New world order notes: Cuba, Venezuela's Chávez, the U.S. banking crisis

[AlphaCentauri]

Mexico City, Mexico, and Havana, Cuba - Around the world, the leaders of many different governments, political analysts, investors of all kinds, and both admirers and detractors of the United States of America (and, even more precisely, critics of its government, which has few fans anywhere) are watching with concern and alarm as some of Wall Street's biggest financial institutions collapse, and the clueless Bush gang strides in, its swagger long since lost, to try to fix the mess.

Is the U.S. federal government doing the right thing to cook up a massive, $700-billion bailout of financial corporations that were poorly managed or that took certain risks - and lost, which is part of the capitalist-investment game? If Washington is so eager to rescue failing financial companies (just as it has aided ailing airlines in the past), why shouldn't it also help financially in-trouble supermarket chains, auto-makers or other at-risk enterprises?

Some of the Bush gang's sharpest critics are not Democrats, but rather fellow, self-styled conservatives who say George W. Bush's "conservative legacy" is at risk. Exactly what "conservative legacy" might that be, considering that the profiteering Bush gang has expanded the federal government so much and run it so far into debt, it's almost impossible to calculate just how deeply in the hole the U.S. is right now? (By the way, just where is that magical $700 billion going to come from?)

Today's Wall Street Journal, that bastion of traditionally conservative thinking about money and finance, reports that "Bush's $700-billion rescue plan for financial markets is prompting widespread soul-searching within the conservative movement. While many Republican lawmakers seek to distance themselves from the plan, or disown it altogether, White House officials hope the heated opposition will cool if the plan works. Many frustrated conservatives see...Bush's rescue plan, on top of his decision to invade Iraq, as cementing his legacy as a big-government conservative."

Last week, in Havana, a visitor could watch on a Venezuelan TV channel beamed in by satellite to guestrooms in one of the Cuban capital's better-appointed hotels (but not available on televisions elsewhere around the country) the weekly program starring Venezuela's leader, President Hugo Chávez. In the program ("Hello President!"), Chávez sits at a desk before a small audience of obviously enthusiastic supporters, occasionally taking their questions but mostly declaiming about - well, about just about everything.

His political rhetoric notwithstanding, in last week's broadcast, Chávez clearly and accurately pointed out that the current crisis in the American banking-and-financial sector is a major milestone that shows that a vital component of the U.S. capitalist system is not working. He explained to viewers that, according to its own traditional principles and rhetoric, the U.S. government really should not be intervening to save companies of any kind that take chances in the marketplace and fail. Likewise, he hinted that it was hypocritical for American, capitalist lawmakers to criticize the socialist system, in which a country's central government effectively owns and manages enterprises of all kinds and controls its economy, when they themselves are making concerted efforts to bend their economy's own rules in order to do the same thing.

Chávez has just returned to Venezuela after a whirlwind tour that took him to China, Russia and Europe. He cut some big deals all along the way. In Portugal, Chávez and Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates "agreed on a deal to export one million laptop computers to Venezuelan schoolchildren and build 50,000 pre-fabricated . A Portuguese company will make the computers <, which will> be delivered to Venezuelan students this year." Socrates said: "It's a lot more than exporting computers....It's about cooperating with Venezuela to set up a program similar to what we have in Portugal. The aim is to improve education." With Chávez's visit, Venezuela and Portugal "also agreed to cooperate on energy, notably on gas and electricity...." (Agence France Presse)

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