Blogging the democratic revolution
Brazil announced today that its state oil company, Petrobras, would spend $18 billion to develop its Santos Basin offshore natural gas reserves in a bid to reduce its dependence on imported natural gas, explicitly, from nationalization-minded leftwing Bolivia. Eighteen billion. That’s big money. A whole Iraq-War trove of cash. A massive, history-changing investment. Why the hell doesn’t the U.S. get a clue from Brazil! The U.S. is a veritable soup of regulations and special interests that prohibits development of its own abundant natural gas and oil reserves. That’s why U.S. upsteam energy companies can find almost nowhere to drill –…
So much for George Bush being intimidated by the bitter union- and leftist-bankrolled struggle this past summer to ratify CAFTA. In less than four weeks, negotiators say a free trade pact with Panama could be signed. Negotiators are rushing to polish up the accord in the last weeks before President George Bush visits the wonderful country in early November. If they can get it done, it send a spectacular message to the rest of the Americas that free trade is alive and well and nobody, but nobody, will be shut out of the growing potential for U.S.-style prosperity up and…
Tuesday’s essay on property rights by the great Carlos Alberto Montaner, has awesome intellectual firepower. He is the best writer I know of anywhere in the world, and this is his most luminous essay. Montaner writes about how the destruction of property rights, as is happening in Venezuela, makes democratic revolution nearly impossible. He carefully cites examples from Eastern Europe and Cuba, showing how stripping people of these property rights leaves not only no freedom, but no possibility of freedom. His original ideas are so powerful you will never quite look at the world in the same way again. It’s…
The Dominican Republic has just ratified entry into CAFTA. Wheeeee!!!!!!! This is great news! Dominican Republic was considered the weakest link in the CAFTA state lineup. I thought it wouldn’t happen. I read so much negative news in the local press about this factory layoff and that protest and that opinion poll that I didn’t think it could possibly be true. I was wrong. My embassy source, who insisted otherwise, was right – Dominican Republic is onboard bigtime. The legislature passed the treaty by a 118-4 margin, mopping the floor with the local anti-CAFTA crowd. Yep, 118-4. And that’s great…
The world economy runs on what happens in the U.S. economy. That has potential to affect the outlook for every revolutionary country on earth. At the center of this phenomenon is Alan Greenspan, who yesterday hiked interest rates yet again. He’s hiked and he’s hiked – ten times in the past ten quarters. It’s flattening and inverting the yield curve. And an inverted yield curve NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES THEY TELL YOU THIS TIME IT’S DIFFERENT – is always a harbinger of recession. It was last time, the time before, and the time before that. Despite what ‘experts’ claimed…
6.4% GDP Diversified economy 3.1% inflation 17% stronger peso Tax cuts Pensions Competitive advantage $3 billion budge surplus equal to 3% of GDP Revolution iVIVA CHILE!
