March 24, 2008   ECrisis has noted for some time that the failed president named Rafael Correa, who is not an economist but was a political manipulator who tries to justify Marxism by abusing economic theory, is too expensive for Ecuadoreans. Not only has his government been unable and unwilling to find billions already missing from the state budget, also called state theft, but his Cabinet and management grid, also called being run by Cubans and Venezuelans, is a disaster of unending proportions. Correa's regime are burglars and ninnyhammers who have no clue how to run a nation but they do know how to fight, whine, steal, engage in orgies, assist the FARC and criminal rackets, lie, cover up, shut down Congress and the courts, and mislead.
 
Correa's policies and acts have cost Ecuadoreans not only their present but their tomorrow. This is like a teen ager with his parents credit card on a spree. It will take a very long time to repay and rebuild the foolishness underway today in Ecuador. But Most Ecuadorians believe that by simply handing over their credit cards- their futures- to irresponsible teen agers that this is called responsible, caring life. It is neither responsible nor healthy and it has gotten Ecuador in to a lot of trouble.
 
Most Ecuadoreans seriously believe that their Mamas will bail them out of their selfish adolescent irresponsibility. Or the IMF or the Word Bank or as is the case today, Chavez and the FARC. Ecuadoreans need to grow up and stop pretending that life begins with manipulation.
 
It will take a long time to clean up the disaster that Correa is making not just in international trust, for no one except Castro and Chavez trust Correa and his team of buffoons, but Correa has thoroughly corrupted the easily manipulated and corruptible people of Ecuador who have not the grace or the wisdom to hold their ground against the current tsunami of corrupt communists sweeping over the land. Not that Ecuadoreans actually want to fight this criminal crime spree. Clearly they do not and pretend that every murder- and they are the worst murder scenes in the world today- is not their concern/not their problem/not of any concern to anyone because they are all either shopping or on vacation or planning to do so soon. They simply have manipulated themselves and their families in to a place where nothing matters and no morals hold up.
 
Recently, LATIN FINANCE said this of Correa's unaccountable and dishonest government which has remained current on its debt accounts in order to leverage even more expenditures from the state for so called "social programs: " However, the agency [Moody's rating service] sees dim prospects of further upgrades in the medium term, citing the elimination of the oil savings fund by the new fiscal framework [by Ecuador]. `This is an issue of concern for creditworthiness, particularly given Ecuador's traditionally weak institutions,' Moody’s says. The agency also notes that Ecuador likely registered the lowest growth rate among global energy-producers last year, in part due to a contraction in investment amid policy uncertainty. "
 
Why you may ask are investors out of Ecuador? The answer is simple: Correa has no interest in law and order. He steals from investors and lies about it. Correa hates contract law and has no enthusiasm for rule of law and is busy instead with his team of jackals and liars installing a very hard line communist agenda in Ecuador. Correa promised to do this for years and now the people of Ecuador have rolled over and are letting the very incompetent and dishonest Correa have his way with them. this is not new news: Correa, like Hugo Chavez, has been performing acts of criminality for years with overt impunity, which is not tenable.
 
No one should be surprised at the gross and overwhelming take over of Ecuador by Correa and his criminal rackets: the dirty effort has been underway for some time to any who have ears to hear and eyes to see. Sweeping state kleptocracracies not simply happen overnight and depends on the complicity of a people who are immune to the lure of straight talk, honest rule making and integrity of action. Ecuadoreans are taught by their mothers how to manipulate and get away with it. This has created a whole society of liars, dimwits and dunces whose first allegiance is never to the betterment of their own lives but their primary relationship with manipulation to feel good- never integrity- in their frenzied, overly vapid daily living.
 
Meanwhile, we are told to be patient and that Rafael Correa will self reform. We are told to be his friend and to encourage his state leadership, also called dictatorship. We are told to pretend that Correa is not a criminal nor a dictator. We are told that Ecuador will self reform and we are told to ignore the death of liberty in the land and that soon enough the pendulum will swing back toward democracy all on its own and that criminals will be arrested, tried and justice will prevail. the problem with this line of baloney is that like Chavez, Correa is a sociopath liar. This is well-known. There is nothing normal about dealing with sociopathic liars and craven manipulators. There is no hope for diplomacy and no end to the ruination of decent relations which are clearly impossible.
 
Ecuadoreans live under the sole rule of a sociopathic liar named Rafael Correa and the sooner they figure this out in their failed state, the sooner they can begin rebuilding their failed nation.
 
