Sexual Chocolate musta had a woody.....

[Fairweather]

Edited September 22, 2006 by Fairweather

[Mos_Chillin]

proper trolling technique

 

[foraker]

that's just weak. go get some proper trolling hints from Greg_W

[JayB]

Interesting responses from Rangel and Pelosi, of all people.

[Mos_Chillin]

You are more entertaining when you are obtuse.

 

Just an observation.

[Dave_Schuldt]

I wonder if he's read that book. This guy may be a nut case but what he says strikes a cord with many in South America. He also has oil so we're stuck with him, At least he's no a religious nut.

[Fairweather]

Interesting responses from Rangel and Pelosi, of all people.

 

At first I was encouraged by their comments, but then I remembered......it's almost November, and the Dem's have to appear "tough".

[JayB]

I wonder if he's read that book. This guy may be a nut case but what he says strikes a cord with many in South America. He also has oil so we're stuck with him, At least he's no a religious nut.

 

The amount of oil that he has, as in is able to extract, is steadily diminishing due to gross mismanagement on a number of fronts. Couple that with the damage he's inflicting on the nonstate sector, and I suspect he'll be long on rhetoric and short on cash rather sooner than most people think, and Venezuela will be emulating Cuba in ways than that her citizens may not have anticipated. Fighting Yankee imperialism by inflicting poverty and repression on themselves is a curious, but time-tested, strategy for those wily South Americans. They'll show us.

 

"The Latin Americans," by Carlos Rangel - himself a Venezualan, is as good a guide to understanding that continents tendency towards political and economic masochism as any. Probably out of print, but worth a read.

[G-spotter]

The amount of oil that he has, as in is able to extract, is steadily diminishing due to gross mismanagement on a number of fronts. Couple that with the damage he's inflicting on the nonstate sector, and I suspect he'll be long on rhetoric and short on cash rather sooner than most people think, and Venezuela will be emulating Cuba in ways than that her citizens may not have anticipated.

 

And yet... latest Economist has Venezuelan GDP up 9.2%, industrial production up 13.7%, in latest quarter. (US figures are +3.6% and +4.9% respectively for comparison)

 

That's some diminishment and nonstate damage when it pushes Venezuelan increases to roughly 3x American increases, almost to the level of China.

[JayB]

The amount of oil that he has, as in is able to extract, is steadily diminishing due to gross mismanagement on a number of fronts. Couple that with the damage he's inflicting on the nonstate sector, and I suspect he'll be long on rhetoric and short on cash rather sooner than most people think, and Venezuela will be emulating Cuba in ways than that her citizens may not have anticipated.

 

And yet... latest Economist has Venezuelan GDP up 9.2%, industrial production up 13.7%, in latest quarter. (US figures are +3.6% and +4.9% respectively for comparison)

 

That's some diminishment and nonstate damage when it pushes Venezuelan increases to roughly 3x American increases, almost to the level of China.

 

That has everything to do with macro-conditions outside of Venezuela, and nothing to do with Chavez's economic policies.

 

This is probably a revelation to you, but sustained economic growth requires sustained capital investment in the sectors which are responsible for the said growth, or other sectors which promise to to the same. As a whole, actors in the marketplace have a considerably better record at conducting this kind of analysis and making capital allocations which generate more income than they consume than states do, and populist governments in Latin American rival only sub-saharan warlords in their capacity to missalocate capital. At the moment, every sober analysis of Venezuelan production capacity indicates that the government is not even allocating enough money to exploration and maintenance to maintain production, much less expand it.

 

Given your faith in the long-term prospects for the Venezuelan economy under Chavez, perhaps you can invest in some 30-year bonds backed by Venezuelan oil revenues to augment the private-placement shares in the company that sponsored the fat-virus paper.

 

 

 

"Venezuela's oil model: Is production rising or falling?

High oil prices keep profits up, but output may be down.

By Danna Harman | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

CARACAS, VENEZUELA – In recent weeks, both Bolivian president Evo Morales and Ecuador's president Alfredo Palacio have taken a page out of Venezuelan populist president Hugo Chávez's natural resources manual.

