CNE – Centro Para Una Nueva Economía – Center for a New Economy
Non-profit, economic research and policy development organization
On June 29, the U.S. House of Representatives approved the American Clean Energy and Security Act by the narrow margin of 219 to 212. This comprehensive bill, which now moves on to the Senate, seeks to create clean energy jobs, achieve energy independence, and reduce global warming pollution.
Hace poco tuve una de esas experiencias frecuentes que nos unen a todos los puertorriqueños. Estaba tratando de resolver un problema por teléfono con una agencia de Gobierno.
In one of his best-known poems, William Butler Yeats wrote that there are times when things fall apart and the center cannot hold; when the best seem to lack all conviction and the worst run about full of passionate intensity. A pithy summary, perhaps, of the times we are living in Puerto Rico.
Como parte de nuestro programa de “Futuro fiscal”, y cumpliendo con nuestra misión de proveer análisis independiente y de alto rigor a los asuntos económicos importantes del país, el Centro para la Nueva Economía ha desarrollado una serie de indicadores sobre el desempeño fiscal de Puerto Rico los cuales acabamos de actualizar con la data del presupuesto recomendado por la actual Administración para el año fiscal 2009-10.
This Fiscal Update Report prepared by the Center for a New Economy (CNE) presents an independent analysis of the proposals contained in the Governor’s budget request for fiscal year 2009-2010. The analysis is based on CNE’s evaluation and interpretation of the budget data, rather than the Administration’s, and may incorporate estimates made by CNE’s staff or by other private sector analysts.
In 2008, the Center for the New Economy, in fulfillment of its mission to provide rigorous, independent analysis to policymakers, the press, and the public at large, established a fiscal analysis program to monitor and keep track of important fiscal trends affecting the Puerto Rican economy. As part of that program, we developed a series of budget performance indicators, which we have updated with data from the budget for fiscal year 2009-10.
Some economists in the U.S. have started to talk about the Great Recession of 2009 when analyzing the current economic downturn. In the U.S. alone, home equity lost, between 2006 and 2008, $4.2 trillion; the value of retirement assets has declined by $2.3 trillion; while other investments and savings show losses of an additional $2.5 trillion.
In this paper we examine the establishment and operations of a CDA program in Caguas, Puerto Rico. This program affords us an opportunity to test whether asset-building policies can provide a new approach to social welfare in Latin American countries and Hispanic communities in the United States, a middle way between paternalistic, government-based social programs on the one hand and so-called neo-liberal approaches on the other.
