December 30, 2008   Ecuador's economy is in big trouble. Rafael Correa publicly told us that "people are worried." People are worried-? Ecuadoreans are long past worried- their addiction to fake worrying, like their other malaise called hypochondria- has gotten them in to a stubborn psychotic break with the adult world and rendered all as vapid idiots. Because of their refusal to grow up and stop manipulating all of life around them, Ecuador finds itself looking in the mirror and sees its own reflection in the face of the dishonest, manipulative Rafael Correa. Ecuador is bankrupt and past worried because Ecuadoreans wanted Correa to lie, steal and cheat from them and others and hand out gifts for nothing. Ecuadoreans wanted no part of sane, adult honest government or private living standards- they wanted to participate with Correa in manipulating their own government and finances. Ecuadoreans, addicted to serving the co-addict role and enabling crime, seriously believe that they can have Something for Nothing as long as they remain lazy and irresponsible and let their dictator do for them what they want which is a full communist income  redistribution. Ecuador is bankrupt- morally and financially. This is not specifically due to loss of oil revenues although money for nothing from overpriced, derivatives-driven up oil made president Rafael Correa seem god-like to the fools who refused to actually comprehend what he was and was not doing in Quito. Moreover, Correa continues to blame all others, such as his ridiculous claim that a "global economic crisis" brought about by the evils of capitalism have ruined Ecuador. What has ruined Ecuador is Rafael Correa's childish so called economic ploys that have stolen from the private and public sectors for his self enriching schemes to convert Ecuador from a vibrant economy in to a Cuban gulag of misery just so that Correa can fulfill his personal sociopathic, ruinous plans.
 
No economy thrives long on a monolithic oil based economy. Oil and other commodities, currently moving in to global monopolies driven by so called governmentally-backed dirty money "sovereign funds" to launder dirty speculators' off shore monies for Iran, Russia and those cheats who run through Curacao and the Caymans, are trying to corner all commodities markets and force illicit price hikes to benefit the neo communist state ploys. This is not helpful at all. But Correa's original sin, besides being an utterly irresponsible and dishonest actor, is to drive away all private sector work while lying a lot about his respect for the private worker. Correa has, by word and by deed, done all that he can- and he is a dictator today- to force out any private businesses from Ecuador. His plans to ruin this nation through dishonesty and unaccountability are working very well, which is the only thing working out of Quito.
 
Correa tells all of Ecuador to prepare for an economic crisis. This "crisis" is purely from his hands alone. While running away and pretending that Correa is honest, Ecuadoreans forget- and refuse to consider- that Colombia and Peru's economy are doing just fine, thank you very much. The simple reason for this is that Peru and Colombia are vastly more honorable today than is the Cuban mambo king called the disgraceful and irresponsible Correa who has not got a clue how to grow Ecuador.
 
Correa has created this nation of UNCERTAINTY which profits his cartel bond speculators and derivatives traders, for a short while. It also gifts Correa, he thinks, with the capacity to drive Ecuadoreans in to a hyper frenzy of irrational fearfulness and instability. This is not hard to do since all Ecuadoreans are trained from birth to act irrationally and to behave as if all of life is hyperactively manipulatable. This is the only credo for Quito: manipulate and run away with no fixed creed and no fixed core ethic. A nation of frantic, shallow chickens does not cluck its way to fame and fortune and it does cluck itself in to personal and societal collapse.
 
 
HERE is BLOOMBERG'S of 12-29-08: Ecuador Reserves Fall 8.4% in Week to $4.8 Billion (Update2)

 -- Ecuador’s foreign reserves fell 8.4 percent in the week ending Dec. 19, the fourth consecutive weekly decline since the government signaled it would default on $3.9 billion in bonds.
The reserves, reported by the central bank today at $4.8 billion, are shrinking as government spending remains high and Ecuadoreans hold onto their cash, said economist Jaime Carrera, head of the Quito-based Fiscal Policy Observatory. The decline began when the government withheld a $30 million interest payment on its benchmark dollar bonds due in 2012.

“There’s a capital flight going on because of the uncertainty,” Carrera said in a telephone interview. “People are worried.”