Ecuadoreans seriously believe that someone else will come along and clean up the disaster they have created. Like some space alien come to Earth, they believe that magic will occur and all will be well as long as they pretend that bad education, lives of dishonesty and unhappiness under manipulative living is carried forward. This shows how duplicitous the social mores have become. There is nothing honest at all coming from any Ecuadorean today: they have all sold out to Correa's megalomania and his criminal cartels, called supporting the FARC and every other criminal cartel on Earth.
 
Ecuadoreans truly believe that as seen at the recent RIO Summit and before the OAS, that if they lie and manipulate enough, their "sovereignty" will be retained and the globe will pretend that this is a serious nation even though its leaders are street thugs, liars and manipulators. Ecuador wants you to know that they seriously approve Correa's adolescent tirades of stamping his little feet, screeching like a harpy and demanding justice when justice was never his to begin with. Correa is a spoiled rotten teen ager with the keys to the family car. Worse yet- he is a sociopathic liar and a man of personal abuse. He should not be leading any country but Ecuadoreans call his behavior "normal." Correa is not normal and he is not legitimate and he is a disaster. Correa is what happens when a whole nation deludes itself that only manipulative living matters and ethical performances matter nothing. And part of what Correa is doing is trying to force a new socialism across the Andes. Here is the Chavez mission leader, recently exposed in Lima Peru:


 
Rafael Correa has crafted and installed a new narcostate in Ecuador today. Soon his assembly will deliver his new narcostate constitution which will legitimize all that should never be legitimized by any nation. This will cast Ecuador in to the doomed roster of failed nations for many years to come, by their own determined will to self ruin. The USA today tells us ridiculously that it is wonderful in Ecuador and that rampant criminality is a good thing and that lawlessness inside this new narcostate is exactly what the USA supports. And indeed the USA has supported this- with tens of millions of U.S. dollars to aid and abet the installation of the Ecuadorean narcostate. A quick review of the paid so called contractors/where they go/what they do/how they act and what they spend their U.S. monies on will confirm this. What they are essentially are support networks for the mafia style tactics and FARC support networks encouraged by the Soros pro drugs activities and the US AID actors who adore Hugo Chavez, Rafael Correa and the FARC. Of course this is treason but none seem to care.
 
Here is a brilliant piece about Colombia, already looking ahead to peace and economic stability....while Ecuador is looking ahead to ruination, depravation, dishonesty and a debauched society- always the outcome of lives lived by manipulation. But Colombia is correct to eye the Irish model for success. Ecuador should have been doing this also, providing for the common good of its people. But Ecuador preferred to take the lazy way out and stick its head inside a garbage can. Colombia today is being punished by the U.S. Democratic Party in a fake accusation that it does not do enough to protect labor unions when Colombia has the best record in Latin America for protecting union members who also parade as FARC members. The stubbornly dishonest labor unionist argument against Colombia by the U.S. Democrats- and Latin anti-democracy "populists" to hurt its economic gains is dastardly and must be corrected. The sooner that Colombia has a sustainable economy and sustained law and order, undoing the Clinton Plan to give away half of Colombia to the FARC, the sooner the USA can enjoy Colombia without spending USA money on its defense against global terrorists. Today sadly the U.S. Democrats neither take responsibility for their own badly flawed and disgusting plan to cede half of Colombia to the drug lords in the 1990s but they refuse to help rebuild Colombia so that it can stand on its own two feet, preferring to enable the ruination of Colombia's progress and a retreat to its previously failed state as a sponsor of terror along with Ecuador and Venezuela. Why Ecuador, Venezuela and the U.S. Democratic Party seem to think that their Soros think tanks and political operatives are right that Colombia must join Chavez and Correa as state sponsors of terror just so that narcotics can be legalized is craven.
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The Wall Street Journal

March 24, 2008

THE AMERICAS 

Bogotá Eyes the Irish Model
By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY
March 24, 2008; Page A14

When Colombia's trade minister visited the Journal's New York offices two weeks ago, the last thing I expected to come up in our conversation was Ireland. To my surprise, it was the first subject he raised.

No sooner had Luis Plata sat down then he started talking about the Irish economic transformation -- from impoverished ugly duckling to swanky swan of Europe in just two decades -- and why a similar growth model is just what Colombia needs.

Some of the necessary policy adjustments are already under way in Bogotá, he said, and with any success, the reforms can be deepened. But the big question mark is whether the U.S. Congress will approve the pending Free Trade Agreement. The FTA, Mr. Plata explained, is as important to Colombia's growth as European Union membership has been to Ireland's.