Here’s a small item that looks like real news – Nick Burns, the number three guy at State, insists that the Andean Free Trade Agreement (this is CAFTA, but for Andean states like Colombia, Ecuador and Peru) is advancing nicely. News sources have repeatedly said that the bloody and terrible Congressional battle to pass CAFTA probably made the Bush administration too demoralized to try to pass more free trade agreements for the foreseeable future. But I am not so sure about that. Maybe, as Burns’ statements suggest, the Bush administration is instead emboldened by CAFTA’s success. And it will grow…
It’s as if the mighty impact of CAFTA that we all worked so hard to achieve has really started to yield something. Veneconomy, in a brilliant essay here, noted the signs of stinging defeat it rained on Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. Suddenly all his oil billions are meaningless compared to the vast opportunity of the great Gringo market up north. What’s Chavez’s oil billions compared to the U.S.’s trillion-dollar buying market? Who wants charity when they can have something way bigger and own it free and clear, no strings attached, through honest two-way trade? National sovereignty? Get it, for real,…
All communist regimes are characterized by shortages. In Venzuela, the government suddenly announced it was suspending all steel exports, creating a new commodity shortage on world markets. But the export gate might not be where the real shortage is. I am wondering if investment-starved Venezuela simply cannot produce the steel it used to produce. It’s only a matter of time before this happens, it may be happening now. Veneconomy sees something more sinister and directional – they argue that Venezuela cannot possibly use the extra steel it produces, at least not for awhile, and will probably end up with stacks…
The best part about CAFTA is upon us – Hugo Chavez has come out screaming on Venezuelan television about CAFTA’s passage. And why shouldn’t he scream about our CAFTA victory? A rich El Salvador, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica are the last things Chavez wants to see. It’s bad enough that these democracies are friendly with the U.S. – now they have free trade rights, too, and as nations they have embarked on a great regional mission to become as rich as America. Why shouldn’t they be? They’re our friends. But for Chavez, it’s pain upon pain.…
Developing countries almost never have civil society organizations, making them vulnerable to tyrants who are always happy to fill the void with … tyranny. Rare indeed are the PTAs, the Elks, the Kiwanis, the Ladies’ Auxilliaries, the Neighborhood Watches, the Surfriders’ Foundations, the Explorers’ Club, the Roadrunners – and all the much-maligned but critically necessary spontaneously organized private groups that are the building blocks of democracy. So it was a joy to read that in determinedly democratic El Salvador, our new CAFTA ally, Salvadoran locals got together to clean up the beaches. And had wild exuberant Latin American fun together,…
CAFTA is often compared to NAFTA, but the roots of the trade pact are very different. They began in 1983 when the great Ronald Reagan launched his Caribbean Basin Initiative. As he fought the march of communism with all his strength, the far-thinking President Reagan also knew that U.S. might is based not only on military power but on economic power and more particularly, the ability to share our hope with others. The American Dream is also the Honduran Dream, the Salvadoran Dream, the Costa Rican Dream, the Guatemalan Dream. Now, with CAFTA, we all share the same dream. CAFTA…
in the House. Victory for our hemisphere. The full list of how they voted. Our friend Will has analysis and a good roundup of what other bloggers are saying here. IBD has an editorial saying this trade treaty will benefit businesses across the board, citing the word of Central Americans who are in the middle of this. It is here or here. Sigh. I am too tired to comment. But I am overjoyed.
Tick tick tick – CAFTA’s victory is expected in three hours, according to my sources, and to the Washington Post, but cross your fingers, it’s not over until it’s over… This trade treaty is the most important measure of support we can give to the entire hemisphere. Central Americans don’t want our troops. They don’t want our money. They just want a chance. They want CAFTA. Political death to anyone who votes against it. No forgiveness and no forgetting. FREE TRADE THROUGH THE AMERICAS NOW!!!!
The G8 summit is over, aging hipsters have finished playing concerts the nostalgic world over, and experience as old as their songs has been cast out the window in favor of some feel-good debt relief lovin’. Dictators from the Middle East to Asia are outraged and harping on endlessly; not because they’re being forced into reform by democratic crusaders, but because they aren’t getting it as good as their brethren in the sub-Sahara. You see, for twenty years the West has made the disastrous mistake of attempting to correct the genocides, famines, and poverty of Africa by fueling unchecked billions…
Marvellous, prosperous, democratic, revolutionary Chile, which has already signed free trade pacts with the U.S. and other nations, has signed three more free trade pacts with Brunei, New Zealand and Singapore. While Hugo Chavez up north and his Master in Havana scream about how bad they are. And the U.S. thrashes about trying to decide CAFTA, as special interests howl like jackals in the desert. Chile’s citizens have three more bright lights on their horizon while Chavez’s Venezuela slips further into economic darkness, blaming the U.S. all the way down. And while the U.S. tries to decide between Big Sugar,…
Earlier today A.M. Mora y Leon posted an entry on the necessity of passing CAFTA, and I wanted to add to that. Today the Wall Street Journal published an article which described the kind of negotiating going on in the House of Representatives over this trade pact, and in doing so illustrated the short-sightedness which seems to perpetually dominate that august institution (see “White House Barters for Trade Pact Votes;” A4, subscription required): As the House moves toward a vote this week on President Bush’s Central American trade pact, the White House is trying to cut deals to shore up…
All stops must be pulled out to pass CAFTA. Not doing it will destroy our country. And we can kiss the hemisphere goodbye. The showdown is this week. We cannot fail. I repeat, cannot. Andres Oppenheimer, in the most powerful argument yet, explains why here. Update: The Washington Post, in its bluntest argument yet, warns that a vote against CAFTA is a vote for Hugo Chavez. It’s as simple as that.