Ecuador’s reserves this year peaked at $6.5 billion in September, fueled by the surge in the price of oil, Ecuador’s top export. With little room to cut spending and limited access to foreign funding, President Rafael Correa could deplete the reserves within several months, Carrera said.

“The reserves will probably last until the elections” scheduled for April 26 of next year, he said.

In recent speeches, Correa has warned Ecuadoreans to prepare for an economic crisis after the price of oil fell from a record to the level of 1999, a year in which numerous banks failed and Ecuador decided to ditch its currency, the sucre, in favor of the dollar in a bid to stabilize the economy.

Remittances - During the boom, oil money and remittances from Ecuadorean emigrants provided dollars to import manufactured goods. Now, the drain on dollars caused by Ecuador’s non-oil trade deficit is the biggest risk to dollarization, Correa has said.

In the week after Dec. 12, the day Correa announced the default, the government’s reserves dropped by $306.6 million and commercial banks withdrew $242.4 million from the central bank, while the state-owned Social Security Institute deposited $84.4 million, the central bank said today in a report on its Web site.

The Institute’s President Ramiro Gonzalez said today the agency will buy about $500 million in new government bonds after it purchased $700 million of the securities last week, less than two weeks after the default on foreign bonds. The institute bought $350 million each of two securities -- six-year bonds that pay an interest rate of 6.5 percent and seven-year bonds that pay a rate of 6.75 percent, Gonzalez said.

Correa has pledged to maintain dollarization through a set of economic measures including raising duties on luxury goods and cutting benefits of civil servants. The government has also turned to multilateral lenders like Andean Finance Corporation for cash.

“They’re already feeling the lack of liquidity,” said Carrera. “In the end, he may have to de-dollarize.”

Correa's solution to resolving his own crimes is.....more fake bonds so he can drain social security, more fake economic reports to lie some more that the government is only short $2 billion for next year, and more state thefts and threats to imprison any one who does not happily hand over to the burglar named Correa his or her money.  Correa has been living off the gifts from the CAF already and will in fact bankrupt the CAF soon enough. The CAF, for its part, is a criminal accomplice to Correa and never requires functional loan and banking practices.

All week we hear the phrase, "Correa may have to de-dollarize." May have to? He has said for years now that he wants to end the dollar. This week he is again pushing his incompetent, loser take all alternative economic regime for loser nations, as if he is a brilliant economist. Correa calls Dr. Joe Stiglitz "my economist." Stiglitz had better sever ties with these cartel fools before he lands in jail for aiding and abetting criminals.

Simply put: we wish Rafael Correa a happy New Year- in jail. Where he belongs for grand theft and for crimes against his own people. Our suggestion that Correa, already criminally married to Iran's dirty money and weapons movers, is a drug king pin and deserves not one penny of assistance from the USA or the EU. Correa belongs in jail for his crimes. We know this will shake you up from your cult-induced love fest of the revered cult leader Correa but wake up and grow up you must. Stop pretending that if you are fearful, live like a childish-selfish teen aged girl only considering you own gains and none others, and act the noisy manipulative clacking useless manipulator that you life has meaning and that you are helping rebuild Ecuador for you are overtly avoiding any systemic assistance.

Leadership makes a difference and today Ecuador has a leader- a dirty dictator who lies like a dog. The only money being made in Quito is dirty offshore traders who are betting that Ecuador will collapse...and take you down with it. This is what happens when a whole nation lives by the manipulative life plan-  you get what you are.

Correa "may have to de-dollarize”? That is a lie. He should have the use of the U.S. dollar yanked from his disgustingly dirty little hands because Correa just uses and criminally abuses the U.S. dollar for his cottage industry also called making fees from washing dirty FARC money and Iranian money in to U.S. dollars. Correa also makes protection racket fees from selling dirty passports and citizenship papers to dirty actors and then sells non-extradition protection to all global criminals. Correa is a drug king pin and profits from his protection racket scams for criminals. But to abandon the use of the inflation restraining dollar for Correa's new funny money is the height of irresponsible living. As of yet, the USA has not insisted that Correa de-dollarize [although it should] and should in fact demand a restoration of economic growth measures inside Ecuador. For its part, the USA has too long sent political hacks, disguised as economists, in to Quito who have sold Ecuadoreans on the fabulous idea that their land can be run just as lawlessly as an off shore hedge fund and that their favorite NGO policy fools will lead them to paradise under their new hedge fund cartels for communists. This is not progress but it is what has transpired in Carondelet. And while the money came in, no one questioned this fraud.

