|
Lovely weather in South America this time of year, George
|
View this Thread in Original format
| MisterOpus1 |
Lovely enough to have a few protestors out for Bush's wonderful trip:
http://us.news3.yimg.com/us.i2.yimg.com/p/nm/20051104/2005_11_04t110042_306x450_us_latam_summit.jpg?x=234&y=345&sig=uyqlqn1JFkf5q9q3w6ckyQ--
I realize it's a good attempt for Bush to run and hide down in S. America right now, considering he's being polled at around 60% disapproval ratings here in the U.S., but he's not really doin' that hot anywhere else either:
| quote: | A recent poll of Latin Americans in business, government, and education in six Latin American nations showed that just 17 percent of Argentinean leaders and 12 percent of leaders in Brazil viewed Bush positively.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?...r=latin_america |
And those darn, pesky journalists just won't leave him alone no matter where he goes. Always askin' about that darn investigation that just won't go away:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051104...m4yBHNlYwNmYw--
And one other thing, Steven Hadley had some negative things to say about Venenzuela and Chavez lately. He opines in the Bloomberg article:
| quote: | "At a time of record high oil prices, one would expect to see a lot of progress against poverty'' in Venezuela, White House National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said Nov. 2 at a briefing on the eve of Bush's departure. ``We're not seeing that. We're actually seeing some deterioration in the economy."
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?...r=latin_america |
Now I'm not a big fan of Chavez myself, but I fail to see why our government continues to try to undermine him, financially support coup attempts to overthrow him, and villify him so ing much when he does, in fact, do some pretty serious business with our oil companies. Of course I realize that he does threaten to reduce his oil exports to us, but that should be a wake-up call to us on getting our ing addictive needles out of the veins of foreign energy and find some actual constructive ways to produce and conserve energy in our own right. But here's some interesting things about Chavez' country regardless:
| quote: | For the record:
-- Venezuela's economy is the fastest growing in the hemisphere. For the first half of this year, it has grown by 9.3 percent; last year, recovering from a deep recession caused by the opposition oil strike of 2002-2003, it grew by 17.8 percent.
-- The official poverty rate now stands at 38.5 percent, down from a recent peak of 54 percent following the oil strike. But even that is misleading, because it counts only cash income. For example, if the United States were to abolish food stamps and Medicaid, poor people here would be much worse off. Similarly, the subsidized food and free health care now available in Venezuela have significantly increased living standards among the poor. More than 40 percent of the country buys subsidized food, and millions of poor people have access to free health care that was previously unavailable. If these are taken into account, the measured poverty rate would drop well below 30 percent.
-- The private sector is actually a larger share of the economy than it was before Chavez took office.
-- With a moderate public debt and low foreign debt, huge trade surplus, a federal budget surplus, and $30 billion in reserves, the economy appears well situated to withstand external shocks such as an unanticipated decline in oil prices.
-- A comparison with the past is also instructive: in the 28 years before the present government (1970-1998), income per person declined in Venezuela by 35 percent, one of the worst economic declines in the world during this period. (This includes an actual decline for the decade of the 1970s, when oil prices increased much faster and to higher real prices than today). If the Chavez government succeeds in reversing this long-term decline and just restores normal growth, or does even better than that - either of which appears quite probable at the moment -- it will almost certainly be seen as an historic success and economic turning point for the country. (Recall that so far, the government has had less than three years of political stability, since the end of the oil strike in February 2003).
The past 25 years have been the worst growth performance in modern Latin American history. For comparison: income per person -- the most basic measure of economic success or failure used by economists -- grew by 82 percent from 1960-1980; from 1980-2000 it grew by only 9 percent and for 2000-2005 it has been only 1 percent. This unprecedented, long-term economic failure is the major cause of poverty and unemployment in Latin America, and has contributed to the major electoral changes of the last 7 years -- e.g. in Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Uruguay, and Venezuela, where presidential candidates running against the economic reforms of the post-1980 period have won elections.
Mark Weisbrot is Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research
http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/11/3/154920/231 |
|
|
|
|
|
