Articles

LIMA – On February 17, Pope Francis is scheduled to celebrate Mass in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, just south of the border with the United States. He will surely take that opportunity to urge support for the poor in Mexico and for those who have migrated north.After all, that is what he did in September during his moving homily in New York’s Madison Square Garden. Referring to the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the US, he asked his listeners to reach out to “all those people who don’t appear to belong, or are second-class citizens…because they have no right to be there.

Read more: A Mexican Impasse for the Pope

Han pasado 14 años desde que el presidente George W. Bush declaró una “guerra global contra el terrorismo”. Hoy, tras gastar 1,6 billones de dólares y matar a 101 cabecillas (desde Osama bin Laden hasta Jihadi John), Occidente sigue siendo tanto o más vulnerable a los extremistas, que pueden reclutar combatientes y golpear casi con total libertad cualquier capital occidental. Ahora otro presidente (el francés François Hollande) también declaró la guerra al terrorismo, como lo han hecho otros líderes europeos. ¿Estará la victoria más cerca? Yo tengo mis dudas.

Read more: Cómo ganarle la guerra al terrorismo

It’s been 14 years since President George W. Bush declared a “global war on terror.” Today, after spending $1.6 trillion on that war and killing 101 terrorist chieftains, from Osama bin Laden to “Jihadi John,” the West remains just as vulnerable, if not more so, to extremists who can recruit fighters and strike any Western capital virtually at will. Now that another president – François Hollande of France – has also declared war on terror (as have other European leaders), are the prospects for victory really any better? I have my doubts.

Read more: This is how we can win the war on terror

Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century has attracted worldwide attention not because he crusades against inequality — many of us do that — but because of its central thesis, based on his reading of the 19th and 20th centuries: that capital “mechanically produces arbitrary, unsustainable inequalities” inevitably leading the world to misery, violence and wars and will continue to do so in this century. So far, Piketty’s critics have offered only technical objections to his number crunching without contesting his apocalyptic political thesis, which is clearly wrong. I know this because over the last years my teams conducted research in the field exploring countries where misery, violence and wars are rampant in the 21st century. What we discovered was that most people actually want more rather than less capital, and they want their capital to be real and not fictitious.

Read more: Hernando De Soto dissects Thomas Piketty’s apocalyptic political thesis

Le grand économiste péruvien Hernando de Soto taille en pièces le best-seller de l’essayiste français, “Le Capital au XXIe siècle”.

Par HERNANDO DE SOTO

Avec son best-seller Le Capital au XXIe siècle, Thomas Piketty a attiré l’attention du monde entier: non parce qu’il se bat contre les inégalités –nous sommes nombreux à le faire–, mais en raison de sa thèse centrale, tirée d’une analyse des XIXe et XXe siècles qu’il projette sur le XXIe siècle: le capital “entraîne mécaniquement des inégalités arbitraires et insoutenables” qui conduisent le monde à la misère, à la violence et aux guerres. Cette thèse est fausse, comme le montrent les recherches que j’ai menées avec mes équipes. Nous avons fait ce que ni Thomas Piketty ni personne n’avait accompli: explorer la misère, la violence et les guerres du XXIe siècle. Ce que nous avons découvert contredit Le Capital au XXIe siècle: les gens ne fuient pas le capital et ne se battent pas contre lui, ils le recherchent.

Read more: Les pauvres contre Piketty

By Hernando de Soto
Oct. 10, 2014

As the U.S. moves into a new theater of the war on terror, it will miss its best chance to beat back Islamic State and other radical groups in the Middle East if it doesn’t deploy a crucial but little-used weapon: an aggressive agenda for economic empowerment. Right now, all we hear about are airstrikes and military maneuvers—which is to be expected when facing down thugs bent on mayhem and destruction.

But if the goal is not only to degrade what President Barack Obama rightly calls Islamic State’s “network of death” but to make it impossible for radical leaders to recruit terrorists in the first place, the West must learn a simple lesson: Economic hope is the only way to win the battle for the constituencies on which terrorist groups feed.

Read more: The Capitalist Cure for Terrorism

Read about how Peru's poor were successful in defeating the Shining Path terrorism movement. This book was mentioned by ILDs Hernando de Soto in his latest article on Project Syndicate published on Novembr 4th, 2016. Como se menciona en el último artículo de Hernando de Soto, La Disyuntiva Colombiana: Los Terroristas o Sus Ciudadanos, aquí está la historia  de cómo el Perú venció al terrorismo.

Read more: The Story of How Peru Defeated Terrorism l La historia de cómo Perú derrotó al terrorismo

The protests that toppled governments were fueled by anger over the lack of a basic element in market economies.

By Hernando de Sotoa

February 26, 2013 - Al Qaeda is resurgent in Mali, Algeria and beyond. Violent turmoil and anti-Western hostility are rising in the Middle East and North Africa. Two years after the Arab Spring, it would be easy to become discouraged about what the mass awakening has wrought.

That would be a mistake. Unfortunately for al Qaeda and its allies, much more promising forces are at work, sending positive signals for the West, if only the West will listen.

