Our Brand is Crisis
In this week’s film entitled “Our Brand is Crisis” we see the consultants from the firm called Greenberg Caville Shrum who assist with a government election in Latin America which so happens to turn out crooked. The effort to sell the idea to the Bolivian citizens about the economic and political issues that were to be solved with the experience of Goni results in his presidency. Yet when the Bolivians see Goni’s presidency as a failure because the Bolivian natives feel that Goni sold out on the people’s interests and failed to produce jobs that he promised Capitalism would bring with it. According to Cypher he claims that not a single country in Latin America escaped the authority of the Washington Consensus. Macroeconomic imbalances were brought under control, barriers dealing with international trade were lifted as well as state owned enterprises were privatized. He states that the promise to improve the people lives with the help of the government by outside or government elected sources is debatable. Chile and Bolivia both adopted plans that were similar to the Washington Census
Perkins on the other hand was more concerned with convincing countries that were tied to the United States to enter into enormous loans for infrastructure development and to make sure that projects were also contracted to U.S. corporations. He also explains how he convinced these countries to accept loans in the billions which they surely couldn’t afford. As the result of these acts Perkins claims that these actions can be associated with terrorist attacks that have been directed toward the United States. The funnelling of these actions came from the World Bank, USAID, and other foreign aids that emptied into the pockets of wealthy families who controlled the natural resources of the world. The reason Perkins claims the debt for other nations was to allow the debt owned countries to provide favors such as military aid or aid in oil as well as UN votes.
In conclusion “Our Brand in Crisis” reflects on a firm who assists Goni in Bolivia during political elections in order to help him get elected to presidency by the citizens of Bolivia. The fooling of other countries into falling into the “snake pit” of the United States in my opinion were taken advantage and should have never had firms putting other nations into debt.