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ischiappacasse.bsky.social
@ischiappacasse.bsky.social
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benbraun.bsky.social
Tracing the political power of business and finance is hard, because the politics is often 'quiet', power is structural, etc. Demonstrating that Piñera & friends prevailed against the objections of a military dictator (stated 14 times by Pinochet in the decisive session) is quite something.
January 14, 2025 at 2:54 PM
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benbraun.bsky.social
New paper by ischiappacasse.bsky.social & co-author. *Incredible* Pinochet quotes from the secret sessions in which Chile's Junta decided the mother of all pension privatizations. He accused Piñera & his finance allies–"a bunch of crooks"–of engineering a bonanza.
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
‘Who will manage the money? That gets me nervous because I also know that several gentlemen are becoming millionaires in this country, and they have sent people [abroad] to study the [pension] system since they want to operate in it’, said General Augusto Pinochet in October 1980 during the opening of the key secret session in which the military Junta discussed – and ultimately passed the proposed reform to privatise Chile’s pension system.1 Later during the same meeting, the powerful dictator was to reiterate his concerns several times: ‘I believe that a new pension system is necessary, but the fact that there will be so much money and [that] here we have a bunch of crooks [who might take advantage of the system] causes me anguish.’ As mentioned in the introduction above, Pinochet raised his concerns regarding the management of the funds in the opening of the first session: ‘I also agree on the fact that the social security system has to be modified ... But at the same time, I have said that I do not agree with the idea that the funds go to the private sector.’103 Then, he openly proposed that funds be managed by the state: "Therefore, Minister [Piñera], everything is OK, but when we discuss the issue of the management of the funds, I hesitate. Let me explain: could it be that one of our agencies, a responsible state agency ... such as the Central Bank, that such an agency could hold the money and assign it to banks and ‘cajas’, I don’t know, I can’t work it out at the moment." Later, he once again made clear his reservations about the role the private sector was to play in the defined-contribution, for-profit system: "I maintain the apprehensions I pointed out before. Why? Because here there are two gentlemen who are trying to grab ... I will not name them, but you know perfectly well who they are since Hoy magazine published a report on this ... The machinery is so big, but if you remove the nut at the bottom the whole building collapses. The evidence is clear: they have built an empire. Therefore, I have found out ... they will be those who will ruin the [pension] system." Title of the article: Can Powerful Dictators Escape ‘The Market as Prison’? The Case of Pension Privatisation in Pinochet’s Chile By Ignacio Schiappacasse and Diego Sánchez-Ancochea
January 14, 2025 at 2:54 PM