To think that Democrats might undermine Mr. Plata's visionary agenda is troubling. In 2006, U.S. official development assistance aimed at alleviating poverty around the globe was $23.5 billion and it was pretty much money down a rat hole. That's because development requires economic liberalization, and leaders of poor countries have little incentive to disturb the status quo of monopolies and protectionism that put them in power. Their incentives are even less when rich-country handouts are flowing.

Now along comes Colombia, with a leader -- President Álvaro Uribe -- who is willing to risk political capital to open domestic markets, cut taxes and spur competition in a bid to grow fast à la Ireland. All his government asks from Washington is two-way trade, but Democrats want to slam the door in his face.

Before Mr. Plata became trade minister last year, he headed a government export agency. "We starting going to Ireland several years ago, he says, "because we were looking at countries around the world that had been successful in attracting foreign direct investment. What we found was that Ireland had lowered its corporate tax rate from 40% to 12.5%," and as a result "was attracting investment, had lowered tax evasion and had increased tax collection. We went back to Colombia and said, 'why don't we just bring [our corporate rate] from 38% to 12.5%.'"

That wasn't a popular view with Colombia's treasury department. "It got me kicked out of their offices," Mr. Plata recalls.

No surprise there. Bean counters in every treasury in Latin America have tax-cut phobia in their DNA. It explains why they often get jobs at the International Monetary Fund in Washington after the collapse of the governments they've served back home. At the fund they can put into practice their deeply held convictions that the only responsible fiscal policy is one built on a static analysis to discover the "right" tax rate. Embracing the notion that production creates its own demand, and that government revenues expand under a low-tax regime, is considered high-risk behavior.

Mr. Plata is more sympathetic toward his treasury colleagues. He says that they have to balance the medium- and long-term benefits of tax cutting with the more immediate need to finance the government. Nevertheless, he was convinced that Ireland's experience could be applied to Colombia. Despite the initial reaction, his team "went to work" on the idea of attracting investment through tax cuts.

In a perfect world, he would have won a flat corporate rate. But he had to compromise and instead came up with the "single-enterprise free-trade zone." It expands the low-tax treatment that companies receive when they are located within a "free trade zone" -- normally an industrial park -- to any company that meets certain investment criteria. Businesses (excluding mining and oil) that qualify by meeting minimum investment amounts and employment targets now pay a 15% flat tax instead of 33%. They also import all raw materials with no tariffs and pay no value-added tax.

In addition to offering these tax advantages, the government is writing "stability contracts" to guarantee that the rules will not change when presidents do. It is also working to reduce the regulatory burden, since red tape is one of the most common complaints from foreign investors.

The "single-enterprise free-trade zone" was launched last May, and to date it has attracted about $864 million in foreign direct investment. That number would be higher under a pure flat tax, and if Colombia is to rival the Irish miracle, it will have to move in that direction. But to persuade the treasury to adopt a broad-based flat tax, Mr. Plata will have to show some results with his initial experiment.

That's why the FTA is so important. Companies investing in Colombia are looking beyond the domestic market and, as the minister notes, the recent dustup with Venezuela -- in which President Hugo Chávez threatened to close the border -- demonstrates the fragility of Colombia's export market. About half of Colombian exports now go to Venezuela and Ecuador. Access to the U.S. market and to duty-free imports from the U.S. are both crucial for producers.

All of this begs the question of why congressional Democrats want to reject the Colombian trade agreement. They say it's because Mr. Uribe hasn't done enough to quell violence against labor leaders in the country. But murders are down dramatically, and as Mr. Plata says, "you can't make the case that killing the FTA will make things better."

What will make things better is investment, which is fundamental to reducing poverty. Peru, Mexico and Central America all have FTAs with the U.S., which means that Colombia is automatically disadvantaged if it is denied one. And that could harm national security, which is so fragile. As Mr. Plata pointed out, "You don't win the peace with soldiers alone. You have to have a functioning economy." Surely Democrats can't be against that.
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Note too that no savior- no savior at all- comes from the USA's "development monies" which tallies at $23 billion "down a rat hole"- that is, money wasted with no tangible benefits much at all for the expenditure. There is no development without contract law and no sustained progress without open economies. But today pressure is growing to wall off economies of scale and cut off trade except when goods and services financially reward the ruling regime. This is a cousin to communism and is of course state kleptocracy. Add to this criminal conspiration with rackets and you have Ecuador today under Correa and Chavez. One wonders when Ecuadoreans will shout NO MAS! But no word comes forward. The silence of the complicit criminals is deafening.
 
