This, multiplied by a thousand, is a very modest description of the US economy, right?
And what was the US current inflation rate in 2006? 3.24% (not in excess of 20,000% as you suggest above). That should be enough to put paid to your comparison, but for the record I would also like to note that the US lacks price controls on basic goods and has a floating exchange rate.
So no, actually, it's not.
Venezuelans
queing for milk (much bigger version of pic
here):
Got any similar pictures from the US?
You'd think George Bush would get down on his knees and kiss Hugo Chavez's behind.
Yes, that or maybe Hugo Chavez should get down on his knees and kiss Bush's behind, since US dollars are paying for Venezuela's public spending programmes, not to mention the vast increases in wealth (surely some sort of coincidence) experienced by the Chavistas.
In my interview with the president of Venezuela on March 28, he made Bush the following astonishing offer: Chavez would drop the price of oil to $50 a barrel, "not too high, a fair price," he said — a third less than the $75 a barrel for oil recently posted on the spot market.
The people of Venezuela must be very glad that their President is so free and easy with their most valuable natural resourse. After giving billions of dollars in cheap oil for no reason to the Cuban dictatorship, the poverty stricken United States is the next obvious choice. Palast has his nose so far up Chavez's arse that he is not even concerned about the political games the President is playing with
Venezuela's resourse rent.
Oh and your InfomationClearingHouse article is a sick joke:
Faced with constitutional reforms which strengthen the prospects for far-reaching political-social democratization, the US, European and Latin American media have cast pro-coup ex-military officials as ‘democratic dissidents’, former Chavez supporters disillusioned with his resort to ‘dictatorial’ powers in the run-up to and beyond the December 2, 2007 vote in the referendum on constitutional reform. Not a single major newspaper has mentioned the democratic core of the proposed reforms – the devolution of public spending and decision to local neighborhood and community councils. Once again as in Chile in 1973, the US mass media is complicit in an attempt to destroy a Latin American democracy.
The US mass media is attempting to destroy a Latin American democracy? It's those bastard Neo Libs in the Washington Post and the NYT (and the BBC) again!
Chavez's "democratic" reforms are basically intended to expand the power of the presidency. In short to:
- Remove constitutional limits on the president re-running for election;
- Extend the length of a single presidential term from six to seven years;
- Allow the government to appropriate private property without first seeking court authorisation;
- Give the government total control over the Central Bank;
- Create collectivised property managed by cooperatives;
So why are you bothering to defend this disaster of a regime? Oh that's right -- Chavez calls it "socialism", and that's enough.
"We who were nothing" etc ad absurdum...