Chavez signs law barring Venezuela brokers from fx, govt debt

[cory777]

Source: Reuters

(Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez signed a new law into effect on Tuesday that formalizes the exclusion of private brokerages from trading the local bolivar currency or public sector dollar-denominated debt.

The new Capital Markets Bill, which had already been approved by parliament and only needed the president's signature, means private brokerages will only be able to trade local equities and securities issued by the private sector.

"With this we are leaving behind the rot of capitalism," Chavez said in a phone call to state television. "Venezuelans can now save, but not save in the rotten brokerages of the bourgeoisie that take the money to the United States."

Market players say the law would spell the end of private brokerages in a country where the bourse traded an average of less than $500,000 a day last year and there is almost no investment banking or initial public offerings.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE67H0HX20100818?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FworldNews+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+International%29

---

Breaking Activist News http://activistnews.blogspot.com

[dipsydoodle]

1. Good man.

Protecting his own citizens.

[Ter]

2. Can he just go one week without making something illegal or nationalizing something?

Jeez...

[Warren Stupidity]

4. We let the dogs of wall street loose on our economy and they ate it.

Venezuela is not going down that road.

[brentspeak]

11. And nations who have erected some barriers to Wall St. are surviving the global recession

Canada, Germany, the Nordic nations (Iceland, the notable exception) -- all have made sure to keep Wall St's influence away from their economies as much as possible. All are doing ok.

Meanwhile, Iceland, which invited Wall St in, has been economically-blasted to the Dark Ages. Greece -- allowed Goldman Sachs to play games with their debt accounting -- sinking like a stone. The Irish Republic -- pretty much the same thing.

Any nation that is exposed to Wall St. pretty much is going to get poisoned and maybe even destroyed.

[Lightning Count]

14. Germany has banned currency trading?

I guess you can't leave the EU unless you have something to trade for other currencies besides Euro's.

[nyy1998]

19. I think more blame goes into the country's leaders management

Of their finances in Greece, Ireland, Spain, and Portugal. Sure, Goldman and Wall St. certainly played a role. But looking at their fiscal history and talking to natives of those countries, I'd blame their leaders' irresponsibility.

Germany and Canada didn't hike up their regulations or anything. In fact, German banks still play a large role in their economy. India and China have been "exposed" to "Wall Street" and they're growing fine.

If you want to blame them for causing the recession here in the US, fire away. They deserve plenty of blame, but to adjust that model to other countries is logically oversimplifying and doesn't take into consideration unique conditions in that country, which is very vital in understanding those countries.

[yurbud]

26. do you want to live in a Milton Friedman paradise where you only get as much protection,

health care, and democracy as you can buy?

[classysassy]

31. The merchants of greed

are upset,way to go Mr President,the American and European thieves hate you.HELP THE POOR THE ONES THE RICH SCREW OVER.

[CJvR]

3. So...?

He doesn't want people to save, save as in rescue, their money while they are still worth something?

[Judi Lynn]

5. He's sticking close to his campaign promises he made long ago. Congratulations, voters of Venezuela.

Wish our own President could follow his example.

[NuttyFluffers]

22. and 'signed law' passed by a 'parliament' -- where's 'dictatorial fiat' in that report?

:evilgrin:

i know, i know, starting shit is bad...

well, back to waiting for the ever-anticipated Venezuelan economic implosion and collapse in 3, 2, 1... (i hate having to reset my egg timer)

[Odin2005]

6. K&R.

[Lightning Count]

7. Very provincial.

I guess if the Bolivar drops in value then there will be no other options for the people of Venezuela.

[brentspeak]

9. Anything that reduces a people's exposure to the toxic effects of Wall St. is a good thing

[Lightning Count]

10. So currencies like the Euro and the Yen are Wall Street inventions?

Wouldn't that make the Bolivar a Wall Street invention?

[brentspeak]

12. I'm referring to currency speculation on the market n/t

[Lightning Count]

13. So you're against currency trading?

People should be stuck with the dollar in order to be patriotic? Maybe they can stick that in when the Patriot Act is renewed.

[brentspeak]

15. If currency trading destabilizes a national currency, then yes, I'm against it

Any three-card Monte high finance game which causes people who aren't even a direct party of the game to become poorer I am dead set against.

[Lightning Count]

16. Please explain how currency trading has resulted in 30% inflation.

For the Bolivar. Also, please explain how currency trading affects the demand for the Bolivar.

Would you allow people to trade currencies if they were travelling or resided in multiple countries?

[CJvR]

24. Speculation isn't the problem.

Chavez policy is.

