CNE – Centro Para Una Nueva Economía – Center for a New Economy
Non-profit, economic research and policy development organization
The global economy is apparently beginning to recover from the most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression and the deepest recession since the end of World War II. In general terms this is good news, but hold the champagne, we are not out of the woods yet.
The White House reported over the weekend that 17,597 jobs have been “created or saved” in Puerto Rico thanks to the impact of federal stimulus spending in the island. According to this report, Puerto Rico has been awarded $1,936,135,565 in federal funds under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (“ARRA”), of which $200,030,374 have been “received”, and thus presumably spent.
The smoking ruins in CAtaño are a grim reminder of Puerto Rico’s extreme dependence on fossil fuels. Indeed, one of the biggest challenges we currently face lies in transforming our fossil fuel-based energy economy to a stable, sustainable energy economy.
Yesterday the administration presented a report on the use of funds available to Puerto Rico under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (“ARRA”). To date, Puerto Rico has spent $1.2 billion in ARRA funds, which have generated 1,600 jobs. Thus, according to official statistics, 1.33 jobs have been created for every $1 million of ARRA funds spent so far.
Professors Steven Davis and Luis Rivera Batiz, in an analysis conducted for their contribution to the book The Economy of Puerto Rico: Restoring Growth, published in 2006 by the Center for the New Economy and the Brookings Institution, found that a “truly striking feature of Puerto Rico’s economy is the underdeveloped state of its private sector”. According to their analysis, private sector employment rates in Puerto Rico are less than half the U.S. rates in recent decades.
200,000 new jobs are good but they are not sufficient to keep up with population growth. According to data from the Puerto Rico Planning Board, Puerto Rico’s civilian population 16 years and older increased from 2,788,000 in July 1999 to 3,068,000 in July 2009, a net increase of 280,000 persons, equivalent to an average of 28,000 persons per year.
Al momento de escribir este post el jueves 24 de septiembre por la tarde nos encontramos en medio de la cuenta regresiva para el anuncio de despidos masivos en el sector gubernamental—una polĂtica que aun el Economist de Inglaterra considera como “unwise” en el medio de una recesiĂłn.
In 1985 the Johns Hopkins University Press published a book by Richard Weisskoff entitled Factories and Food Stamps: The Puerto Rico Model of Development. The book, as you can deduce from the title, is a withering critique of the Puerto Rican economic development model.