The article above is utterly correct. While Correa screeches for sovereign rights and peace! he has failed his own people and ruined what was once a functioning economy, leaving Ecuador sui generis... mui nerviosa, fearful, without any human rights by abandoning their own laws and values, manipulative and criminally craven.
 
Today Colombia promises stable contract law. They even go so far as to pledge that rule of law does not blow with the wind as presidents come and go. This is of course what any first and second rate nation does. No nation that does not do this is a 3rd rate or failing or failed state. In Latin America, this is a novel concept which many have faught against for a very long time: common law. In other words, Rafael Correa, who considers contract law or rule of law as evil, has set about to insure that Ecuador remains a failed narcostate under his command and control. Today Correa has many enablers in this goal.
 
In fact, if things do not turn around soon, the epitaph on all Ecuadoreans when they die will show tomb stone markers that read:

Here lies an Ecuadorean who was born to be manipulative and lived a life of manipulation and dishonesty.
 
Rafael Correa is the perfect partner in marriage for all Ecuadoreans. He is what they want and what they have, which is of course a fake, in name only relationship because Correa only cares about himself while expending lots of  hyperactive, unproductive frenzied time explaining that he does care a lot about his people when the reality is that he only cares about manipulating all the time. Ecuadoreans call this a real marriage. Ecuadoreans of course are idiots and are self delusionally dishonest. Correa is a sociopathic dictator: a vain and vapid, jealous, uneducated spoiled rotten child who is a childishly screeching and demanding amoral adolescent who has not the grace to hold himself nor the wisdom to act for the common good or any sustainable charity while succeeding by non-idle threats and listening at every keyhole to conjure up more fake fears. Ecuadoreans call this a healthy relationship. We call it a disaster. Why do we enable these people? Why do we agree with U.S. Congressman Engle that this unhealthy and dishonest, manipulative leader named Correa is the perfect partner for Ecuadoreans, the FARC and the U.S. Democrats?
 
Here is how some Americans see the lying, manipulative Hugo Chavez, kissing cousin to Rafael Correa- blaming everyone for their own faults and their own problems:



There are better partners in life than lying, irresponsible manipulative teen agers who only care about themselves. At some point, some people see through the smokescreen of manipulations and note the core of the thing. This is the case for all Ecuadoreans today who still yet fail to see their own disastrously criminal dictator for what he is while the rest of the world is grasping the concept that Correa is a jerk- a childish and dishonest one at that. In other words, be careful who you attack, and Correa and Chavez pretend to defend themselves by accusing everything that moves, because it may be a mirror of yourself and your own foolishness. There do exist responsible allies who succeed as adults, not children, and build a sustainable society for all ages, not just a playground for communists, also called off the books Latin-Russian global oil traders and speculators and criminals. With Correa one cannot dream of a better tomorrow. Correa's mental state mandates that today will be as horrible as tomorrow, unless he is out of town or distracted. But the one constancy is that he will for all his tomorrows be as he is today: a spoiled, lying manipulative failed person who is no partner to any and permits no dreams for betterment because Correa's vision of living is living to manipulate and spend someone else's money, in this case the tax dollars from Ecuador coupled with theft, Chavez's money and FARC money. This is not a partner for progress. It is a recipe for sustained failure which will last a very very long time. The Church of Ecuador is gravely sinning to bless this unholy union. What will the Church writ large do when the so called Interpol analysis confirms the Reyes computer files that the unholy marriage in name only, called the Republics of Venezuela and Ecuador, are indeed republics in name only and have no commitments to anything honest or healthy? With the Church of Ecuador join the OAS to pretend that acting in name only is the honorable course when nothing honorable or sincere is transpiring?

Will the Church of Ecuador, like Ecuador's military and police plus its courts and all civil society, join to enable the manipulative marriage of Rafael Correa with the FARC just because the money is good? This is a marriage of convenience: criminal convenience; and as with all shallow marriages of convenience which exist not by true relationship integrity but in name only, must be dissolved. Check the bottom of your shoes. Do you know where they are walking and what is sticking to your person by your own acts? Guilt by association or irresponsibility does leave footprints. We are known by the company we keep and where we have been and what we do...or not do.
 
-Pedro Camargo for ECrisis