If you are a reasonably well of Venezuelan facing a massive inflation combined with ever more questionable state bonds what would you do? Well normally you would invest in realestate or other inflation proof items - however your goverment is showing alarming tendensies of cleptomania making realestate less secure than it should be.
So you are left with the option of sending as much of your money out of the country as possible, it is really just common sense. However when a million Venezuelans draw the same conclusion it becomes a huge problem since it will drain the currency reserves in a hurry, this is the "evil" market.
Naturally Venezuelans are not the only ones who look at the state of the national finances and draw conclutions, every loan now made will have higher intrests due to the default risk. Why dont people stop loaning Chavez money? Simple, the last loan before Venezuela defaults on it's debt will be the most profitable. There are plenty of sharks in the state debt and currency market sea, but they hardly ever attacks a fundamentaly healthy economy.

[CynicalObserver]

34. very rational post. I am amazed at the cheerleading here.

Would folks like to see their dollars banned from conversion as well, given where the dollar may be heading in the coming years?

I assume online forum have a core of paid or useful idiot true believers to drown out rational discourse, but the chavez threads bring out folks with zero grasp of why this isn't the same as hating GSCO/MSCO/JPM (hell I cannot remember jpm's give-up now, do they even display under one anymore?)

[friendly_iconoclast]

36. The cheerleaders don't realize Chavez can't force non-Venezualans to accept boilvares

Looks like Hugo is dead set upon being the Robert Mugabe of South America.

Wonder what the Venezuelans will put on the 100 billion bolivar note. Here's a suggestion for what it may look like:

[bitchkitty]

40. What is cleptomania? n/t

[Tempest]

17. You don't appear to understand speculation in the currency market

Here's a primer you should read:

http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/nar-cn.htm

[Lightning Count]

18. Any article that uses "My" and "I" from an anti-globalization site is suspect.

Are you a fan of the gold standard and why?

Maybe you would like to also answer these.

Please explain how currency trading has resulted in 30% inflation for the Bolivar.

Also, please explain how currency trading affects the demand for the Bolivar.

[Tempest]

20. Did you read the link I provided?

If so, what is wrong with their analysis? In depth, not just throw-away terms and your personal beliefs.

If not, then there's nothing for us to discuss.

[Lightning Count]

21. I did and that is why I asked you these questions.

Are you a fan of the gold standard and why?

Please explain how currency trading has resulted in 30% inflation for the Bolivar.

Also, please explain how currency trading affects the demand for the Bolivar.

[Warren Stupidity]

23. Brenton Woods: commies, all of them

[friendly_iconoclast]

39. Bretton Woods worked as long as everybody went along with it

Once it was discovered that gold could command a higher price in non-controlled markets, the Bretton Woods framework was doomed.

[ensho]

8. kick

nt

[fascisthunter]

25. good

[Vidar]

27. Bravo Chavez!

[Judi Lynn]

28. The transformation of Latin America is a global advance

The transformation of Latin America is a global advance
The radical tide is about to be put to the test in Brazil and Venezuela. If support holds, it will have lessons for all of us
Seumas Milne guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 18 August 2010 21.00 BST


Nearly two centuries after it won nominal independence and Washington declared it a backyard, Latin America is standing up. The tide of progressive change that has swept the continent for the past decade has brought to power a string of social democratic and radical socialist governments that have attacked social and racial privilege, rejected neoliberal orthodoxy and challenged imperial domination of the region.

Its significance is often underestimated or trivialised in Europe and North America. But along with the rise of China, the economic crash of 2008 and the demonstration of the limits of US power in the "war on terror", the emergence of an independent Latin America is one of a handful of developments reshaping the global order. From Ecuador to Brazil, Bolivia to Argentina, elected leaders have turned away from the IMF, taken back resources from corporate control, boosted regional integration and carved out independent alliances across the world. Both the scale of the transformation and the misrepresentation of what is taking place in the western media are driven home in Oliver Stone's new film, South of the Border, which allows six of these new wave leaders to speak for themselves. Most striking is their mutual support and common commitment – from Cristina Kirchner of Argentina to the more leftist Evo Morales – to take back ownership of their continent.

Two crucial votes in the next few weeks will put the future of this process to the test. The first are parliamentary elections in Venezuela, whose Bolivarian revolution has been at the cutting edge of Latin America's renewal since Hugo Chávez was first elected president in 1998. For all his popularity at home, Chávez has been the target for a campaign of vilification and ridicule throughout the US, European and elite-controlled Latin American media – which has little to do with his high-octane rhetoric and much more with his effectiveness in using Venezuela's oil wealth to challenge US and corporate power across the region.

