Blogging the democratic revolution
Economist Steve Hanke has a brilliant essay in today’s Wall Street Journal on his experience and knowledge of Montenegro. Professor Hanke is one of the most important sources of reliable information on the country’s progress and very knowledgeable about the leadership of the country. Notice that recurring theme of currency turmoil that has begun to recur in the Fareed Zakaria essay on populism and on the Pedro Camargo Ecuador essay – it is the very same story, in spades, in Montenegro. Currency devaluation and economic mismanagement are as good triggers as any for independence and democratic revolution. For Montenegro, the…
Via Real Clear Politics, I have found an exceptional essay by the excellent Fareed Zakaria on the problems Americans have perceiving the world’s vast move toward democratic revolution. Zakaria writes that Americans are pretty convinced that their country is the beacon of freedom. And with its visa lines and 12-million-strong illegal alien count, who is to argue with us? But he discusses how inside countries like Russia and Singapore, there really are a lot of people who support their existing governments, flaws and all. And part of the reason they do is that they have the memory of the world…
Evo Morales’ nationalization of Bolivia’s energy resources seemed to be the act of a retrograde madman intent on repeating the mistakes of the 1960s. And largely, that’s what he is. He’s taking Bolivia right down the road to ruin, as if this poor country can afford any more of that. Nationalization has got to be the stupidest, insanest, most guaranteed-to-fail thing he can possibly do for, or rather, to, Bolivia. Yet there are many people … for now … who support him. It defies belief that in this day and age, anyone could possibly support the messes of the idiotic…
Today signals the beginning of the end for Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. His oil-fueled pork-barrel project to buy off the Americas and secure absolute power is now showing signs of fraying badly at the seams. It has to tatter, of course, and the reason is simple: Chavez’s Cuban socialism does not work. Three powerful news items around Hugo Chavez’s personal ATM machine — I mean, Venezuela’s oil production — tell the story, and these stories are starting to arrive fast and thick: 1. All new (corrected, thank you Nick) oil production from 32 operating contracts with foreign firms HAS COMPLETELY…
Blogger Boli-Nica, a Bolivian national who knows a load of baloney when he sees it, whales hell out of the newest development coming out of that Chavisticating country: The army of 400 auditors from Venezuela’s flamingly corrupt, incompetent, thieving oil company rolling in to inspect the books at Bolivia’s national energy company. Boli points out that there’s something distinctly unsavory about the auditors of ONE country, coming down to audit the books of COMPETITOR! When has that ever happened except in a hostile takeover? It’s scary indeed. Aside from that, Boli points out that Venezuela’s auditors have an Augean Stable…
Who could have a fortune like that but an absolute ruler, a totalitarian dictator like Fidel Castro himself? The bearded beast is today worth $900 million, thanks to high commodity prices and some help from his little Venezuelan friend. Cubans go hungry, making less than a dollar a day, and freeze ice for lunch so that the meal tastes more like “food.” The obesity epidemic is nonexistent in Cuba and it’s not because of any accomplishment of Castrodom, let alone too many rabbit salads. It’s due to starvation living conditions. Castro, meanwhile, traipses around billionaire-style, isolated, alone, Gatsby-like, in a…
Alvicho at Off Topic notices a creepy similarity here. I dare you to argue with it!
