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| The Chávez Record | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Mar 7 2013, 10:19 PM (482 Views) | |
| Berton | Mar 7 2013, 10:19 PM Post #1 |
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The Chávez Record By Ian Vásquez Hugo Chavez is dead. He leaves behind a country ruined by populist policies he referred to as “Socialism of the 21st Century.” Venezuela under 14 years of Chavez’s leadership benefited from about $1 trillion in revenues from the oil bonanza but has little to show for it. Instead, the country has largely followed the path described by economists Rudi Dornbusch and Sebastian Edwards in their 1991 classic, The Macroeconomics of Populism in Latin America. Again and again, in country after country, policymakers have embraced economic programs that rely heavily on the use of expansive fiscal and credit policies and overvalued currency to accelerate growth and redistribute income. In implementing these policies, there has usually been no concern for fiscal and foreign exchange constraints. After a short period of economic growth and recovery, bottlenecks develop provoking unsustainable macroeconomic pressures that, at the end, result in the plummeting of real wages and severe balance of payment difficulties. The final outcome of these experiments has generally been galloping inflation, crisis, and the collapse of the economic system. Venezuela’s economy, kept afloat by the long commodity boom, has not yet collapsed. But it is headed for crisis. A devaluation of more than 30% this year brought the official exchange rate to 6.3 bolivars to the dollar. The black market exchange rate—about 26 bolivars to the dollar—shows how much further it has to go. Inflation in 2012 reached 20%. Uncontrolled spending, expropriations, price controls, monetary expansion, capital controls and other misguided policies have also led to scarcities of basic goods, recurrent power outages, water rationing, increased dependency on imports and on oil exports, and a rising public debt and fiscal deficit. Chavez also centralized political power as he gained control of the main institutions of Venezuelan society—the military, the judiciary, the congress, the central bank, the electoral council, the most important broadcast media, etc.—and did so by trampling on due process and basic civil and political liberties. The vast expansion of state power led to a neglect of traditional functions of government such security or keeping up infrastructure, and to an increase in corruption. Crime under Chavez skyrocketed. When he came to power in 1999, the country experienced less than 6,000 homicides per year; in 2012 that number reached about 21,700. By 2012, Venezuela’s ranking in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index fell to 165 out of 174 countries. The systematic corruption of the Chavez regime that Gustavo Coronel documented in a 2006 Cato study only got worse in subsequent years. The economy did grow under Chavez and poverty was reduced as occurred through most of the region, but annual growth in Venezuela averaged 3.3 percent from 1999 to 2011, below the rates experienced by Chile, Peru or Colombia—all market democracies that didn’t sacrifice basic liberties in an attempt to achieve such progress. The complete economic record of Chavez’s rule will take into account the decline in wages and per capita income that result from any future crisis his policies engendered. Only then will Venezuelans be able to fully assess the extent to which the last 14 years were recklessly squandered, and hopefully move away from the state-dominated development model which has afflicted Venezuelan society for decades. LINK Yet liberals think Chavesz was good for Venezuela. It makes one wonder if Obama does the same thing to the US if they will think he is good for the US. |
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| Mountainrivers | Mar 7 2013, 10:24 PM Post #2 |
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Fire & Ice Senior Diplomat
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Oh! Surprise! Another copy and paste from a right wing site. |
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| Berton | Mar 7 2013, 10:31 PM Post #3 |
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Thunder Fan
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But you still can not deny any of what was in the post can you? |
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| Deleted User | Mar 7 2013, 10:49 PM Post #4 |
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Once again, Bertrude is only capable of copy & paste rather than do his own research. What is article states may well be true, in fact most of it probably is, but as usual because it is political, colored & one sided it does not tell the entire story or even a small percentage of it. One has to strip away all the rhetoric to get at any substance. Then again what right winger wants to hear both sides of any issue? They are by the very definition, narrow minded & bigoted. That is why they come across as so stupid to any thinking person. |
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| Mountainrivers | Mar 7 2013, 10:53 PM Post #5 |
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Fire & Ice Senior Diplomat
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| Deleted User | Mar 7 2013, 10:54 PM Post #6 |