You are Correa now and Correa is you. Just listen to him- he says the same thing. Correa knows well that he has seduced the very easy to seduce Ecuadoreans who have no backbone, no commitments and no value system, preferring the shallow education of the undereducated and the phony religiosity of the Country Club Catholic- all for show and nothing substantive. A nation of clucking, clacking chickens who say nothing of any relevance or importance and who remain on the make and on the take because they are addicted to living ruinously. You can stop the downward spiral and you can stand for something that is more meaningful than just running around like an addict, jumping and popping like an addict.

In a brilliant piece of 12-23-08, Carlos Alberto Montaner reminds us that Rafael Correa and his cartel compadre Hugo Chavez ruinously insist on controlling the Latin arena under their suicide pact for ruining your life. He tells us that all are hopelessly naive to expect anything helpful from Lula of Brazil, Correa of Ecuador and Chavez of Venezuela because....they are hopelessly mired in their own psychotic break downs as well, also called living la vida manipulativa.

"It is not true that a grand-scale economy will solve the problems of poverty. China and India had the world's two largest potential markets, yet until recently they were two of the most miserable nations on the planet. When did that grim landscape begin to change? When they were able to create efficient and competitive enterprises that produced goods or services with a lot of added value. The key is not in the size of the market but in the quality of the supply. Nor is it true, as Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa presumes, that economic integration is better achieved with a common Latin American currency, with regional development banks that handle the region's savings and with supranational organizations that coordinate international commerce. He's talking about the ruble, in the days of the Soviet Union; he's talking about the Comecon, which arranged for commercial exchanges in the so-called ''Eastern bloc,'' instead of encouraging competition -- and we know the picture of backwardness and poverty that characterized the ''fraternal socialist bloc.'' Correa, who was trained as an economist, may have a vague idea of how wealth is distributed but is totally ignorant of how it is created. The dollar, the euro, the yen, the pound sterling, the Swiss franc are international currencies because even in times of crisis, like today, the countries that issue them are stable, respect property rights and have -- as tangible backup -- a powerful productive apparatus that is modern and innovative. Why place one's trust in the currency of countries that arbitrarily repudiate their foreign debt and default on their commitments anytime they feel like it? Chile, for example, or Costa Rica or Uruguay, countries that are reasonably managed, would commit an act of madness if they turned their economic future over to a regional bureaucracy managed by representatives of countries that are terribly corrupt, as almost all countries in Latin America are..."

Montaner is essentially declaring that Correa, Chavez and Lula are criminals, liars and manipulators. But you knew this. He writes correctly, "Can the reader imagine a currency-issuing continental bank under the direction of, let's say, Néstor Kirchner? Integrationist delirium aside, something a lot more serious could be seen at the Sauípe summit: the total absence of ethical requirements." But hemisphere wide banking and finance norms of cartels for communist cartels are precisely what Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador and Venezuela are selling today. And  each nation is backed and gassed up by incompetent and dishonest operatives from the US Democratic Party working to promote the George Soros plan for communist cartel creation in South America, funded by US AID and the EU to further misery and craft a two pronged statist system, also called Progressivism or Alternative Democracy- nations with 99% of its peoples in Cuban communist gulag hells, also called the happy proletariat run by state labor unions and a tiny fraction lawlessly betting and speculating for self enrichment. This is not a healthy, honest, vibrant world view but it is what the U.S. Embassy in Quito is selling today and it is what Correa, Chavez and Lula are selling today. And their pet so called economic gurus to aid and abet this Hedge Fund nation of scofflaws boasts the blessings of aberrant thinkers such as Joe Stiglitz, paid both by the Correa-Chavez due to rebuild Iran and his paid boss George Soros. For his part, Soros seriously believes that all should be happy as a labor unionist run by the state money making machine as long as he can play with state monies, pensions and "sovereign funds." These financial rackets are not legitimate economies and do not legitimately oversee honest living. They do insure misery and happy communist gulag regimentation of all facets of life. Montaner begins to grasp this concept.

