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Inside the neoliberal laboratory preparing for the theft of Venezuela's economy
The academic laboratory of the Venezuelan coup has the highest academic pedigree of all
JUSTIN PODUR
FEBRUARY 15, 2019 12:30PM (UTC)
This article was produced by Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
As we watch a U.S.-backed coup unfold in a distant country, as in Venezuela today, our eyes are drawn to the diplomatic, military, and economic elements of the U.S. campaign. The picture of a scowling John Bolton with a big yellow notepad with the message 5,000 troops to Colombia reveals the diplomatic and military elements. The New York Times headline U.S. Sanctions Are Aimed at Venezuelas Oil. Its Citizens May Suffer First reveals the economic element.
But U.S. foreign policy mobilizes every available resource for regime change and for counterinsurgency. Among those resources, you will always find academics. The pen may not always be mightier than the sword, but behind every U.S.-backed war on a foreign people there will be a body of scholarly work.
The academic laboratory of the Venezuelan coup has the highest academic pedigree of all its housed at Harvard. Under the auspices of the universitys Center for International Development, the Venezuela project of the Harvard Growth Lab (there are growth labs for other countries as well, including India and Sri Lanka) is full of academic heavyweights, including Lawrence Summers (who once famously argued that Africa was underpolluted). Among the leaders of the growth lab is Ricardo Hausmann, now an adviser to Juan Guaido who has already drafted a plan to rebuild the nation, from economy to energy.
In an interview with Bloomberg Surveillance, Hausmann was asked who would be there to rebuild Venezuela after the coup the IMF, the World Bank? Hausmann replied (around minute 20), we have been in touch with all of them. I have been working for three years on a morning after plan for Venezuela. The hosts interrupted him before he could get into detail, but the interview concluded that bringing back the wonderful Venezuela of old, for investors, would necessitate international financial support. Never mind that the wonderful Venezuela of old was maintained through a corrupt compact between two ruling parties (called Punto Fijo) and the imprisonment and torture of political opponentsamply documented but forgotten by those who accuse Maduro of the same crimes.
The Growth Lab website provides some other ideas of what Hausmanns plan likely includes: Chavezs literacy, health care, and food subsidy Missions, a growth lab paper argues, have not reduced poverty (and, implicitly, should go). Another paper argues that the underperformance of the Venezuelan oil industry was due to the countrys lack of appeal to foreign investors (hence Venezuela should implicitly be made more appealing to this all-important group). A third paper argues that weak property rights and the flawed functioning of markets are harming the business environment no doubt strengthening property rights and getting those markets functioning again will be in the plan. If this sounds like the same kind of neoliberal prescription that devastated Latin American countries for generations and was imposed and maintained through torture and dictatorship from Chile and Brazil to Venezuela itself, that is because the motivation is to bring back the wonderful Venezuela of old.
More:
https://www.salon.com/2019/02/15/inside-the-neoliberal-laboratory-preparing-for-the-theft-of-venezuelas-economy_partner/
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Inside the neoliberal laboratory preparing for the theft of Venezuela's economy (Original Post)
Judi Lynn
Feb 2019
OP
pangaia
(24,324 posts)1. Disaster Capitalism at its best, as it were....
sandensea
(21,720 posts)2. Sad but true. Whatever can be said against Maduro, the alternative is unlikely to be much better.
That is, it could be - but any new regime that comes to power though a Cheeto invasion would almost certainly be one handpicked by Elliott Abrams and/or Otto Reich (to say nothing of the bloodshed!).
And as you know, that would be probably look more like a post-Zelaya Honduras, than the kind of government many Venezuelans expect to take over in the event of an ouster.
What a quandary for them. I hope Venezuela can find its way of this as smoothly as possible.