Penny-ante neoliberal coups: the story of Honduras and Prospera

 I got around to the highly ill-making article about Prospera in the August 27 NYT Magazine.

I recommend reading it. And then reading the petition of the Progressive economists, here.

Prospera is one of those libertarian-fascist off shore wet dreams, birthed by the usual suspects: corrupt far right politicos and ethically deficient Nobel Prize winning “economists”. It is located on the Honduran coast, within Honduran territory – but of course, does not obey Honduran law.

The story of its making begins, of course, with a military coup. Nothing as grandiose as Pinochet – rather, more neo-liberal feel-good skulduggery of the pack the court and pop the president variety. The Honduran military, in 2009, with a little assistance from the Pentagon’s Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies [see this story] ousted the leftist president of Honduras and installed a creature named Porfirio Lobo (hark at the name: Porfirio!). As a far right president, Lobo had, of course, some alert little Harvard biz school-niks on his staff, and one of them had seen a lecture by Paul Romer. Romer gave a corporate shill TED talk all about helping the third world through corporations – much like Shell helping helping helping Nigeria.

Romer is, of course, a perfect corpo-tool, which is sort of required for getting the Nobel prize in Economics. Like the first getter of that prize, Fred Hayek, he came running when called by some rightwing generalissimo to help bury socialism. Between 2009 to 2013, Romer helped the Honduran government hammer out the terms of the laughably named Economic Development Zone – ZEDE – law. It was hurried along even after the Honduran Supreme court ruled against it – merely a matter of restocking the court.

Well, the Prospero corp, the starter fund for which was – via the magical laws of poetic injustice- put together by, Patri Friedman, Milton’s grandchild – started buying a chunk of Honduras’s coast and planning their slave plantation/utopia.

Everything was running as smoothly as a crypto-currency fraud when, suddenly, the rightwing government fell. Hernandez, Lobo’s successor, lost to the wife of the former leftwing president. Hernandez went on to a few other probs – he is under a 45 year sentence in the US for drugdealing – but he had, during his reign, done his best to insure the legal standing of Prospera.

This came to an end under the new Honduran government, which has pulled the plug on Romer’s ZEDEs. Naturally, the libertarians turned to one of those offshore legal entities foisted upon the global south by the inglorious Norrth: the World Bank’s International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes – a “court” which is as far as the mock Florida courts set up in the 2009s to railroad homeowners unfortunate enough to have bank mortgages, and banks fortunate enough to have courts overlook such technicalities as a paper trail, proper documents, and the like.

Honduras has withdrawn from the ICSID. But Prospera is persevering. If the sentence comes down, as it probs will, that Honduras owes them 11 billion dollars, everything will depend on the powers that be – basically the U.S. – treating this as a legitimate outcome.

We know how that will go under Trump. Don’t think that the Harris regime will do anything radically different. Unless they are forced to by public outcry.

Interesting sidenote: Prospera can sue Honduras. But can the Honduran government sue the U.S. for the help it gave to the generals who performed the military coup? Oh child, what earth are you living on! That is never going to happen.