Cliff Stearns: “perhaps the most amazing aspect of the Clinton administration's $53 billion loan bailout of Mexico--$20 billion of which…”

“perhaps the most amazing aspect of the Clinton administration's $53 billion loan bailout of Mexico--$20 billion of which comes straight out of the pockets of the U.S. taxpayers--is that it's a bailout that should not have happened. As the Washington Post recently reported, there were signs as early as February of last year that Mexico's economy was in serious trouble. At that time the International Monetary Fund issued a report stating that Mexico's consumption of foreign goods and services was outpacing the ability of its economy to pay for them. In other words, it was living on borrowed time--and money. Clinton administration officials expressed no alarm, not even when foreign investors began shifting money to dollar-denominated investments that would make it easier to pull funds out of Mexico. As a former analyst for Mexico's Banca Serfin Banking group said, ``That's a clear sign something was wrong * * * if the American Government didn't see that, they're blind.'' But that did not stop then-Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen from claiming in mid-February that Mexico ``has become an example for all of Latin America.'' He said this one year ago. Then in March, the Mexican financial markets suffered another shock when the ruling political party's Presidential candidate was assassinated. This prompted the Clinton administration to extend a $6 billion credit line to Mexico, even as Mexico was using up its reserve of U.S. dollars to prop up the peso.”