With the nationalization of Bolivia’s energy resources, the two biggest victims in this are socialist Brazil and socialist Spain. Franco, I am still waiting for you to give us word from Spain on this Bolivian travesty, so in the meantime, consider Brazil: Evo Morales is determined to play approximately the same tormenting role to Brazil that Hugo Chavez plays to the U.S. – that of underdeveloped big energy supplier that revels in politicizing the energy supply and seeking very high prices. Bolivia is actually better positioned than Venezuela for that nuisance role, because natural gas, which Bolivia exports to Brazil,…
Right after signing a hellish pact with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Fidel Castro of Cuba, Bolivian President Evo Morales signed a decree nationalizing the natural gas fields of Bolivia. Color this country gone as a serious energy player now. Morales sent in troops to take over the assets of companies like BG, Total, Petrobras and Repsol-YPF. Exxon Mobil, too was hit. He did it on communist day, which is May Day. Obviously, he’s pretty confident that the Western aid spigot will always be running for him. And obviously, he’s pretty sure that what happened to his mentor, Fidel Castro,…
Chavista mismanagement (and thieving) has left Venezuela with a $2 billion oil shortfall on its contracts. The country literally DOES NOT HAVE ENOUGH OIL to supply all the nations it’s signed contracts with to supply. Therefore, it’s buying $2 billion in oil from Russia to avoid penalties, not the least of which is its claim to be an important oil superpower. It’s nothing to be surprised about, given that socialism ALWAYS produces shortages. That’s been a lesson to the world for about 80 years. The example this travesty parallels most closely is from 30 years ago, when the Soviet Union,…
As oil prices hit $75 a barrel, the U.S. is right now caught up in an idiotic debate over supposed price-gouging at the pump. Congress wants to investigate oil companies over it. What they should be doing is asking why the U.S. is dependent for its oil on anti-American Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. We are dependent on him, he knows it, and he abuses us for it. It’s him who, along with his pals the ayatollahs, is deliberately trying to drive oil prices up to $100 a barrel, not the oil companies. That’s not all. Chavez harasses U.S. oil companies…
For the 45,873th time, communism has failed. Forced confiscations of once-productive farms have left Zimbabwe a hollowed out shell of itself, its people hungry and starving, its government without revenue, and its infrastructure a smoking ruin. How many times do people need to learn this? Is there ever such a thing as learning from others or the past? Does everyone on earth need to learn everything the hard way individually? How anyone could support communism after this is beyond stupid. It can only be evil. Hugo Chavez of course has yet to learn. Anyway, Zimbabwe’s government has “invited” farmers of…
Cuba’s state-controlled press has just reported that Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez is proposing a new federation of “autonomous” nations in one big Bolivarian union. It’s a massive show of self-aggrandisement (for who would rule such an entity but Chavez himself?), but also an incredible call to regess to the failed past. Chavez has dressed it up in the aggrieved language of preserving indigenous identity, something that makes sense from his point of view because he is most likely to entice into this the supporters of leaders like Evo Morales of Bolivia and Ollanta Humala of Peru, who have no knowledge…
Russia took over the rotating chair of the Group of Eight (G8) Presidency on January 1, 2006, and therefore Russian President Vladimir Putin will host the G8 summit in St. Petersburg in July 2006. Putin has made it clear that he wants ???????Energy Security??????? to be the number one topic of the summit, and it appears that he will get his way. The Russian government wants the summit to be a success and wants to pull it off without any public disputes, however, the US, behind closed doors, is making it clear that Iran must be on the agenda????????threatening that…
Thomas Friedman has a terrific new piece out in Foreign Policy magazine, describing something I have discussed earlier, the creepy inverse relationship between rising oil prices and declining freedom. As oil prices have shot up, many oil producing countries and regions – Venezuela, Iran, Russia – have correspondingly lost their freedoms. Others, like Nigeria and Aceh, have seen a rise of gangs and rebels, making life hell, just as surely as a tyrant. The article is not out on the Web yet but you can buy the issue, which is loaded with several good articles of great relevance. The newly…
I hate to have to waste bandwidth on this but there are still people out there who think Hugo Chavez has improved the situation in Venezuela, and is only in power because he is popular. Having been there and talked to people, I strongly doubt it. But I also used my eyes. If it’s true that Chavez is popular because he’s made things so much better for the poor, how come this is the Caracas reality today? The above PowerPoint presentation, courtesy of The Real Cuba shows the deterioration of Caracas from 1998, the last year before Hugo Chavez took…
