Chavez becomes Latin America's Banker

Center for Economic and Policy Research ^ | 2006 | Mark Weisbrot

[LeftToRight]

This overview article by Mark Weisbrot will be published in the next issue (Vol. 36, No. 4, 2006) of the International Journal of Health Services.

It looks at Latin America's political shift over the last several years. The author argues that these changes have largely been misunderstood and underestimated here for a number of reasons:

Latin America's unprecedented growth failure over the last 25 years is a major cause of these political changes and has not been well-understood

The collapse of the IMF's influence in Latin America, and middle-income countries, is also an epoch-making change

The availability of alternative sources of finance, most importantly from the reserves of the Venezuelan government, is very important

The increasing assertion of national control over natural resources is also an important part of the new relationship between Latin America and the United States The author argues that for these and other reasons, the relationship between Latin America and the United States has undergone a fundamental and possibly irreversible change, and one that opens the way to new and mostly more successful economic policies.

Rest of article:
http://www.cepr.net/columns/weisbrot/2006_06_end_of_era.htm#article

[Howie66]

Any picture of this little man should include cross hairs right between his "running lights".

[Prime Choice]

The increasing assertion of national control over natural resources is also an important part of the new relationship between Latin America and the United States. The author argues that ... opens the way to new and mostly more successful economic policies.

Ummm..."nationalization" and "successful economic policies" are mutually exclusive phenomenon.

See [the former] Soviet Union.

[redbaiter]

I'm not sure the decline of IMF influence will turn out to be a bad thing for the US, as I'm suspicious of all international cartels. But, price controls? Who, exactly, thinks those are going to be anything but disastrous? And Hugo Chavez's sharing the wealth with the poor - yeah, while the bridges collapse and the refineries all explode, sure. It will be interesting indeed to see what happens in 2-3 years when oil prices fall.