----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Henwood" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
That Venezuela's in a stronger situation than most other countries would be. It has to worry less about capital flight, and has a huge revenue stream to tap for social improvement projects. Patrick's national-scale approach wouldn't work very well in less well-situated countries - they need trade and technology partners.
Ok, take Argentina. After the default and imposition of exchange controls (on profit repatriation), they ran a trade surplus - without much in the way of trade finance by the way - and have recovered faster than other Latin American countries. Even Zimbabwe managed to maintain a modicum of exports (including even from the highly volatile agriculture sector) after their 1999-present default on foreign debt and imposition of tough capital controls.
And anyhow Doug, you'd surely agree we're going to win these national states one by one, well before we get to the point a global proto-state can be persuaded to do serious financial regulation, not so?
