drop plans altogether. (I have seen both -- extraordinary price increases and the elimination of a health care plan in my years as co-director of CEPR.)

The ACA will lead to considerable more government oversight of insurers which presumably means they will be less able to have erratic increases in prices or drop plans arbitrarily. Employers also have the option of dropping insurance and paying the penalty (2.5 percent of wages for employers with more than 50 employees). In this case they would know exactly what their costs would be.

If the uncertainty created by the ACA is really slowing recovery we should expect to see weaker job growth concentrated in the firms that would be most affected, those with 45 or more employees (they could cross the 50 employee cutoff in the not distant future) who do not currently offer their workers' insurance. The data do not indicate that employment growth among these firms has been notably slower than for other firms in the recovery.

Reason #2 is that the ACA raises the cost of labor and therefore will reduce hiring. Samuelson tells us: