It is no secret Latin countries are mismanaging their natural resources, but no one ever said so clearly as the "Post". The Venezuelan State Oil Company is broke and no one in the world is ready to loan it any money nor invest in Venezuela. The Mariscal Sucre natural gas bid failed, as no one, not even Russian and Chinese national oil companies, did submit bids. Venezuela is operating its oil industry through foreign contractors, but it is not paying them ($8 billion in arrears). The Post comments that there is much to do to turn the Company's fortunes around but "it appears that its management may not be up to the task."
This is the first Wiki cable that does change my world view. I grew up in Latin America and worked much there. I never saw Latin Americans in such terms, I love Latin music and food, and I never considered them (collectively) simply incompetent. The Post thinks they are and proves it with figures.
6 comments:
The Brazilian economy is not mismanaged. Latins are not economically incompetent - socialists are, everywhere. N. Korea is poor because it is socialist, not because of their race. S. Koreans have the same race and they are highly competent. If Venezuela got rid of Chavez and restored good government, its resources would be well managed again. Socialists can turn gold (or black gold) into straw - they are reverse Rapunzels. Cuba once was the global king of sugar - with enough socialism they will be importing sugar.
K
Brazil has been stab le inthe last 50 years, but it has the same volcanic temperament as the rest of the Latins. As Stephan Zweig wrote, Brazil is a paradise. Not now, tomorrow.
Who needs economics?
Latin America has sexy, tanned women with large nipples (barely) hidden under bikini. You have fond memories of the Senoritas, J?
According to the two books on national intelligence, Venezuela has a national IQ of 88 (2002 estimate) or 84 (2006 estimate) making them about as smart as US Blacks.
Mark - Venezuela, like a lot of Latin countries, is not racially homogeneous - you have a more or less pure white upper class and then a lower class that is some mixture of black, Amerindian and European. The white "smarter fraction" that formerly ran the country, including the oil industry, has currently mostly joined their Cuban brethren in Miami - the brown majority, lead by the chief brown, Chavez, is currently running the country about as well as you could expect people of their intelligence to run a (formerly ) advanced economy.
While theoretically countries with a "smarter fraction" can be run indefinitely to the mutual symbiotic benefit of both the smarter and dumber fraction , in practice this does not seem to work - the larger "dumber fraction" always begins to think that the smarter fraction is reaping a disproportionate benefit and that whatever the smarter people are doing is really not that hard and is something that the dumb fraction can do for itself, so lets get rid of the smarter fraction (often the Jews) and we'll keep 100% of the pie. They do get to keep 100% of the pie, but the pie that remains is often shrunken and rotten, which defeats the point of the exercise. But no one ever seems to learn this - the same mistake is made over and over - must be one of the "bugs" in our human programming stemming from our tribal nature - the "kill my neighbor's cow" impulse.
K
Precisely the history of Sub-Saharan Africa over the last 50 years, except Africa was worse.
Anon.
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