April 4, 2007   With no known legitimate obligation to do so, Rafael Correa- erstwhile adolescent president of Ecuador- on April 2, 2007 informed his nation boldly of his upcoming economic plans. Problem is: Correa once again failed to deliver any substance and actual details for his sweeping conversion to hard line socialism.

Correa wears his mantle of an elected economist like a badge of credibility. Problem there too is that he is no economist, despite his shopping mall degrees. Perennially gullible Ecuadoreans, functionally illiterate by choice by consistently refusing to demand the facts on Correa and his regime, bought into his falsities and his claim to be a seasoned economist when anyone who actually knows Correa knows too well that he is an angry, bitter youngster whose only hope at succeeding is to destroy his nation through divisiveness, theatrics, ruinous adoration for governability with no accountability,  authoritarianism, and lawlessness….hardly a recipe for success.

Correa’s so called education as an economist, shallow as it is from a massive state university chock full of “check in and check out” students, is that Correa has only ever abused standard academia to encourage his badly formed, shallow world view and vain efforts to blame the globe’s problems on some bizarre version of development-is-to-blame and some “Evil Empire” fault finding which of course has no validity.

But the real problem for all of Correa’s rhetoric is that he has not got a clue as to how to lead Ecuador- he only knows how to mobilize his well paid state backed protesters for faux showings of support which he really knows to be as shallow as their next pay check- in cash and liquor for their day work to attack governmental officers and destroy all in their path.

Correa gave no details on his Economic Plan except to complain and perform his standard operating procedure: employ passive-aggressive attacks on some other cause of his ill founded ire while never once proposing functional solutions. Ecuadoreans know this tactic of manipulation very well- applying it daily.

Rafael Correa wasted his opportunity to deliver any common sense approach to returning Ecuador’s dying economy on his personal addictions which include his senseless hatred of dollarization as some mythical evil that has ruined Ecuador. Claiming to be far wiser than Alan Greenspan and his clones at the U.S. Federal Reserve who have wisely guided U.S. fiscal policy across numerous challenges, Correa denounces the value of the U.S. dollar which was permitted in common usage for Ecuador as a tool to stabilize their run away investors, save domestic funds even on printing bills and stem run away inflation which cost Ecuadoreans billions. In his eye, however, the U.S. dollar is demonized as the major perpetrator in Correa’s perp walk of falsely accused bearers of harm to Ecuador.

Problem is: Correa never cared one bit about What it Takes to Lead a Nation or What It Takes to Build a Republic. In fact, Rafael Correa is determined to bring low all that Ecuador had worked to develop as a sustainable and growing third world economy. Rafael Correa’s ruinous plans will aid and abet the cash and political bag men from Caracas and doom Ecuador to a failed state….far lower than a Third World or potential second world player. Contrast Ecuador’s economy with Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Salvador  and Panama. These nations hold out hope for their citizens. Ecuador holds out fake economic theories as some vague bombast but by now obvious path to ruin. Rafael Correa has no idea what to do to upend the downward spiral in Ecuador except to ruin it some more. And ruining Ecuador is what he is all about.

Correa’s so called foreign policy mouthpieces, instead of proposing any diplomatic relational developments, have set about on to a path replete with misinformation/lies and utterly nothing that could be construed as actionable because no sane nation would act in tandem with the Correa teen agers who have no plan for anything except to whine, lie and demand more and more senseless favors from unsuspecting well intentioned idiot savants. Nothing of any supportable proposals have been delivered by Correa and his team.

Instead, Correa attacks dollarization as the cause of Ecuador’s problems which now include Correa’s plans to merge Ecuador with Chavez’s Venezuela, blend Ecuador’s oil with PDVSA under his new  military-management of national oil mandates [ also called a military bribe], and his insistence that the USA stands for evil while Hugo Chavez and Ahmadinejad stand for glory, as well as banned alcohol as is underway in Venezuela [supposedly short term] not to curtail rampant alcoholism and soaring suicide in the hopeless Venezuelan society but instead to placate Chavez’s Iranian mullah factories, already operating at warp speed.

We do not know what the boozey, feckless Ecuadorean society of self delusional drunks will do when Ahmadinejad and his muslims ramp up Correa to cut off their booze.

To be sure, Correa knows well that most of his state backed golpistas prefer to be paid their day wages in whiskey or chicha ignoring their $16 a day or so cash payments from the Chavez-Correa wallet.