 

It's the page that features politicizing the oil and gas industries and nationalizing them - keeping more of the petro dollars at home but alienating longtime foreign investors. A good model? Many oil industry analysts are skeptical.

In the Monitor

Friday, 09/22/06

 

 

While the government denies it and high oil prices mask it, analysts say Venezuelan oil production is declining. Since Chávez took over in 1999, production in the state-run oil fields has fallen almost 50 percent, say analysts at PFC Energy, a global energy consulting firm based in Washington, D.C., who spoke on condition of anonymity rather than risk the wrath of the Venezuelan government.

 

During the same period, no new significant oil reserves have been discovered. And with new, smaller profit margins for outside companies, foreign investors are now slowing the rate of investment in the jointly run oil and gas fields.

 

"The outlook for increases in the future is starting to go up in smoke and we see a petroleum industry in contraction," said Luis Giusti, the former president of Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), in an interview earlier this month with Venezuela's Union Radio. "The day the prices change, the situation is going to be evident once and for all," he said"

 

Rest of Article

[Crux]

Meanwhile, the book that the brash Venezuelan president waved through the rhetorical fumes, Noam Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival -- America's Quest for Global Dominance, rose from relative obscurity in the American marketplace to become the bestseller at Amazon within 36 hours.

 

 

 

Seattle PI: "Chavez Launches Bush Broadside at U.N"

 

 

[JayB]

The only thing that I find odd about the response from Pelosi and Rangel is that they would rebuke Chavez for making statements that really aren't terribly different from the rhetoric and arguments offered up by members of their own party, and sound relatively mild when compared to what passes for sober analysis on the likes of the Daily Kos, Democratic Underground, etc, and were probably perfectly in tune with a the thinking of a significant percentage of their party.

 

Were they having a Dr. Frankenstein type moment "Hey the Fahrenheit 911/loosechange/Daily Kos types sure are spunky and energetic, and can man the keyboards and phone banks for weeks on end, without food or water so long as we've got a tape of Janine Garofolo reading Chomsky playing over a techno-beat in the background, but now...they're....coming....for....us...." or perhaps they were just peeved at him for upstaging them and stealing their thunder.

 

Hopefully someone in the Chavez fan-club will stop casting misty-eyed glances at the signed, 8.5x11 glossy that they got after registering on chavista.com, hit the minimize button on the window that's playing a continuous loop of the loosechange/chomsky/Farhenheit911 multimedia edit that they found on YouTube, and hammer out something on the special impact resistant keyboard that'll help the rest of us understand the infatuation.

[cj001f]

The only thing that I find odd about the response from Pelosi and Rangel is that they would rebuke Chavez for making statements that really aren't terribly different from the rhetoric and arguments offered up by members of their own party

 

And is only mildly more inflammatory than that offered regularly at the UN by Bush's recess appointed ambassador John Bolton

 

Why is this a big deal? Because everyone can score cheap "I love America" points heading into the fall elections. And the fools still lap it up.

 

Caring about what Chavez says is like getting worked up when the homeless dude on the street corner makes a lewd comment about your female companion.

[Crux]

Anybody have the actual content of the Chavez speech? And what's up with the reports that he received "warm ovations" while Bush got the cold shoulder? What did the Venezuelan president actually say?

[Dave_Schuldt]

Democrocy Now had something about it. The guy has some important points but as usual they are lost in the BS.

[TREETOAD]

Anybody have the actual content of the Chavez speech? And what's up with the reports that he received "warm ovations" while Bush got the cold shoulder? What did the Venezuelan president actually say?

 

The truth maybe?

[Dechristo]

yeah, right.

 

You're a fool if you hitch your wagon to any of The Playas.

 

[Stonehead]

Anybody have the actual content of the Chavez speech? And what's up with the reports that he received "warm ovations" while Bush got the cold shoulder? What did the Venezuelan president actually say?

 

All the world's a stage...