Of the great cartel leader confab in Brazil before Christmas, Montaner honestly writes:

"• There stood, shouting, Daniel Ortega, guilty of so many ugly things in his lamentable past, the man who brazenly stole the recent elections in Nicaragua.

• There stood, preening like a star, the colorful Hugo Chávez, who fraudulently attempts to perpetuate himself in power while heading the worst kleptocracy ever inflicted on that poor country.

• There sat, like the guest of honor, Gen. Raúl Castro, now presiding over the longest and most pauperizing dictatorship in Latin American history.

Of course, nobody voiced the slightest criticism; everyone applauded them as if they were the honorable representatives of their peoples. It was the old Latin American tradition of complacence with crime and indifference to the pain of the victims. Everybody either cheered or kept silent.

The example of the European Union was invoked. But what do those Latin American countries that do not defend freedom or decency have in common with a union of countries whose membership requirements include democratic behavior, respect for human rights, the subordination of everyone to the rule of law and common sense and honesty in the performance of government duties?

As long as the Latin American political elites do not understand that the fundamental objective of democratic governments is to maintain the freedoms and guarantee the dignity of their people, not only will they fail in the administrative field but also will continue to elicit from their citizens their most categorical contempt and most cynical attitude. "

With no moral compass, Latins do indeed either cheer the criminal or remain mute. Today Ecuadoreans are compliant with Correa's criminality which also means they are complicit. No one makes one tiny effort to defend or promote essential liberty. Montaner correctly asks, "what do those Latin American countries that do not defend freedom or decency have in common with a union of countries whose membership requirements include democratic behavior, respect for human rights, the subordination of everyone to the rule of law and common sense and honesty in the performance of government duties?"  What do Latins have in common with the free world- nothing. They have no respect and no regard for themselves or anyone else, preferring to lie a lot to all around them how they are exactly like the EU or the USA or, worse yet- Chavez's claim that he is Norway. Lying a lot is what Lula, Chavez and Correa do- never mind the irrational boy Evo Morales whose entire ploy is ruinous. Complacency and indifference is selfishness in extremis...it is a well honed dysfunction taught now in every school, at work and in bred by dysfunctional homes.

Worried? Start for once to stop manipulating all around you and be honest for just five minutes a day. You will probably find that you feel weird, feel strangely out of body and feel like you need to rush back to your good old manipulative normalcy. You are not normal. Stop defending your manipulative ethics and stop pretending that if you ignore who and what you are and how you act that no one else will notice. They have noticed and found your behaviors unacceptable, childish and dishonest. You no longer have to hide from the world about your addictions to irresponsible living. It is now well known and found criminally incompetent, complacent and aberrant. Wake up. Enroll yourself in Uribe's school for enablers and co addicts to dysfunction in Colombia. Stop worshipping the dysfunctional and stop pretending that you have no way out. Honesty requires hard work and is not for the chickens. But it is worth every step.

Take a good, long hard look at these people from Palestine, who voted for and lived off state handouts from Iran through the hate group called terrorist HAMAS. They lived off of terror and do now, tragically fear for their safety. These depraved victims of their own evil seriously believed that Hezbollah and its kissing cousin HAMAS would destroy all of Western Civilization through the great power of communism and Islam. Or so they were told....by your new partner Ahmadinejad and Rafael Correa and all who lie a lot about evil. But look at these faces- they are yours:

In despair: Cover image from the Daily telegraph, December 29 2008 Photo: AP

Where will they go now that their own "political activities" have exposed their criminal government? Who will help them? Iran? Syria? Lebanon? Where will you go when Correa's own alignment with the very same criminals from Iran who control Hamas now are exposed? Will you stand up and fight to defend Correa and his Hamas-Hezbollah-FARC-Iranian partners to kill Jews and Christians? Will you do this or....run away some more, neither man nor woman in your moral strictures. Those grand charitable cartels called the FARC, Hamas, Hezbollah and Al Qaeda have never assisted their proxy hate sellers for hundreds of years in various names and varying acts of hatred but simply send more money and more weapons to enact border skirmishes and set up terror cells of hatred and despair. Clearly this poor family flees from the terror their own acts- and refusal to stand united for functional liberty [instead preferring the hand outs from Marxist-Muslim hate sellers] have created and do now run from. The London Telegraph correctly notes of Hamas and Israel today: "A resolution to the calamity lies, therefore, principally in the hands of Hamas, whose anti-Semitic leaders seem to regard the family in our picture as expendable in pursuit of their bigger ambition, which is to break Israel. For as long as Hamas refuses to contemplate the only possible answer to this conundrum – a two-state solution – there is little chance of peace."

