July 24, 2007 (LPAC)--Mexican Treasury Secretary Agustin Carstens, who went straight from being #3 at the IMF to running Mexico's economy, has submitted a "fiscal reform" bill to Mexico's Congress which turns out to be nothing less than a scheme to put through a Nazi-style restructuring, which, if proposed in its own name, the financiers know they could never get approved.

The centerpiece of the fiscal reform is a new tax, the so-called "Single Rate Business Contribution" (CETU), which would tax businesses on their income after deducting input costs and investment in plant and equipment. Salaries and benefits, however, would not be deducted (i.e., businesses would pay taxes on the salaries and benefits they pay out), but they would be allowed to deduct "fees" paid to workers. The result is obvious: businessmen are given a tax incentive to fire salaried workers en masse, and replace them with temporary workers, who receive no benefits.

That, in turn, would cut the government's social security and health care "burden," because non-salaried workers lose their affiliation to the government social security and health care system, IMSS. Temporary workers are left with the choice of either turning to a private health insurer, and assuming the costs themselves, or affiliating with IMSS as "independent workers" under a program which the new administration of IMSS, put in by the Calderon government, has announced should be abolished.

All in all, a program worthy of an IMF butcher.