Monday, January 9, 2012

Another Embarrassing Debt Scandal Involving a PRI Governor

It's not just Coahuila now:
In a bit more than a year, the PRI's Miguel Alonso Reyes, governor of Zacatecas, multiplied the state's debt by a factor of almost eight.

The preceding administration, headed by the PRD's Amalia García, left the state with a debt of 718 million pesos, in September of 2010. In December of 2011, the total was 5.261 billion. This figure surpasses, by more than 200 million, what was approved by the local Congress. Additionally, the governor sought to issue another 372 million in debt.

The current administration no longer has enough to pay its suppliers nor the second part of its aguinaldo [the annual Christmas bonus].
Wasn't the younger generation of the PRI supposed to be different? I don't ask that to be a smartass, I find it genuinely odd that the exceedingly conservative management of debt and the generally responsible conduct of the economy in general over the past 15 years would not have rubbed off more on the 40-something set, and turned into something like the default approach to the political economy. I guess the lesson is that as the early 1980s and the mid-1990s fade from memory, younger politicians are growing more comfortable with risky fiscal policies.

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