Know this- even the ridiculously incompetent United Nations could not bring itself yesterday to condemn Israel for its right to self defense against Iran's terror attacks on innocent Jews and Christians. And Hugo Chavez's blustering words in support of Iran's right to kill innocent Jews and Christians in Israel have not- and will not- resonate with anyone except liars like Rafael Correa and his strange bed fellows from Iran, now banking and passport protected in lawless Ecuador.

But all is never easy in a game of chess with evil. The TELEGRAPH explains, "The Israelis evidently calculate that an offensive in Gaza can isolate Hamas from the bulk of Palestinians, who will blame its leaders for the bombardment. But nothing is ever that simple. The air attacks and a possible ground offensive will act as a recruiting sergeant for Hamas and widen the rift with Mahmoud Abbas, the democratically elected Fatah leader whose writ no longer runs in Gaza. The Israelis seem to have decided on an all-out offensive against Hamas, because while the Iranian-backed militia holds sway in Gaza there is no hope of progress. They may be right, though a similar attempt to extirpate Hizbollah in Lebanon was an ignominious failure. This should not stop those with influence in the region trying to broker some sort of rapprochement, however unlikely. Otherwise, there will many more poignant pictures of bewildered families before this tragedy runs its course, if it ever does. "

Lebanon is a disaster by its own hands for enabling laziness and by pretending that all Lebanese hold the power to negotiate and manipulate evil, when no man holds such power. But Lebanese are so addicted to irresponsible living that they  now have and hold a nation run by Hezbollah terrorists from Iran....and they voted them in to power and welcome every George Soros-backed pathetic so called NGO  group in to Lebanon to instruct their citizens on he joys of dishonest living as co addicts with evil. Take a look at what has been spent to spread the canard of co addiction with evil in Lebanon. No one- no one refused the Faustian bargain of Something for Nothing, easily abandoning their soul and their vote to Iran for the state extortion rackets called Hezbollah's evil. This is replicated inside Ecuador today and in Palestine today. Take a long hard look at these faces for they are yours now. But please, do not disgrace yourself further and tell us that you are innocent victims of your own dishonesty today. Ecuadoreans have become.....like Hamas victims by their own choosing and their own volition.

Author Bruce Thornton reminds us however that, "Most conservatives know that politics is not about policy technique, but about the philosophy underlying policy. They know that a quirky, unpredictable human nature is a constant, visible in the record of history, which provides the parameters of what is possible for such flawed creatures and their aspirations. They know that utopia is indeed “nowhere,” that perfection is not in the cards, that every good has a tragic price, and part of being an adult is being willing to pay that price....As Socrates taught long ago, in the absence of knowledge, unexamined opinion will dominate people’s thinking. They will then believe to be true not what they know to be true based on evidence and coherent argument, but what they believe to be true, the ideas that they have picked up from their environment––these days teachers, blogs, television, movies, cable news, etc. These opinions are then held and repeated not because they are true or coherent or even arguable, but because they gratify the person’s self-image by fitting in with his lifestyle or peer group, and flatter his belief that he is better than everybody else. The consumption of such prefabricated opinions accounts for the astonishingly banal orthodoxy of most leftist political ideas."

Actively gratifying your own undereducated, manipulative world view to self enhance your flawed selfish operations and narcissistically flatter your self that you are better than everyone else- you are OK and no one else is OK- gifts you with....Hamas and Hezbollah and its benefactor...evil from Iran and even the FARC. Stop believing your own manipulative self serving propaganda and cease living inside your co-addict's hell and start living...before you really have to run away....from Iran.

This is the end of this adolescent deification of all inane and vapid in Ecuador. Grow up now or stand united with Iran- your choice.

-Pedro Camargo for ECrisis