Talking About Colombia

These are some of the headlines that caught my attention yesterday on Election Day in the U.S.:

Oh, Lovely: This Voting Machine in Pennsylvania Isn’t Accepting Votes for Obama.

Problems at the Polls.

Voter Fraud: A Massive, Anti-Democratic Deception.

GOP Voter Fraud Accusations Suddenly Blowing Up In Their Faces.

I also want to share a commentary written by Joseph Stiglitz. Stiglitz is a Nobel laureate in economics and University Professor at Columbia University. He was Chairman of President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers and served as Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank. His most recent book is The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers our Future.

Stiglitz believes the effects of Mitt “Romney’s policies in creating a more unequal and divided society would not be directly felt abroad. But, other countries that follow America’s lead will experience growing inequality – more money at the top, more poverty at the bottom, and a weaker middle class.”

Until just recently, inequality is being addressed in Colombia. Inequality is the ideological reason behind the FARC, the ELN, the Quintin Lame, the M-19 … all those groups that first began with the intention to help the poor.

Stiglitz believes “Romney’s policies to reduce deficits prematurely, while the U.S. economy is still frail, will almost surely weaken America’s already anemic growth, and, if the euro crisis worsens, it could bring on another recession. At that point, with U.S. demand shrinking, the rest of the world would indeed feel the economic effects of a Romney presidency quite directly.”

Romney promised to declare China a currency manipulator and hence, launch a trade war. The irony — other countries are accusing the U.S. of currency manipulation. (The Colombian peso versus the U.S. dollar is very strong at the moment.)

The U.S. exports three times more to Latin America than to China.

Nelson W. Cunningham, a columnist for the Huffington Post, wrote: “…despite Romney’s emphatic rhetoric about trade with Latin America, it’s not clear that he understands our commercial relations in the region at all. At the third debate, he said that Latin America’s economy was the same size as China’s. It’s not: He was off by $2 trillion. Brazil — the largest country in the region and its commercial powerhouse — is not mentioned even once on the Romney campaign page for Latin America. (Iran, not in Latin America, is mentioned twice). Mexico, our largest trading partner in the region, gets six mentions — five of them relating to drugs and violence and only one, obliquely, to trade.”

On another subject, Stiglitz added: “.. every other advanced country recognizes the right to accessible health care, and Obama’s Affordable Care Act represents a significant step toward that goal. But Romney has criticized this effort, and has offered nothing in its place.”

Lastly, in the after-math of Hurricane Sandy, why would America vote “climate deniers,” as are many of Romney’s advisers? Romney thinks climate change is an issue to joke about.

I welcome four more years of Obama.