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Today, I want to talk about the aproval of new taxes from a legislative point of view. These taxes are being created to cover "social investment" costs that have been leadered by Alvaro Colom, and have been called "Social Cohesion". On February 24, the presence of Finance Minister Juan Alberto Fuentes, the head of the Superintendency of Tax Administration, Rudy Villeda, and the president of Banco de Guatemala, Maria Antonieta de Bonilla, was announced in the the benches of the Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG), banking Guatemala (BG), Nationalist Change Union (UCN) and the Partido de Avanzada Nacional (PAN), in order to ensure their vote on new taxes. It seems they have failed to convay a good case, not being able to proove how this new investment will compensate or justify the pressure and weight this new tax law will put on Guatemala´s already challenged economy. I agree with the political parties´s skeptisism. I am not convinced that the outcome of this "S...

It was more than a year and a half ago, between august and september 2007, that I wrote an article about the Plan for Hope . The plan was the promise that took Ing. Álvaro Colom, to the presidency in January 14th, 2008. The article was published in the "Siglo XXI" Newspaper, and is proof of both the acuracy of my predictions in the last few months and a warning for the next few. This is part of what I wrote: "... The plan (The document) is 274 pages long, and seems to be structured and supported in the ´Social Democratic´ Theory. The strategic programs that are proposed are: Solidarity Governability Productivity Regionalization. (...) The enphasis made on decentralization through the empowerment of municpalities, being a key policy for the country´s sustainable development, is very positive. (...) (...) I was not confortable reading the governments stand point on free market, specially when it states the following: "Markets when posible and state when necessary...