But we do know this: Correa has exposed his hatred for sane, common sense leadership in preference for his own drug-induced plans for communism. We note that it is said that the preferred drink in Carondelet Palace is rum or brandy, not cheap whiskey or chicha. And we can only guess whose rum is the popular drink. In fact, Correa’s team of boozed-up communists have much to celebrate as they have been doing: they boozed up when their goon squads violently forced over half of their legally elected members of Congress from office, they boozed up when Insulza of the OAS applauded their illegal auto golpe and they boozed up when U.S. Senator Chris Dodd and Congressman Delahunt were cited by their good friend US ambassador Jewell as promising Ecuadoreans a free give away called the ATPDA extension for standing against narcoterrorism when the Correa team knows that they are doing all that they can do to install a narcoterror state in Ecuador.

There is nothing valid to celebrate in Ecuador. Correa’s team lies over and over that direct foreign investment is soaring in Ecuador when it is at an all time low. Correa however misses his mark when he blames lack luster economic performance on the evils  of free trade and the evils of inflation stabilization, also called dollarization, on the “evil Empire.” Clearly Correa’s solution is to merge with Hugo Chavez’s disastrous and utterly corrupt global speculative free for all and shutter Ecuador’s once vibrant economy for the foreseeable future. No sane economist would support what Correa eschews….not even Jeffrey Sachs or Joseph Stigletz, themselves deeply intertwined with the Soros money men and other murky global speculators both in New York and their mouthpieces in Quito.

We recall a flight from Quito to Miami not so long so being surrounded by CitiBank speculators who had cheerfully revealed their efforts to persuade then president Lucio Gutierrez to cancel dollarization so as to add Ecuador to their roster of fun filled currency speculating nations for fun and profit and of course with no care as to the stability of Ecuador.

Rafael Correa is determined to aid and abet his real masters: murky foreign global speculators and give them what they want….which happens to be a wide open lawless zone for self enrichment of the worst part of global speculation for Correa is consistently dishonest, consistently opaque and consistently manipulating Ecuador’s economy not for sustainable growth but to financially benefit his masters of arbitrage and market manipulation to whom  he is deeply indebted, looking increasingly like a hapless tool of some unknown global mafia. And perhaps he is. Correa certainly acts like a tool of criminal mafias. While financial speculation is no crime, market manipulation is a crime. And gambling an entire nation’s future to aid and abet criminal cartels and illegal speculators should be forbidden to this Princeling of market manipulation and hate filled policies. In fact, it is increasingly obvious that Correa has progressed into appearing as a bi polar criminal performing criminal acts to satisfy global crime masters.

Even as Correa’s pack of lies told often in Washington recently by his paid lobbyists of deception and misinformation, his “ambassadorial team” always in lock step with their Chavez minders in Washington, D.C., and so called happy investors in Ecuador [who mysteriously were no-shows, realizing at the last minute that lying to the U.S. Congress is an indictable crime for Americans] freely lied to the U.S. government, claiming that the free trade deal with Colombia would ruin Colombia and Ecuador because the evil USA would force soy beans on some unhappy Colombians thus ruining Uribe’s economy (which is soaring by the way), so too is Correa’s team lying about dollarization, claiming that the Republic must print Chavez’s new funny money even as Chavez is leveraging his own nation to the hilts while no one knows where their oil money has fled.

With no accountability whatsoever, Correa claims that the only way to help Ecuadoreans is to install a replica of Chavez’s unaccountable theft of state assets, in their case…oil gold and gas and combine the two nations into one pact with the devil….Chavez’s devil of ruinous self enrichment schemes and arbitrage so dastardly that only masters such as a Marc Rich could motivate their KGB-style actors to continue their money making. And the Correa brandy and rum drinkers will be handed the free license to drive Ecuador off a cliff in 10 days by their foolish support for the so called Citizen’s Referenda which includes only pre selected neo communists to enshrine for all times the total power to ruin Ecuador for Correa and his teen age gang.

Rafael Correa no longer deserves dollarization nor does he want it. This Spring however his ruinous plans are building off the books betting boys a tasty plunder as bets come and go….will he? Won’t he? Only his masters of arbitrage know for sure. But this we do know: Correa is engaged in global arbitrage and he is betting the bank: Ecuador’s oil and gas futures and their  entire Central Bank to cause harm to the U.S. Federal Reserve in any way he can.

