Turning point for South America?

[Whomp]

@Luiz
Where does Bolivian President Evo Morales fit in all this? From what I can tell he's really stuck it to Petrobas by seizing the natural gas industry.

I'm not sure how this will work considering Mexico did the same thing when they nationalized oil and are now in desperate need of new infrastructure.
Thoughts?

 

[luiz]

@Luiz
Where does Bolivian President Evo Morales fit in all this? From what I can tell he's really stuck it to Petrobas by seizing the natural gas industry.

I mentioned Evo in the OP; now he is pretty much the only reliable ally Chávez has in SA. He did stuck it to Petrobrás (and Lula) big time with the nationalization, and managed to hostilize a government that was quite friendly (too friendly for mu tastes). Now nobody will invest in Bolivia, and he is internationally isolated.

Bolivia is becoming a venezuelan satellyte.

I'm not sure how this will work considering Mexico did the same thing when they nationalized oil and are now in desperate need of new infrastructure.
Thoughts?

Brazil did the same thing, in the 40's. We only reversed it in the 90's, and things got much better. Nationalizations suck. That's it, in a nutshell.

 

[jameson]

A few months afterwards, and after replacing a good part of the directors of the institute, they published a study that claimed that in fact millions of people had little food in Brazil.

Right, but my point is the INE is supposed to have waited for years after Chávez came to power to start manipulating the numbers.

Well the other chart puts 53% on the first semester, since Zamenick said it was 6 months old that's what I figured.

Fair enough .

By the way I'm still wainting for any source for your claim that Venezuela grew 18% in 2005, all sources I've seen state 9%. Which as I said earlier is nothing compared to the drops they had before.

I claimed Venezuela´s GDP grew 18% in 2004, but looking back at my post, I can understand the confusion. In any event, I used the numbers from the
Total Economic Database rmsharpe linked to earlier. They list 2003 GDP as $171,545 mn and 2004 GDP as $202,251 mn, which boils down to a 17.9% increase (which, like you point out, only compensates partly for the impact of the recession which hit Venezuela earlier on). If GDP growth was 9% last year, GDP must now be above its previous highest level of 2001 again.