January 15, 2008   We at ECrisis commend all reformed Latin idiots, including Alan Garcia of Peru: he reminds us that even idiots can grow up and perform admirably if they chose to. Garcia of late, besides leading Peru toward development goals not seen in Peru as consolidated under freedom's promise for a long time, is not only exhibiting leadership for the betterment of Peruvians but has analyzed Ecuador's Rafael Correa and has found him to be a ninnyhammer, a dimwit and a dunce- for he is. But more seriously, Garcia did not call Correa any names. He simply made the direct cut and claimed that Correa is not an economist of any seriousness [for he is not. Correa is a Marxist socialist politician who parades as a badly educated economist] and well Garcia knows this. Garcia knows first hand that Correa is no leader of any honest government because Ecuador is collapsing. Garcia sees how Ecuadoreans use Peru's banks, have moved their business headquarters to Peru, and rely on the safety net provided by law abiding nations called Peru and Colombia which have not rejected rule of law as Ecuador has done.
 
Once again we applaud Mary Anastasia O'Grady's seminal work on the Index of Economic Freedom. This annual report is always a good read from the team of authors and laudably available through the HERITAGE Foundation and a very useful analysis, reminding us that freedom [which encourages fluid exchange of ideas and innovative entrepreneurship for growth] is essential to sustainable economic development. While this INDEX was not yet able to compile the current economic freedom destruction plan underway today in Ecuador by Correa, one year from now the facts will be exposed for what they are. Correa has single handedly driven out investment and has destroyed Ecuador's economy and freedoms because- among many things- he refuses to uphold rule of law, Correa has shuttered open media essentially by installing self  censorship and media controls, and Correa is of course a dictator installing his Cuban-Marxist self coup in every sense. The INDEX will ultimately concur with Garcia.

There are no meaningful economic freedoms in Ecuador today and soon enough, Correa's massive propaganda will not be able to hide his dirty secret that Ecuador is now a narcodemocracy and a failed state under one adolescent's total control for the betterment of the Chavez-Castro plan.
 
Peru's CORREO, read it here, reports facts on the ground from Ecuador because none in Ecuador want you to know their dirty little secret:" “Pregúntenle a cualquier ecuatoriano si está contento con el manejo económico de Correa. El es un buen satélite de Hugo Chávez y para entenderlo hay que mirar antes al venezolano”, señaló.' " In other words, far from the phony claims and overpaid Chavez-Correa propaganda underway to tell us that Correa has magically distanced himself from Chavez, when he has done nothing of the sort, the Peruvians tell us what we already know if we are honest....the Correa has made Ecuador a satellite of Chavez in his new bloc of doomed states. The Peruvians forgot to mention how almost daily now, Correa preaches his anti-USA rhetoric and proclaims that capitalism is the real evil...not the criminal cartels and rackets running Ecuador today, raping murdering and seizing innocence.
 
 
The FREEDOM INDEX notes, in "Narrowing the Economic Gap in the 21st Century," Stephen Parente, associate professor of economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, debunks several World Bank myths by showing that it is not the resources -- land, workforce and capital -- of an economy that play the most important role in explaining higher income countries. Instead it is "the efficiency at which a society uses its resources to produce goods and services."

We remind that Parente's words are the exact opposite of Rafael Correa's words, both now and while he "studied" at the same huge state school in Illinois where inexplicably Correa was conferred a shopping mall degree from this shopping mall degree factory. It is a pity that all Correa did as an "economics" student was not to learn anything, as is evident in his acts and words, but to set about to try to prove that his own stilted views that Cuba's Marxist economies are needed...instead of ceding the facts that his revered Cuban model is a failure, a fraud and a scam. Correa still yet promises a Castro paradise in Ecuador and he is skillful in enshrining this totalitarian model for complete economic fascism as is the case today. Far better had Correa studied functional- not political- economics and actually moved out of his adolescent mind set in to a functioning adult. In Ecuador, adolescent mind sets are called ultimate. This is a national tragedy that serves none and ultimately fails, exposed as it will always be for its irresponsibly corrupting nature.
 
