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Showing posts from February, 2009

10 years under Chavez (a mainstream economic report card)

While I am of the opinion the revolution in Venezuela must continue to move forward and end current property relations or it is doomed to fail; I'm certainly not against enacting progressive reforms along the way. The following report gives an idea of what has been accomplished so far. (Obviously, at least from my point of view, not everything is positive. Many of these programs show their limitations within the confines of a capitalist system.) It was done by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a research institute with Nobel laureates Joe Stiglitz and Robert Solow , among others, on its advisory board. http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/venezuela-2009-02.pdf Key points (as taken from the report): * The current economic expansion began when the government got control over the national oil company in the first quarter of 2003. Since then, real (inflation-adjusted) GDP has nearly doubled, growing by 94.7 percent in 5.25 years, or 13.5 percent annually. * Most of t...