Read more: The Secret to Reviving the Arab Spring's Promise: Property Rights

¿Por qué tanta cortesía con Movadef?

Por Hernando de Soto

Los delegados de Movadef —fachada legal de Sendero Luminoso— están siendo recibidos por gente decente, desde Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, premio Nobel de la Paz, hasta el ex-embajador en Argentina, Nicolás Lynch. Esa excesiva cortesía con Sendero es tan solo la punta del iceberg: una reciente compilación de más de 800 documentos escritos por extranjeros sobre la guerra contra Sendero, indica que la mayoría simpatiza con su causa. ¿Acaso no fueron terroristas? Sí y pocos lo dudan porque hasta la Comunidad Europea los calificó así, pero hay simpatía con la dimensión de “luchador social” —o “Robin Hood”— que convive con la de “asesino”.

Read more: Robin Hood y los liliputienses

4 October 2011 - Hernando de Soto argues that a series of myths and misconceptions continue to marginalise indigenous people and exclude them from integrating into the world economy. Yet in the Amazon, much like in the rest of the developing world and unlike in the fictional blockbuster Avatar, the story is much more complex. Millions of people living off natural resources face obstacles such as lack of property rights and legal recognition when seeking to participate in and benefit from the global economy. And while the concept of empowerment – giving excluded people the right to control their resources through the same property and business tools that wealthy people have – has guided discussions among international donors, they have found it difficult to put into practice.

De Soto challenges a series of myths that form the basis for disempowering attitudes towards indigenous populations, concluding with recommendations for governments and donors to enhance the ability of poor people to protect themselves from the drawbacks of globalisation, and benefit from its advantages.

Read more: Chapter 5: The Amazon is not Avatar

Features April 28, 2011

Renowned Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto argues that the financial crisis wasn't just about finance—it was about a staggering lack of knowledge

By Hernando de Soto

During the second half of the 19th century, the world's biggest economies endured a series of brutal recessions. At the time, most forms of reliable economic knowledge were organized within feudal, patrimonial, and tribal relationships. If you wanted to know who owned land or owed a debt, it was a fact recorded locally—and most likely shielded from outsiders. At the same time, the world was expanding. Travel between cities and countries became more common and global trade increased. The result was a huge rift between the old, fragmented social order and the needs of a rising, globalizing market economy.

Read more: The Destruction of Economic Facts

Opinion

February 3, 2011

More than 90% of Egyptians hold their property without legal title. No wonder they can't build wealth and have lost hope.

By Hernando de Soto

The headline that appeared on Al Jazeera on Jan. 14, a week before Egyptians took to the streets, affirmed that "[t]he real terror eating away at the Arab world is socio-economic marginalization."

The Egyptian government has long been concerned about the consequences of this marginalization. In 1997, with the financial support of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the government hired my organization, the Institute for Liberty and Democracy. It wanted to get the numbers on how many Egyptians were marginalized and how much of the economy operated "extralegally"—that is, without the protections of property rights or access to normal business tools, such as credit, that allow businesses to expand and prosper. The objective was to remove the legal impediments holding back people and their businesses.

Read more: Egypt's Economic Apartheid

Entrevista en “América Economía”, abril de 2009

Hernando de Soto viaja constantemente por países de los cinco continentes como cabeza del Instituto Libertad y Democracia (ILD), asesorando reformas legales en diferentes gobiernos y codeándose con los principales líderes mundiales. Todas estas millas de vuelo acumuladas lo han convencido de que la crisis económica mundial es, fundamentalmente, de orden legal y estructural, y que las respuestas no pueden limitarse al aspecto financiero. "Se está tratando de resolver con un palo de dientes un problema que requiere una pala", asegura con preocupación el economista más famoso del Perú. De Soto habló de esto y la crisis global con Cecilia Niezen, corresponsal de AméricaEconomía , en su gran casa en el distrito limeño de Surco. 

¿Cuánto tiempo considera que va durar la crisis que actualmente golpea la economía mundial?

En una conferencia en Moscú se nos preguntó a los cinco expositores sobre la crisis. Se pidió que levanten la mano los que creían que sería de 12 meses y solo uno levantó la mano. Los demás levantamos la mano en la alternativa de 60 meses.

Read more: La mirada de Hernando De Soto "Esta es una crisis legal y estructural"

March 25, 2009  Hernando de Soto

The Obama administration has finally come up with a plan to deal with the real cause of the credit crunch: the infamous "toxic assets" on bank balance sheets that have scared off investors and borrowers, clogging credit markets around the world.

But if Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner hopes to prevent a repeat of this global economic crisis, his rescue plan must recognize that the real problem is not the bad loans, but the debasement of the paper they are printed on.

Today's global crisis —a loss on paper of more than $50 trillion in stocks, real estate, commodities and operational earnings within 15 months— cannot be explained only by the default on a meager 7% of subprime mortgages (worth probably no more than $1 trillion) that triggered it. The real villain is the lack of trust in the paper on which they —and all other assets— are printed. If we don't restore trust in paper, the next default —on credit cards or student loans —will trigger another collapse in paper and bring the world economy to its knees.

Read more: Toxic Assets were Hidden Assets