In today's column, Paul Krugman writes that Obama's debt ceiling deal > will damage an already depressed economy; it will probably make America’s long-run deficit problem worse, not better; and most important, by demonstrating that raw extortion works and carries no political cost, it will take America a long way down the road to banana-republic status.<
this seems an insult to banana republics. After all, when it fit this epithet a country like Honduras -- often seen as the classical case of República bananera -- was under foreign thumbs, from the Wikipedia: > Banana republic is a pejorative term that refers to a politically unstable > country dependent upon limited primary productions (e.g. bananas), and ruled > by a small, self-elected, wealthy, corrupt politico-economic plutocracy or > oligarchy. The term banana republic originally denoted the fictional > “Republic of Anchuria”, a “servile dictatorship” that abetted (or supported > for kickbacks) the exploitation of large-scale plantation agriculture, > especially banana cultivation. As a political science term banana republic is > a descriptor first used by the American writer O. Henry in Cabbages and Kings > (1904), a book of thematically related short stories derived from his 1896–97 > residence in Honduras, where he was hiding from U.S. law for bank > embezzlement... >The long history of political discontent and insurrection in Honduras derives >from commercial and political competition between banana exporters, e.g. the >United Fruit Company and the Cuyamel Banana Company, for control of Honduran >agricultural land and workers. In 1911 Sam Zemurray, owner of the Cuyamel >Company hired mercenaries, led by “General” Lee Christmas, to effect a coup >d’état to depose the liberal President Miguel R. Dávila (1907–11), with whom >the United Fruit Company was colluding for a banana monopoly in exchange for >brokering U.S. Government loans for Dávila's government; the Cuyamel Banana >Company deposed President Dávila and installed President Gen. Manuel Bonilla >(1912–13) in his stead. Contemporarily, internal political instability and a >great foreign debt — more than $4 billion — have excluded Honduras from >capital investment, thereby continuing its economic stagnation, and >reinforcing its banana republic status.< -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