Nicaragua’s Contras, the original freedom fighters in our lifetime, who during the Reagan Era, took on the name and tradition of the original Hungarian freedom fighters who resisted Soviet tanks in 1956, have turned their swords into plowshares and begun the extraordinary task of growing some of the world’s best coffee. Freedom-fighting Contra Cafe! Being Nicaraguan, it’s going to be good – it would be good even if sandalistas grew it – but so much the better that it’s a project of those who truly know what freedom is. Boli-Nica first discovered the phenomenon, and Instapundit has some good and…
I have already discussed thoroughly the ongoing trade embargo that Syria is imposing on Lebanon. By closing off the border, Syria is effectively shutting out Lebanon’s only means by which to transport their goods to the rest of the Arab world. This in the middle of an enormous fiscal crisis worth upwords of $30 billion. Effectively, Syria is waging a trade war against Lebanon to throw it into crisis while saying that the Lebanese “can’t govern themselves.” One of Syria’s other tactics at sowing discord has been the targeted assassination of politicians in Lebanon. Today, another bomb went off in…
Booker Rising, a neat blog for Black-American conservatives and moderates reports approvingly that two tiny Caribbean states, Trinidad & Tobago, and Barbados, showed the presence mind to tell Hugo Chavez and his smothering oil deal ‘no.’ Both self-respecting nations cited their national interest in different ways – Hugo Chavez’s artificial oil prices would undercut Trinidad’s authentic energy business of its own. Barbados, with its refining businesses aligned with Trinidad, wanted no part of Hugo Chavez’s kill-our-economy offer. These two tiny states stood up to two monsters in our hemisphere, Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, and should be encouraged and applauded.…
According to Al-Hayat, the Jordanian government of Prime Minister Adnan Badran is having further problems surviving a vote of confidence due to recent increases in the price of basic foods (see “The Badran Government Seek the Confidence of Representatives and Opposition Parties Call for Him to Leave,” July 15, but no longer on the paper’s site). This is a partial translation: …Tens of demonstrators representing the leaders of the parties and the heads of the professional unions demanded the resignation of the government, describing it as “The Hunger Government” and holding up signs rejecting the government’s decision to raise the…
Hugo Chavez and the communist thugs and barefoot Neanderthals one step removed from white sheets who oppose CAFTA are all about to be dealt a stinging defeat. The House leader reports that CAFTA is likely to be approved before the end of July. This is the scent of victory, because defeat is unthinkable. This is the most important legislation of the year because the fate of our entire region is at stake. I just hope we have reason to have hope. We need CAFTA.
..and the chicks are free. Hugo Chavez is flinging money in multi-billions all over the place, like a drunk with coins burning holes in his pockets. He’s the world’s biggest spendthrift and he’s driving Venezuela straight into the ground. Miguel Octavio has the whole sordid story here. Read and weep.
I knew this would happen. Hugo Chavez’s incessant meddling with the market would lead to what it always leads to: shortages, just like Cuba. And ration cards as well. More and more, Venezuela is looking like a communist regime. The thug of Caracas is bringing hunger to Venezuela. He’s got to go.