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Strategies & Market Trends : Value Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Spekulatius who wrote (23969)	5/20/2006 11:46:21 AM
From: gcrispin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 78705

A bit unrelated, but my take is that there is an unquantifiable risk to investing in PVD, which you have mentioned before. I believe, from the excerpt below, reducing the "high commissions" will be part of the reform they will be seeking. "It's not at all clear, however, that Bachelet is willing to break with the neoliberal model her coalition has been managing since the end of the Pinochet regime. Like Salvador Allende, she is a socialist and a doctor, but the comparison stops there. "Latin America is now moving from one development strategy--the Washington Consensus--to a new model of development," says economist Manuel Riesco of the Center of National Studies for Alternative Development. "We have to wait and see if Bachelet also takes steps in that direction, but at least the composition of her cabinet doesn't indicate any changes in that regard. The cabinet seems to reflect continuity of the previous Concertación governments." Indeed, an unexpectedly high number of new ministers (seven of twenty) come from the most conservative wing of her coalition. Economics minister Ingrid Antonijevic is a favorite of the ultraconservative associations of bankers and industrialists. One of Bachelet's immediate challenges is to reform the pension fund system, privatized by Pinochet in 1981. Among the system's many faults is that while the companies that invest workers' contributions in the stock market (and charge extraordinarily high commissions) are making record profits, about three-fourths of retirees now receive less than the minimum monthly pension of $140. Bachelet's response: a plan to appoint a commission charged with drawing up a reform bill. "Pension reform will seek to improve the system, not replace it," is how Bachelet's official program puts it." thenation.com