G Simon, you say that my analysis of the Haitian economy under Aristide is bad yet when you are proclaiming him a genius I never see you mentioning the fact that he personally encouraged hundereds of thousands, if not millions, of Haitians to put their money, in many cases their life savings, in cooperatives promising 10 to 15% return a month; of course that such a catch being too good to be true ended being bust thus resulting in all these poor people becoming not just poor anymore, but desperate.
How can a "genius" encourage his already destitute people to invest their savings into such a scam, where economists had warned him about a similar situation that occurred years earlier in a eastern european country and went bad? I find that no better than stealing money from people who do not know any better; worst when all these cooperatives closed their doors one after another, their owners all fled the country to the point that Aristide was accused of receiving money to let them leave the country.
"Economic genius" Aristide then went on television to tell the people that they need not worry because the state would refund them their money causing outcries that justice was not being served because the owners of the cooperatives were not even being pursued with all the money that they had scammed from the people; sadly enough, the state only ended up refunding small amounts of the big chunk that was stolen from the people to the point that CONASOVIC was born to put pressure on the Aristide to keep his promise to refund the money (mind you that Aristide was complaining that he his gov't was broke and not getting a cent from the international community); to no surprise the leader of CONASOVIC was jailed on charges of plotting against the security of the state with claims that the police had found weapons at his house.
Note that the only cooperative owner who was arrested was David Chery who confessed in jail to the leader of CONASOVIC that all of his cooperative's money had been pocketed by the government to finance a certain ALFA MOBIL campaign of which we barely saw any fruits and that there was no more money in hos cooperative's account.
That being said, I agree that there was an influx of finacial capital during Aristide's first 7 months in 1991, but where has all that financial capital gone? Aristide publicly asked George Bush Sr for a stiffer embargo on Haiti in Washington DC so that the military rule of Cedras would crack while in reality it put the Haitian economy on its knees and resulted in the lost of approximately 100,000 jobs in the manufacturing sector alone.
What should the diasporas who put their money in Haiti think after Aristide asked for sanction on an economy where they had invested?
