Recently we posted an article about the apparent beginning of changes for the better that we were observing in  several countries.  Those countries included the United States, Chile, and Argentina. In these cases the voters decided to replace the politicians in office for free market oriented men with successful business experience. It’s pretty hard to turn the Titanic when it’s been on the same course for a long time but you have to start somewhere and the process has at least begun..

As you know, while we like all the countries in the Southern Cone for prospective investment and/or second home, we think Chile is in very good shape. Many expats were worried about the socialist/Marxist influence that was in office in Chile. But as we wrote a few weeks ago, that changed with Chile’s last election, making another positive for Chile. As we also reported earlier, in this world of ridiculous debt, even Chile’s national debt is low.  Argentina is trying to unravel years of destructive socialism.

Our resident real estate  developer in  Talca, Chile, Darren Kaiser, sent us his informed analysis of Chile in a bit more detail. Following comments from Darren:

“The person taking office as Chile’s president is the free market oriented entrepreneur, Sebastian Piñera.

“Piñera is a bilingual Fulbright scholar who’s served as president in the past. He received 54% of the vote and was largely responsible for a 7% rally in the local stock market right after the election. .

“During Piñera’s previous term (from 2010 to 2013), the economy grew at an average of 5% per annum and the country maintained one of the lowest debt to GDP ratios in the Americas in large part to the streamlining of some of the country’s more bureaucratic sectors.

“This time around he’ll be taking over just as things are starting to look quite interesting for two of the nation’s primary resources, copper and lithium, and has already drastically improved confidence within the business community.

“In a country with a population of just 17 million, the effects of local policy can usually be seen much more quickly than in some other parts of the world.

“Just in the last 24 hours (from this writing) it’s been made apparent that the promise of a more efficient public sector placing less burden on local markets has been enough to push investors off the sidelines and onto the playing field.

“The Southern Cone countries of Chile and Argentina have both taken turns to create more pragmatic governments in the past couple of years now.

“Instead of promising their citizens the moon while running up gargantuan debt loads and indebting future generations, they’re more concerned with setting up a long term, sustainable financial system.

“Given the fact that most countries around the planet are heading in the exact opposite direction, you can rest assured that there’s going to be increasing competition to gain exposure to this part of the world in years to come.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

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