Amid protests, Venezuela's president warns Third World leaders against free market policies

Clashes between police and thousands of protesters pressing for the recall of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez overshadowed a summit of developing nations, with at least two people killed and dozens injured. The confrontation came Friday as Chavez opened a two-day summit with the leaders of 18 other developing nations in Caracas, urging them to reject free-market policies imposed by industrialized nations. "Globalization has not brought expected independence. It has increased dependence. ... It has extended poverty," Chavez said. "Free market ideology was created by the North to serve its own interests."

Corruption, not the free market, is the cause of Latin America's perennial poverty. Since Chavez' idol is Castro, nothing but a continuing downward spiral awaits Venezuela. It's sad that such an oil-rich, beautiful country is being held back by their government.

Chavez just doesn't want to pay back his IMF loans.

He intentionally conflates free enterprise with international finance. It's all Kapitalism to him.

Typical Commie crap.

Socialist economics and more, populist cultural values have taken a potentially wealthy country and driven it into the ground. The problem didn't start with Chavez, it has been coming for a long time. He took a patient debilitated by state-run economics and populist expectations and has tried to apply a more pure form of the poison that has very nearly destroyed it.

Venezuela has never known what a free economy is, and it has never known what rule of law is. Its political tendencies vary from more left to less left, anti-business socialist to pro-business socialist, but there is nothing like a Republican party there, no understanding of the kind of classic liberalism that sets the US apart, and no interest in it. So they lurch from crisis to crisis.

Chavez' economic philosophy is not really different from that of the average Venezuelan, he differs only in that he is more determined to make it work come what may, and in his willingness to align himself with anti-US revolutionary forces internationally. Philosophically, though, the opposition parties find it difficult to oppose him on the field of ideas because there is no clear philosophical barrier between them.

"Globalization has not brought expected independence. It has increased dependence. ... It has extended poverty," Chavez said

Sounds like Chavez is a summa cum laude graduate of the Kim School of Economics.

Next he will probably be saying that North Korea is paradise, because the people have all the tree bark they need to eat.

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