Indeed, just the other day, EL COMERCIO ran Correa's incorrect assessment that the historian Alexis de Tocqueville, whose original studies on functional democracy in America, was- according to Correa- a justification for his Cuban style "alternative democracy." This claim by Correa is utterly incorrect and exhibits his adolescent addiction to ignorance. De Tocqueville, in all things, noted that the USA succeeded against all odds because it was a democracy under a republic with practical capitalism protected under rule of law, fundamental features which Correa has just removed even as he lied- calling him basically a justification for Correa's fake democracy called the Alternative Democracy movement and proclaimed that de Tocqueville worshipped income and property redistribution, which he of course did not. Like Chavez's lies about Simon Bolivar, Correa's lies about de Tocqueville survive because we let them and because Ecuadoreans now enjoy manipulating all realities to suit their daily addictions to bending the facts.


I confess that in America I saw more than America; I sought the image of democracy itself, with its inclinations, its character, its prejudices, and its passions, in order to learn what we have to fear or hope from its progress.
~ Alexis de Tocqueville
 
There are no real elected officials or independent judiciaries any more in Ecuador: Correa has had them removed at the point of a gun. De Tocqueville would, in today's world, sue Correa for libel and slander and misrepresentation of his research. But Ecuadoreans are so addicted to retaining their right to be lazy and undereducated that none meaningfully challenge Correa's lies. And this recalcitrance, which initially is claimed to preserve their addiction to greed and complicity with criminal actors, in the end costs Ecuadoreans more money as their resources fall away in the anti-developing world of Correa and Chavez. In the end, lying down with dogs in a cold bed does cost...and the cost is seen in the dead zone where vibrancy, intelligence, effectiveness and meaningful quality of life are sold out to preserve the manipulative. This has cost Ecuadoreans their future and their honor.
 
Alan Garcia scores a goal with his accurate appraisal of Correa as a loser and a dysfunctional leader and an economist of flawed assumptions. Peruvians see the flood of Ecuadoreans fleeing Ecuador because Correa refuses to stop the domestic chaos born of his adolescent turmoil, noted in the globe's highest murder and crime rate and failed economy. Ecuadoreans, so addicted to manipulative living, continue to praise Correa for his failed and dysfunctional leadership even in the face of real time data that he is a fake/ a fraud and in no way a partner for progress. To Ecuadoreans, sadly, fake partners for progress, called fraudulent partnering, is so enshrined in their genetic code these days that none stand up to press for adult leadership for functional partnering. This addiction to fake progress and dysfunction at all costs is costing Ecuadoreans a lot of money to sustain. While Ecuadoreans continue to maintain that dysfunction must be protected at all costs, including the full abandonment of integrity and honor, we note that the world is not so addicted to manipulative lies about Ecuador's real relationship, which all Ecuadoreans now like to hide, with the world. Far more admirable would be a fact based plan to restore Ecuador to function.
 
While Rafael Correa promises to make Ecuador as wonderful as Castro's Cuba, take a look at the failed economies on this list. These nations are horrible for any who live there. And these nations....Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, etc are the precise nations that Correa has decreed are his sole international partners. Of course Correa has plunged Ecuador in to the status of....failed state and fully and formally in bed with Cuba, Iran and Chavez's Venezuela. Alan Garcia now, like Spain, sees the tens of thousands of Ecuadoreans decamping their homes for the tender mercies of refugee status. Rafael Correa stupidly wants to tell you that Ecuadoreans flee Ecuador because of Colombia's fight with the FARC. In this of course Correa is lying again. While Correa has only aided and abetted the FARC, Ecuador itself has no law and order, no rule of law and no justice. Correa and his goon squads control everything today and all is not surprisingly dysfunctional and broken. This is what happens when we permit badly trained adolescents to run everything in this nation with no accountability like a kindergarten.
 