Forget his success in slashing the Venezuelan poverty rate in half, tripling social spending, rapidly expanding healthcare and education, and fostering grassroots democracy and worker participation. Since the beginning of the year Venezuela's enemies have smelled blood as his government faltered in the face of drought-triggered power cuts, a failure to ride out recession with a stimulus package – as Morales's Bolivia did – and growing discontent over high levels of violent crime. So expect a flurry of new claims that Chávez is a dictator who has stifled media freedom and persecuted bankers and businessmen, and whose incompetent regime is running into the sand. In reality the Venezuelan president has won more free elections than any other world leader, the country's media are dominated by the US-funded opposition, and his government's problems with service delivery stem more from institutional weakness than authoritarianism.

More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/aug/18/latin-america-venezuela-brazil-elections

[Judi Lynn]

29. How The Associated Press (AP) Gutted Its Own Scoop On The Venezuelan Coup D'etat

How The Associated Press (AP) Gutted Its Own Scoop On The Venezuelan Coup D'etat
By Jared Israel
www.emperors-clothes.com


Does the Western media deliberately distort the news to serve the interests of the foreign policy establishments of the NATO countries, especially the US? Based on much research, Emperor's Clothes says: yes, but not entirely.

Journalists sometimes - perhaps often - write accurate pieces. However, when the issues are important, foreign policy stories get edited or replaced, with the end result supporting a slant which is so consistently in tune with the long-term goals of the US foreign policy elite that it is possible, by analyzing news stories, to predict positions which will be adopted by the US government. That is partly how we made the predictions in the article, "Why Does Washington Want Afghanistan?" Alas, those predictions have proven true. (1)

Every day we test the above-stated thesis using the excellent Lexis search engine. It enables us to scan millions of newspaper articles and TV news transcripts in seconds. We can focus on particular dates or periods of time. We can check for the presence or absence of certain words or phrases. In this way, we can fashion an hypothesis and test it - see if we are right about the line being taken by most or all the media. Or we can just "go fishing" and see what we find.

On April 13th, the Associated Press published what is by far the best - indeed, from what I've seen, the only - mainstream article reporting the massive police terror against pro-Chavez Venezuelans after the recent coup d'etat. It was a scoop. Below I have posted this dispatch, written by Christopher Toothaker.

Soon after AP sent out the Toothaker dispatch, they released a revised dispatch without Toothaker's account of police terror in poor neighborhoods. The new dispatch, by Andrew Selsky, retained only one thing from the original: the first part of an important paragraph was the same, but the second part was completely rewritten to reverse the meaning. All the original material in the Toothaker dispatch was removed. AP gutted their scoop.

AP dispatches are sent out to news media "outlets" around the world. Thus by April 14th, most of the important newspapers and TV stations had received two very different AP dispatches. The first (Toothaker) was detailed and refuted the official line on what happened in Venezuela. The second (Selsky) was general and supported the official line. This is as close to a scientific experiment as one could fashion to test our thesis that key media "outlets" censor themselves to support the US establishment's agenda.

More:
http://www.trinicenter.com/world/venez/lessons8.shtml

[LTX]

30. How are the articles you posted

(one of them from April of 2002) related in any way to the o/p? Do you just drop in on every thread about Venezuela to spread around some generically laudatory state propaganda?

[friendly_iconoclast]

35. Apparently, DU can never have too many odes to the Dear Campanero...

Mind you, I don't actually hate the guy- I've been known to buy gas at Companero Hugo's Gas N' Gulp (Citgo, for the non-cognoscenti).

It's just amusing to see our version of Bushbots in action. Change a few names and policies, and the copy could be substituted

for some of the more obsequious pro-Bush posts on Free Republic circa 2003-2004.


Not all true believers sing the same song, but they all tend to sing in the same key...

[Kringle]

32. more work for friends of H.C. .nt

[ProudDad]

33. WooHoo!

Stick it to the capitalist assholes, Hugo!

Viva Chavez!

Too bad our fucking "leaders" are too well bought to do the same...

[friendly_iconoclast]

37. Kewl! I'll be able to buy some billion-bolivar notes on Ebay soon enough.

It amuses me to see people who realize drug Prohibition doesn't work claim that this Prohibition will surely work

because H.C.'s motives are pure and his strength is as the strength of ten...

[friendly_iconoclast]

38. What's the line on when the hyperinflation will kick in?

I'd say before the end of the year.