As Hugo Chavez welcomes “Comrade Bush” to the land of socialism, he himself is boarding the train to neoliberalism:
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has announced a plan to help the country’s businesses as rising inflation threatens the economy.
Under a stimulus package unveiled on Wednesday, Mr Chavez scrapped a tax and eased currency controls that made it harder for Venezuelan firms to operate.
He also announced a $1bn fund to help key industries such as food and oil.
7 figure incomes give way to G levels, the new status.
Charles do you know what neoliberalism is? Chavez easing currency controls is hardly deregulation of the economy, privatization of government services or the expansion of police state powers to replace social welfare benefits.
I was defending Chavexz the other day from the charge he is a socialist. I don’t think he actually socialized too much — that he had the govt. nationalize ownership of private cos.– maybe just a tv station takeover or something — mainly he just
forced oil companies to pay more to Ven. govt. then
redistributed that $$$$ to lots of programs mainly for hte poor and a few roads or bridges or schools or health clinics etc.
So he’s mainly done what Palin did in Alaska (get more royalties from oil cos.) or what they do in many places….just hold up the oil cos. for a bigger share of those massive petrodollar profits.
Is this incorrect? Is there some list of industries or oil cos. assets he expropriated of which I am unaware?
Please advise.
Esp. you Bailo since you equate good ol’ social democracy with hard core Marxist socialism and stuff. I think you even said redistributionist tax policies are socialist!
Weird.
Unity most of y’all–
Um, does anyone know who’s currency is the most stable? I heard Canada’s economy is doing pretty good and so is their dollar, but if their economy takes a nose dive (like wall street) then so will there money.
I want to convert my pitiful savings into a currency that won’t devalue into nothing and a liberal foreign country sounds nice.
This is not a step towards neoliberalism, much less a “train.” Since the Bolivar Revolution is not occurring in a financial environment that has been hermetically sealed off from the neo-liberal market, Chavez needs to ensure the health of the revolution by not completely ignoring neo-liberal market crises. The lifeblood, thus far, of his revolution is oil dollars. This is what the elimination of the 1.5% tax on foreign transactions and creation of a $1 billion fund for “private-public sector projects in areas such as food, oil and manufacturing” is all about. To not directly address the devastating effects of inflation would be suicide. Bush has done a great deal more to earn his commie status in the past few weeks than Chavez has ever done to be so quickly denigrated as a neo-liberal.
Perhaps Mr. Chavez has invested a portion of his education in the ‘School of American liberalization of Republicican Marketing Strategies’ to thwart the Online Advertising Industries ties to gambling, “prostetuitative conspiro-systematic nuance co-efficienciecy modulators”, and the comedy joke slag heap already in progress.
What a buffoon. When crude hits $60/barrel, he’ll be back to sucking Washington’s kneecaps.
I loves Chavez!
@4/@5 – The USD has been strengthening like crazy during the past couple weeks of this financial crisis. A Canadian dollar only costs about $0.85 now. A few months ago it cost $1 and one point less than a year ago was something like $1.10.
Basically, people realized that the US economy being fucked is going cause problems pretty much everywhere else in the industrialized world because of globalization.