I must admit that my knowledge of Paraguay is rather limited but Chavez? Mr. Presidente for life? 3 guesses why inflation is currently running at 20% per month and why petroleum output is declining in Venezuela ...
1) He keeps winning those darned elections, eh? Maybe the people shouldn't be trusted with anything as precious as democracy.
2) Inflation has always been high in Venezuela.
3) Petroleum output in Venezuela: maybe you're using secondary sources?
Paraguay did obtain a pyrrhic victory over Bolivia in the hideous Chaco War (1932-1935).
Sadly, all about the oil that wasn't there:
"And the oil? In a final irony, the petroleum wealth that had inflamed the imaginations of prewar nationalist agitators turned out to be a will-o'-the-wisp. There was no oil in the Chaco itself, and Bolivia's modest output was exported, not by river, but by pipeline through Brazil. The oil speculators pronounced themselves mistaken, and left the Gran Chaco to the cow, the quebracho, and the dead."
Mark
Ottawa
The Chaco War was a hideous spectacle, all right: 8% of the male population of Paraguay died in that conflict. That is approaching the correct usage of the word "decimation."
"Mr. Presidente for life? " Not really abolition of term limits was VOTED DOWN, remember. Furthermore Canada, Australia, NZ and GB do not have constitutional term limits. Does that make them dictatorships as you imply?
Does that make them dictatorships as you imply?
Probably only if a Liberal is PM 
Inflation in Venezuela, meanwhile, is not in fact running at 20% per month. 20% per year, yes--which while much lower than immediately before Chavez took power, is high. Big fat hairy. The economy is growing about as fast as China's, except unlike China inequality is decreasing, poverty shrinking at high speed, real wages for the bottom half of the population have doubled, medical care and education become massively more accessible, and on and on. A bit of inflation don't signify a whole bunch next to all that.
Petroleum output has shrunk slightly. Mainly because Venezuela's OPEC output quota has shrunk slightly, and Venezuela has stuck to it. OPEC's output quotas may be bad for me and you, but sticking to them is sure as hell a good idea for oil producing countries.
"let us hope that the turn is to the left, with Evo Morales and Hugo Chávez"
Heh. I would like to revisit that quote in several years. As for Paraguay, I wish them best of luck.
When I read about Lugo's win my first thought was the probable reaction around the Bush family's Emergency Relocation Committee boardroom table:
"Shit. Shit. Shit-shit-shit-shit-SHIT!"
"Amen. Well, what about Dubai?"
Good one North of 49 I thought the same thought
To hear the former chief economist of the Venezuelan National Assembly (from 2000 to 2004, no less) tell it, Venezuela's performance isn't quite what the Chavistas del Norte would have you believe. More like a left-wing version of Ralph Klein.
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/
20...revolution.html
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