Economy

The relevant question for Venezuela is how far oil prices would have to fall before the country would begin to run an unsustainable current account deficit. This is the binding constraint for developing countries.

The old adage that "When America gets a cold, Latin America catches pneumonia" has been widely cited. However, there is good reason to believe that South America, in particular, can weather this storm with minimal damage if it adopts the right macro-economic policies.

The uniformity of the collapse of Latin American economies raises important questions about the changes and claims of independence, decoupling and post-liberal models, which many regime leaders, ideologues and progressive US-European Latin American writers made over the past several years.

Final Declaration of "The International Conference on Political Economy: Responses from the South to the World Economic Crisis," which took place in Caracas, Venezuela from October 8-11, 2008, and was attended by academics and researchers from 18 countries around the world.

Regardless of the impact of the existing economic meltdown, the Venezuelan government has taken important economic decisions, even before the crisis was even known, that now benefits and secures its economy against the financial crisis.

It is not that pure capitalist politicians are all against the state intervention in the economy, they just want that the money go straight into very rich people, this time for the amount of $700 billion dollars. On the other hand, socialist state intervention prioritizes the most basic needs of people.

Central America, Cuba, the Dominican Republic and islands in the eastern Caribbean are receiving more and more oil from Venezuela, while major refineries are planned in South America -- at Pernambuco in northeastern Brazil, and at El Aromo, on Ecuador's Pacific coast.

Since 1998, the government of President Hugo Chavez has embarked on wide ranging projects to redistribute Venezuelan resources and services.

On August 27, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced the end of negotiations with former owners Ternium over the nationalisation of the Sidor steel factory, stating that the government would “take over all the companies that it has here”, insisting Ternium “can leave”.

The attempt of the Venezuelan government to regain control over the resources of the country is entirely justified. Yet it has been met by howls of protests from the multinationals. How can these gentlemen speak of the so-called efficiency of the private bankers?