OK, now I have the final proof that Chavez knows he lost the election: he pulled out of his ass a new currency for the ALBA countries. A brilliant way to distract political analysts by bringing in economic analysts!
Of course, this will never work. The problem is not the currency of these countries, it that they produce nothing of significant value for the rest of the world, except for Venezuela's oil. In fact I suspect that Correa of Ecuador is trying to use this as a way to escape the dollarization of Ecuador which is a road block in his wishes to seize power the way Chavez did. After all, how can you create a punitive currency exchange system like Chavez did if your money is the US dollar? Of course Chavez loves the idea because Venezuela will be subsidizing it and with that he hopes to control further his client states, a group of miserly country that is not able to contribute to any currency scheme anywhere: Cuba, Honduras, Dominica, Nicaragua and Cuba (Ecuador is just an observer, the only one that could contribute anything if it were not so busy ruining its international credit by not willing to pay its debts). And in this time of crisis as the Moscow stock market gyrates wildly, he invites visiting Medvedev to join in.
I do not know if I should cry or laugh at this latest silliness of Chavez. No one in his entourage is going to tell him that he does not have the money for that toy? Does he know, I mean as in biblically know if necessary, that oil prices are around 50 USD?
Bonus point if you read this far. If Thanksgiving turkey weighs you down on the couch you can read the adventures of Sean Penn in Venezuela and Cuba and see how skilfully he has been manipulated to promote the agenda of Chavez and Cuba. Fascinating reading if you can stomach so much self serving prose that belongs way more to a blog than the pages of any publication. Then again The Nation is kind of a blog, is it not?
-The end-