South America on the Rise as US Declines
While the US repeatedly raises its debt ceiling, auctioning bonds by the billions to foreign creditors, South American countries continue to shed their foreign debt obligations.
[Venezuela] said in a statement late Saturday it plans to buy back about US$700 million (euro588 million) in Par and Discount Brady bonds around March 1.Chavez is no fool. He knows the game.
The country will buy back an additional US$3.2 billion (euro2.7 billion) on dates of future interest payments, the ministry said.
The Brady bond repurchases would amount to about 15.2 percent of Venezuela's foreign debt obligations, a ministry official told Dow Jones Newswires. Venezuela's total outstanding public foreign debt stood at US$31 billion (euro26.1 billion) as of Dec. 31, according to preliminary ministry data.
Chavez has often claimed that such debt instruments are designed to benefit rich countries while saddling poorer ones with crippling interest payments. He has made buying back foreign debt an ongoing policy amid the government's surging revenues from oil exports.Country after country asserts its economic independence and national sovereignty on the world stage - Iran, Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil, even Norway.
Venezuela is the world's fifth-largest oil exporter.
[It]will seek to pay off its loans with international creditors like the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank earlier than planned.
Other countries in Latin American have also made efforts to pay off foreign debt amid surging exports and a falling dollar. Brazil announced on Friday that it would buy back US$6.34 billion (euro5.32 billion) in the last of its Brady bonds.
The gig is up.
But, rest assured, the powers that be will not cede world dominance without a struggle.
posted by qrswave @ Sunday, February 26, 2006
2 Comments:
"Chavez has often claimed that debt is designed to benefit rich countries while saddling poorer ones with crippling interest payments."
This is exactly what capitalism does to the American people, here at home. Profit and interest is meant to destabilize an economy by keeping the rest of us in debt. People can't even demand the right to freely negotiate the value of a simple item. The con men control the availability of the social "connivance" called money. Therefore, the supplier can fix the price of necessary goods because they know you need it. Gasoline is a good simple prime example of that control. I hope that people realize that this con game just can't go on any longer. Merchants, owners and producers, whether good or bad, are force to play within the fixed perimeters of this fixed fraud. They are just as guilty for their compliance in this scheme.
Necessities should be nationalized by the people. Fuck private ownership at the expense of people. The Protestant ethic that says that working people are lazy and stupid should be tarred and feathered! Over sixty percent of wealth in this country is inheritance wealth. That's should be translated into just the top 5% of the elite hold most of the wealth! They didn't even have to work for it! Herbert Spencer's social Darwinism is a live and well on the backs of working and poor people.
Oh! On Spencer's death bed he said and felt that maybe charity should be an accepted practice.
South America deserves to develop as they see fit. And they are, even while Uncle Sam holds a cocked gun to their heads. What are Americans afraid of? A less stressful life, educated and healthy children, an honest face, an honest days work? You deserve what you don't demand, that is what is happening to you. We're a nation of cowards and bullies not fit to sit at the table of humanity.
Tiger Eye said:
"Necessities should be nationalized by the people."
I couldn't agree with you more. Basic public services (water, utilities, healthcare, education, transportation, communication, etc.) should be truly NON-PROFIT (i.e., no interest-bearing bonds) and controlled by the people.
And agribusiness monopolies MUST be dismantled.
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