Garcia and his neighbor Alvaro Uribe see what is happening in Ecuador. At least they have the grace to speak the facts whereas the U.S. embassy in Quito continues to relay its ridiculous propaganda that all is well in Ecuador when nothing could be further from the truth. Will amb. Linda Jewell go toe to toe with Garcia and debate the merits of her full approval of Correa with Garcia? In any fact-backed debate on Correa, who do you suppose would win? Jewell or Garcia?

Garcia is not afraid to say what he sees. We do not know why Jewell continues her propaganda based on non facts, but she needs instructions soon. Actually, she needs to go.
 
Costa Rica, Peru, Mexico, El Salvador Colombia, Panama, Chile....and even Paraguay are economically more free/more productive than Ecuador.

These nations are more productive because their own citizens did not run away, as is the case in all failing and unfree nations, and acted for their common good under a sound plan for reform, not living under lazy and irresponsible excuses for justifying their own personal failure to stand on principle. We all hang together or we hang alone. And while Iran moves in, to hang 'em high, Ecuadoreans are still pretending that Alan Garcia is lying about their woebegone fake  economist leader who has lead them off a cliff....in to the well paid control of DISIP under Castro-Chavez's new money men.
 
We hope you will study this superb Index. It is a helpful tool to understanding the world we live in. It also helps us understand why it is we say that Ecuador is mostly not free any more. That is....Correa has stopped Ecuadoreans' capacity to even buy this book. Correa has cut off purchases overseas for Ecuadoreans, couched under the fake name of monetary controls with caps on where or how private money is spent. Even buying this INDEX is now controlled by Correa with his spending caps and overseeing what you buy and what you do. This is not a democracy here and it is not freedom.
 
Correa has staked his career and his presidency on converting Ecuador in to an UNFREE Economy where development, except by unaccountable, formal alliances with Chavez and Iran's proxy mafias and money rackets, does not exist. If you think this is a good thing, this web site cannot help you and you should continue reading the Fora de Sao Paulo materials, Chavez's massive propaganda materials and Castro's lies called GRANMA. Of course you will also enjoy all the George Soros-funded NGO materials which dovetail nicely as a Greek chorus for this string of losers in encouraging this criminality called "alternative economies in alternative democracies with no rule of law needed," assisted as it may be by the Russo-military industrial complex called Putin's iron hand in Chavez's weapons build up for his new member bloc states. But if you chose to act to self educate, we hope you study the facts. This INDEX is a very good place to begin.

In fact, the INDEX is so good, it stands on its own and needs no interpretation by us or anyone for it is an annual and completely dependable mirror on our world.
 
Do you know what your politicians- that is your fake economist cum Chavista dictator Correa- does to keep you unfree? _____

Do you know what you will do today and tomorrow to return Ecuador to a real country?
 
-Pedro Camargo for ECrisis

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The Wall Street Journal
January 15, 2008   
COMMENTARY 

The Real Key to Development
By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY
January 15, 2008; Page A13
Are the world's impoverished masses destined to live lives of permanent misery unless rich countries transfer wealth for spending on education and infrastructure?

You might think so if your gurus on development economics earn their bread and butter "lending" at the World Bank. Education and infrastructure "investment" are two of the Bank's favorite development themes.

Yet the evidence is piling up that neither government nor multilateral spending on education and infrastructure are key to development. To move out of poverty, countries instead need fast growth; and to get that they need to unleash the animal spirits of entrepreneurs.

Empirical support for this view is presented again this year in The Heritage Foundation/The Wall Street Journal Index of Economic Freedom, released today. In its 14th edition, the annual survey grades countries on a combination of factors including property rights protection, tax rates, government intervention in the economy, monetary, fiscal and trade policy, and business freedom.

