Chavez exploits oil to lend in Latin America, pushing IMF aside

[Joanne98]

http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070304/BUSINESS01/703040311/1066
Chavez exploits oil to lend in Latin America, pushing IMF aside

By CHRISTOPHER SWANN
BLOOMBERG NEWS

(Original publication: March 4, 2007)

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is squeezing the International Monetary Fund out of Latin America, the region that once accounted for most of its business.

IMF lending in the area has fallen to $50 million, or less than 1 percent of its global portfolio, compared with 80 percent in 2005. Meanwhile, Chavez has used his oil wealth to lend $2.5 billion to Argentina, offer $1.5 billion to Bolivia and hold $500 million out to Ecuador.

Chavez, 52, is promoting what he calls a "socialist" alternative to the Washington-based IMF and its biggest shareholder, the U.S. Treasury. The timing couldn't be worse for the IMF, whose global clout is diminishing as countries pay their debts.

"Chavez is the No. 1 enemy of the IMF in the region," said Jose Guerra, a former head of economic research at Venezuela's central bank and now a professor at Universidad Central de Venezuela in Caracas. "He views the IMF as an agent in the service of the U.S."

The international lender's worldwide portfolio has shriveled to $11.8 billion from a peak of $81 billion in 2004, and a single nation, Turkey, now accounts for about 75 percent. As its lending wanes, so does the fund's ability to influence government policies. The IMF and its sister institution, the World Bank, have used aid to promote free trade, unfettered investment flows and limited government.

"We don't accept the kind of development the World Bank and International Monetary Fund want to push on us to change our hopes, our souls, our pain," Chavez told a summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Havana last September.

Chavez has proposed creating Banco del Sur, or Bank of the South, to supplant international lenders. Such a bank would allow Latin American nations to avoid the policy conditions that generally come with IMF loans.
http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070304/BUSINESS01/703040311/1066

:)

[Judi Lynn]

1. Latin Americans deserve to find more personally helpful ways to find solutions

to regional financial needs. It's time they found the unity the right-wing power loons in Washington have been fighting to prevent. It's THEIR region, their interests, not Washington's.

[movonne]

2. This guy is one smart dude...

[TheBaldyMan]

3. Hooray for Hugo. The IMF is a gangster organisation,

they cause more problems than they solve.

Also they are headed by Wolfowitlez the man who claimed the Iraq war would pay for itself within months.

I can't think of any reason a sane government wouldn't pick Chavez over the royal reaming they'll receive from the IMF.

The record of privatisation in South America would be enough to justify telling the IMF and World Bank where to get off.

[hack89]

4. He better hope that oil prices stay high. nt

[Toots]

7. Are you suggesting bankers are paupers?

Do you think he is just giving his money away? He will be receiving interest believe me.....Chavez is a brilliant person....His country (hell the entire continent) will flourish under his leadership...

[Judi Lynn]

8. Every gain against the darkness, dispair, helplessness of the Venezuelan poor

for so very long before their Bolivarian revolution is a step forward out of hell for them. They would STILL be helpless, hopeless if things had remained as they were when Carlos Andres Perez raised their transportation costs 200%, following the U.S. neo-liberal plan for "success" (for HIM, and his CRONIES, of course!), then ordered his troops to fire into the crowds of protesting poor, when the police wouldn't do it, killing off 3,000 of them, injuring many thousands more.

THAT'S when the Venezuelan poor started moving toward finding their own voice, in 1989, I believe. Hugo Chavez is the one who has stepped forward.

You bet he's brilliant, and he is well loved. Those people are NOT going to go back, no matter how many ways the oligarchy, and _Bush conspire to destabilize the government and destroy Chavez.

[Warren Stupidity]

5. What? No more privatized water? This means war!

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050214/shultz

"The people of Bolivia did not choose to privatize their public water systems.That choice was forced on them, as it has been in many poor nations around the world, when the World Bank made privatization an explicit condition of aid in the mid-1990s.Poor countries such as Bolivia, which rely heavily on foreign assistance for survival, are not in much of a position to say no to such pressures."

At one point it was illegal in Bolivia to collect rain water in barrels.

[Judi Lynn]

6. Isn't that sick? The Bechtel company claimed water in the AIR belongs to them.

It's hard to imagine greedier people any time, any place, on any planet.

Thank God the Bolivian people ran their asses off. What a grotesque shame it had to get so bad that they had to riot, and some of them get killed before the Bolivian government moved to change the conditions.

[killbotfactory]

9. Good riddance to them

The IMF won't be missed.

[jaksavage]

10. Viva Chavez

But the reason the IMF isn't funding anyone is cause the gov has allocated every dollar they can to the war front. Same thing in the forest service etc. We are a warrior society.

[marmar]

11. Good. The IMF's purpose is to keep the Third World enslaved to the West....

Viva la revolucion!