Tim’s El Salvador Blog has a fascinating update and discussion of the famous “14 families” who supposedly rule and control El Salvador. I remember how big a deal that was during the El Salvador War in the 1980s. Today, they are now the “8 Conglomerates.” The discussion is also important, and I half agree with each of the sides. Number one, I do think there’s such a thing as oligarchs in Latin America and while their billions do not bother me, and I make no advocacy of taking them away, they frequently are where they are due to certain privileges…
According to Peru’s official election results page, the battle for a second-place spot for the May runoff shows that free-market Lourdes Flores is beginnning to sharply gain on disastrous ex-President Alan Garcia. If she can completely overtake Garcia, she will be the one to face Ollanta Humala in May, and may well win. As Peruvian expat votes roll in, there’s now less than a 100,000-vote difference between Garcia and Flores. Garcia’s lead above Flores is just 93,818 votes. A few days ago, it was over 200,000 votes. The expats seem to be making a difference. Lobo en Peru has some…
Like a beautiful woman who’s unaware she’s beautiful, free trade is the unconscious crowning glory of the George Bush presidential administration. The US Trade Representative’s Office has about 200 staff and pound for pound, packs more value for us taxpayers and the work of our government than probably any other office. Its tiny staff negotiates these things, working hard 16-hour days. Amid the tons of paperwork, I’ve talked to them, and they always see the next mountain and hurdle. They talk of obstacles and frustrations. They don’t think they are any good, they worry ab out everything. They never quite…
The great political thinker, Alvaro Vargas Llosa, has written a beautiful essay on the trouble with France and its unsustainable economic model. He touches on the French sense of fear and insecurity as one reason why the protests were so sudden and virulent. He also notes the irony of French students saying they want jobs and security defending the very system that denies it to them. 25% unemployment is not job security. In fact, it’s not even a job. Read the whole brilliant thing here.
France has scrapped its proposed youth jobs laws that allows workers in their first two years of employment to be fired at will. The idea behind the bill, backed by Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, was to give employers more incentive to hire the young by alleviating their fears of getting a slacker they wouldn’t be able to get rid of. Things had been so bad in France that no one wanted to hire anyone. Consequently, young people had the highest rates of unemployment, by far, in the nation – something like 20%, with at least 40% unemployment rates among…
Today, Mercer released its annual list of the world’s most liveable cities, based on quality of living. I Googled around and finally found a whole list of the study here. I stripped out all the non-Americas cities and just left in the cities that are in Latin America, in the Caribbean, or in U.S. cities with more than half their populations from Latin America and speaking Spanish. Here’s how it all adds up – note how low Caracas ranks, a disgusting thing, given the amount of oil wealth this country has: 55 56 LOS ANGELES, CA United States 98.3 98.3…
You can call it a peculiar kind of poll, but today’s markets are betting that Lourdes Flores may well be able to win the presidential election in Peru. This candidate’s got to fight hard but apparently she can do it. That’s why markets in Peru are up today. The dynamics are curious in Peru. Roughly, they go like this: early polls have always shown that Flores comes in second place in a three-way race with the two leftists, Alan Garcia and Ollanta Humala. But in a two-way race, Flores can defeat Humala. Logic would suggest that the two leftists would…
Alvicho at Off Topic has some interesting thoughts about the symbiotic relationship between resource-hungry China and resource-rich Latin America, a topic that too frequently gets drowned in the paranoia of anti-Chinese sentiment. The relationship doesn’t bother me, as a matter of fact, I think Latin American states, especially those run by demogogues and populists, could learn the facts of life about how the world works, from places like China if they can’t bring themselves to pay attention to sensible, successful places in their own neighborhood like Chile. Alvicho’s thoughts are here.
The U.S. trade embargo against communist Cuba is frequently criticized, and with some good arguments, as an ineffective instrument against the Cuban dictator. But there’s more than one reason for this embargo, and Castro’s attitude toward paying his bills has a lot to do with why it’s in place too. Naturally, you ask yourself, why should anyone care whether Castro pays his bills? After all, if someone is going to be dumb enough to extend him credit and he doesn’t pay, why should it concern the rest of us? The reason is this: international trade is almost all insured by…