The nearby table shows the 2008 rankings but doesn't tell the whole story. The Index also reports that the freest 20% of the world's economies have twice the per capita income of those in the second quintile and five times that of the least-free 20%. In other words, freedom and prosperity are highly correlated.

The 2008 Index finds that while global economic liberty did not expand this year, it also did not contract. The average freedom score for the 157 countries ranked is nearly the same as last year, which was the second highest since the Index's inception. This is somewhat of an achievement considering the rising protectionist and anti-immigration sentiment in the U.S., the uncertainty created by spiking global energy prices, Al Gore's highly effective fear mongering about global warming, and the continuing threat of the Islamic jihad.

Former British colonies in Asia took three of the top five places this year. But half of the top 20 freest economies in the world are in Europe. Of the five regions surveyed, Europe is the most free, continuing to advance this year with tax cuts and other business-friendly reforms. The only other region to score above the world average this year is the Americas, which is helped by strong performers like the U.S., Canada, Chile and El Salvador. At the other end of the scale Argentina, Bolivia, Haiti, Venezuela and Cuba dragged down the regional average.

Although overall global economic liberty did not expand, there were a few stars. Egypt was the most improved economy in the world, implementing major changes to its tax policies and business regulation environment and jumping to number 85 from 127th place last year. Mauritius was the second-best performer, moving into the top 20 from No. 34 last year. Trade liberalization and improved fiscal policies, including a flat tax, made Mongolia the third-best performer, and put it in the category of "moderately free" economies.

Three essays in the 2008 Index help illustrate why economic liberty matters to human progress. In "Economic Fluidity: A Crucial Dimension of Economic Freedom," Carl Schramm, president of the Kaufmann Foundation, explains that growth-driving innovation results not only from sound macroeconomic policy, but also from dynamism at the micro level.

Most important is the interaction between "institutional, organizational and individual elements of an economy," which gives rise to "the entrepreneurial energy and the speed of economic evolution." Such "fluidity," he writes, "facilitates the exchange and networking of knowledge across boundaries. This fosters both innovation and its propagation through entrepreneurship."

Mr. Schramm's essay illuminates why successful economies cannot be centrally planned. Fluidity, he writes, resembles "the idea of the 'the edge of chaos,' the estuary region where rigid order and random chaos meet and generate high levels of adaptation, complexity and creativity." It is "ideas on the margins, challenging the status quo, that lift the trajectory of an economy's performance." Try that in Cuba.

In "Narrowing the Economic Gap in the 21st Century," Stephen Parente, associate professor of economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, debunks several World Bank myths by showing that it is not the resources -- land, workforce and capital -- of an economy that play the most important role in explaining higher income countries. Instead it is "the efficiency at which a society uses its resources to produce goods and services."
Mr. Parente cites the microeconomic research of McKinsey Global Institute, which estimates that modern industry in India could take a huge bite out of its productivity gap with U.S. competitors by simply upgrading production techniques. India doesn't need another multilateral education project. It needs to tap into knowledge already available in successful economies -- the information and technology is out there. The trouble is that it is unavailable in many countries like India, because government barriers and constraints to limit competition make access difficult or impossible.

French journalist Guy Sorman's "Globalization is Making the World a Better Place" is a treatise on "one of the most powerful and positive forces ever to have arisen in the history of mankind." It fosters economic development, moves countries from tyranny to democracy, sends information and knowledge to the most remote corners of the globe, reinforces the rule of law, and enriches culture. International commerce in post-World War II Europe, he reminds us, wasn't invented by diplomats, but by entrepreneurs who wanted to end centuries of strife on their continent and build a peaceful union based on commerce.

Today's entrepreneurs, across the globe, have similar aspirations and abilities. If only the politicians would let them be free.

Ms. O'Grady is a member of the Journal's editorial board. She is co-editor, with Edwin J. Feulner and Kim R. Holmes, of the 2008 Index of Economic Freedom (410 pages, $24.95), available at 1-800-975-8625.