The U.S. Congress, instead of claiming joining U.S. Senator Harry Reid in claiming fake “religious experiences” in the Andes would do well to first perform due diligence instead of succumbing to fake shaman like trances perpetuated by Correa’s criminals and those who hate the USA. In fact, acting against the best interests of the USA as witnessed today by some inside the U.S. government, is still legally called “treason” and still carries mandatory sentencing.

Joining Hugo Chavez’s run up to the Euro market and building bets to harm the value of the U.S. dollar while abusing dollarization is the new game afoot. Of course, Correa claims he does not hate the American people but rather,,,hates its government. And its economy and its currency and its values represented by the U.S. dollar and the U.S. Treasury. In fact, the U.S. Treasury must finally stop pretending that Hugo Chavez’s ruinous Banco del Sur is but a game of monopoly for children. Correa this week is pledging to install Ecuadorean reserves inside Chavez’s opaque and very phony political ploy, his Banco del Sur for a real time game of monopoly: communist monopoly and with no real banker on hand.

To be sure, the U.S. economy can withstand any mockery staged by the Correa team. And of course the U.S. economy can withstand yet another raid by the hot money boys against the dollar by any Correa and Chavez gang members. However, to aid and abet the self enrichment of these speculative doers of evil is old fashioned crime.

Rafael Correa must be impeached. Today he should be on trial for obvious non-political charges of market manipulations and financial crimes which include theft, bribery, collusion and growing corruption and state kleptocracy. 

Correa’s political plunder of Ecuador is but a shallow smokescreen/ a cover for his economic plunder of Ecuador which increasingly is less like old fashioned plunder and more like rape.

Of course Ecuadoreans are rushing to ask for more rape and to validate their own self imprisonment under Correa by voting “yes” on April 15, 2007 in the most ill conceived and illegal referenda seen in Latin America- ever.

Freedom lovers in Ecuador urge all Ecuadoreans to VOTE NO on April 15, 2007. What Ecuadoreans should know is that Correa must be impeached and stand trial for his crimes to date before Correa’s fake congress and fake courts and fake government locks them in to their own prison of unending misery in a failed nation of criminals, narcoterrorists and Cuban clones of no consequence except hopelessness. Will Ecuadoreans suspend their daily adoration of the shopping mall ethics or will they stand for principle and fight against their own self imprisonment? Sadly, we predict retreat, lawlessness, and disaster in the near future due to the addiction of most Ecuadoreans to their own self delusions and preference for manipulative behavior which can be remedied before they loose all. Correa is the perfect Princeling for all Ecuadoreans- the perfect metaphor for their own new age family values and mores…manipulation, deception, adolescent behavior and destruction. What is however stunning is that few do anything except applaud the criminal take over of a once sovereign nation, while the word sovereign today means impunity from responsibility and moral leadership.

What we do know is this: Correa’s so called citizen constitutional assembly is a trap. Read again his comments from Monday. Correa states that he has no intention- ever- of moderation or common sense. His manifesto is the only matter on the table and Correa’s plan is the only plan  he will allow to be enshrined by his kangaroo assembly, his kangaroo courts and his kangaroo congress. Any who believe they will have any valid input at table over their own futures are delusional or incompetent at reading Correa’s own words. Adult supervision is badly needed in Ecuador. And the adults there are rewarding Correa with more and more liberty to destroy their country, following their own addictions to manipulative behavior. Which is…criminal by all accounts. Will the real Ecuador grow up and stand on principle? Outlook is dim as freedom lovers self imprison and the days grow short.

Correa claims the dollar is a complete failure. In this he lies again. The dollar is not a failure: Correa and his wild eyed money grabs are about to be seen as the cruelest theft of all.

We commend April 2, 2007 Ratliff’s piece (read it here). Ratliff is correct that poverty and inequality are stubborn problems in Latin America and that Chavez’s so called solutions- deception and socialism- are non starters as Chavez is dead wrong in their potential gains for society. Indeed, the article notes that while Chavez plies his billions, Correa’s only endgame is despair and hopelessness. Today, most Ecuadoreans foolishly and arrogantly tell us that what Chavez has done to Venezuela will never be done to Ecuador by Correa because the two nations are so different and so “sovereign.” Once again this shallow and self delusional tripe harms Ecuadoreans even as they feel protected by their uniqueness and go right on ignoring the undeserved reputation as not needing any principled lessons of history as it marches across their bedrooms which are obviously as dishonest as their uneducated world views. But despair and hopelessness are indeed what Correa will hand Ecuadoreans on April 15, 2007 because no one cared enough to demand or deliver the truth.

- Pedro Camargo for ECrisis