Criticizing the President

Mexico City's La Jornada, a reliable opponent of Felipe Calderón and all things establishmentarian, slams the president with a phantom punch today. First, it tells us in a headline that the IMF says that Mexico's economic performance will be the worst in Latin America in 2009, before saying in the article that "the worst" merely means worse than Brazil's and below the regional average.

Also, the business group CCE has criticized the timidity of Calderón's anti-crisis plans, pointing out that the US and Brazil (embracing its role as Mexico's measuring stick, at least in this post) have both dedicated more funds to their rescue packages, with 1.4 percent and 5.4 percent, respectively, of each nation's GDP. This continues an odd pattern of politicians being much more receptive to Calderón's anti-crisis plans than the businesses community. (Odd because for most of his term, business has been a better friend to the president than the political class.) The point is well taken, but the comparison with the US is not very helpful, because American banks are crashing, and a huge portion of the bailout funds have gone to shore up banks. Mexico's banks are fine, so the government has no need to toss hundreds of billions of dollars at them.