ISSN (Print) - 0012-9976 | ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846

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Two Countries, One Corporation and Its Intellectual Property Rights

Monsanto is known to throw tantrums when it does not get the kind of protection it wants from governments for its intellectual property assets, threatening to leave countries if they do not provide it. This has happened in Argentina and now in India. These may look like country-specific disputes on genetically modified seed technologies, but there is much more than what meets the eye.

Argentina: 18 Months of Popular Struggle

To understand the complex and changing reality of Argentina today - a five-year economic depression, financial collapse, popular uprising and mass movements of 2001-2002 as well as the recent return of traditional political parties to political power - it is important to identify the principal political-economic events which shape the present and future perspectives for the popular social and political movements.

Argentina's Crisis: Causes and Consequences

During the east Asian crisis of 1997, Argentina was being referred to as a model state because of its fixed exchange rate regime. However, by 2001, due to several macroeconomic reasons the economy had collapsed. It is now clear that Argentina will reverse at least some of the economic reforms introduced by president Carlos Mennen in the early 1990s to survive the crisis it is currently experiencing. That small and open economies are far more susceptible to large external shocks, such as changes in foreign interest rates, terms of trade, regional contagion effects, etc, is among the many lessons of the Argentine crisis.

Calcutta Diary

The people in Buenos Aires and other towns and cities in the Argentine Republic have rolled into the streets with their pots and pans and sticks and umbrellas and faced police batons and tear gas shells and flying bullets because they have a tolerance level which is different from ours. We are hungrier than they, more emaciated, with less health care and with perceptibly less clothing and other protection against the elements. Compared to the Argentinians the level of tolerance in our case is pronouncedly on a higher plateau. The wretched categories in India have a level of consciousness, or of awareness, of a low order.

Restructuring Argentina's Debt: How Is It Going to Happen?

In the case of Ecuador about a year ago, to effect sovereign debt restructuring, lawyers turned to a solution embedded in the bond contracts themselves, using what is termed as an 'Exit Consent' offer. The lessons of the Ecuador experience are very relevant to Argentina today as a possible way to restructure its debt without the need for either a bail-out brokered by, say, the IMF or an international bankruptcy regime.

Unemployed Workers' Movement in Argentina

The development of the mass urban unemployed workers' movement in Argentina challenges the assumption of the atomised impotent urban poor, a case worth exploring for its innovative features and its explosive possibilities for the rest of Latin America.

Letter from Havana

The recently concluded Third International Conference of Economists in Havana delivered a scathing criticism of the impact of neo-liberalism and market forces on Latin America. This region has seen widespread devastation following the slow down of the US economy - a fall in commodity prices; decline in per capita income have conspired to make it much poorer than it had been in 1980.

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