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Bertrude: BTW to balance out your garbage here is some garbage from the other side. I do not put stock in either, I prefer facts. I know you don, t bertie, but that is beside the point. Hugo Chávez undefeated Source: rabble.ca BY DERRICK O'KEEFE | MARCH 5, 2013 Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías (July 28, 1954 – March 5, 2013). Hugo Chavez has died -- undefeated. Yes, undefeated. Chavez, no matter how many times the corporate media and the cheerleaders of the status quo call him a dictator, was elected repeatedly with overwhelming majorities. No matter how many times this slur is moronically or mendaciously repeated, people know the truth. No less than Jimmy Carter certified Venezuela's elections as amongst the most fair and transparent his organization has ever observed. And the voter turnouts that elected Chavez were usually far, far higher than those in the U.S. The voices that cheer and mock the death of Hugo Chavez are in fact mocking democracy and the people of Venezuela, who elected him and who have re-elected him time and time again -- most recently by a decisive majority in October, 2012. But today we need not dwell on the disgusting carnival of necrophilia with which the right-wing has followed Chavez's illness and which will reach a crescendo in the coming days with the news of his untimely demise. This macabre celebration is only the flip side of impotence; they whoop and holler at Chavez's death from cancer only because they failed to defeat him in life, and could not take down his government by democratic (or other) means. Besides, behind this grave-dancing is not just the hatred of one man who became emblematic of a continental shift to the left and away from U.S. interests and power; it also reveals the shallow indifference to human life and to democracy built into the whole system. As a friend pointed out, within minutes of announcing the news of his death, CNN was discussing the implications it might have on the markets and on the value of U.S. corporate interests in the region. Today, I would rather celebrate the majority of Venezuelans -- especially the poor and the marginalized. It is, after all, the people who made Chavez, and not the other way around. And it is the humble people of Venezuela who saw to it that Chavez was allowed to complete this many years as president, after all. Chavez came very close to dying much earlier -- of unnatural causes. It was People Power that kept him alive and that kept his democratically elected government in power. I'm referring of course to the April 2002 coup d'etat cynically aided and abbetted by Venezuela's rabidly right-wing media and which was issued with an immediate stamp of approval by the Bush administration. It's important to remember that the traditional elite of Venezuela -- the oiligarchs of this South American petrostate who ruled for decades under the 'Washington Consensus,' and who quashed resistance to neoliberalism in blood like during the 1989 caracazo -- and their allies abroad in the U.S. government and in the corporate boardrooms of the world never intended for Hugo Chavez to live beyond those days in April 2002. If the people had not mobilized to restore Chavez to power 11 years ago, Latin America would be a much worse place today. The "pink tide" would likely have been largely stemmed before it had a chance to spread; transformations that have begun in Bolivia and Ecuador might never have gotten out of the gates. Who knows, the FTAA, that continental corporate trade deal, might have been implemented rather than soundly defeated. After all, back in 2001, when tens of thousands marched in Quebec City against the early stages of the FTAA, President Chavez was almost alone as a head of government inside the talks opposing the deal. Whatever the shortcomings and all the very real contradictions of Chavez's government, the poor of Venezuela and of all Latin America are better off today in real and tangible ways because the people kept it in power. So let the corporate media say "good riddance!" to Chavez in their cynical way. Ignore them, and watch (or rewatch) the inspiring story of the People Power that defeated the 2002 coup, as told in the powerful Irish documentary The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. The title is a tip of the hat to Gil Scott-Heron, and it's a reference to the key role that right-wing, private, big media played in orchestrating and manipulating events and their portrayal during the failed attempt at regime change. (Another important source of information about Venezuela is the website Venezuelanalysis.com) The rich and powerful of the world did not hate Chavez because he was a dictator. Deep down the sentient among them know he wasn't. They hated him because he was symbolic of a threat to the dictatorship of Capital, a figurehead of a continent alive with social movements and millions of people conscious of their political power. |
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| Thumper | Mar 7 2013, 10:54 PM Post #7 |
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Fire & Ice Senior Diplomat
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I don't waste my time with Bertrudes trash. If I want biased garbage, I watch Faux News. At least with Faux I may get to see a nice looking woman in a short skirt. |
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| Deleted User | Mar 7 2013, 10:57 PM Post #8 |
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Its always nice to have someone to mark the low point by which to judge all other posts. |
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| Thumper | Mar 7 2013, 11:02 PM Post #9 |
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Fire & Ice Senior Diplomat
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Yup |
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| Neutral | Mar 7 2013, 11:03 PM Post #10 |
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Fire & Ice Senior Diplomat
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More insults and name calling by the left when they are presented the facts. Same old schit, different thread. Teflon wouldn't know Chavez from his Mexican dope dealer. |
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