Fausta's blog

Mary Anastasia O'Grady has an excellent article, Markets for the Poor in Mexico on Compartamos Banco, a for-profit bank whose average loan size is $450. Compartamos Banco is a public company; do-gooders critize Compartamos Banco

What was once written off as an unviable market became a hot opportunity, and Compartamos was well positioned to capitalize on it in Mexico. Last year the company launched an initial public offering that was oversubscribed 13 times. That's when the do-gooders stepped in to question the company's ethics.

In a commentary published last June on the Compartamos IPO, Richard Rosenberg, a consultant for the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor – not part of the World Bank but housed on its premises – observes that the demand for shares in the company was driven, in part, by "exceptional growth and profitability." He then ruminates for some 16 pages on whether Compartamos's for-profit model is at odds with the goal of lifting the poor. A similar, though far less rigorous, challenge to Compartamos titled "Microloan Sharks" appears in the summer issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

Demonstrate that you can make money by lending to the poor, and that the poor will profit from the loans, and get the doo-gooders upset.

Sweet.

Here's Mary's video:




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Labels: business, Mexico

Human ingenuity rises to the challenge:
Scientists find bugs that eat waste and excrete petrol
Silicon Valley is experimenting with bacteria that have been genetically altered to provide 'renewable petroleum'

As soon as the process becomes commercially viable, Congress will come along and tax the sh*t out of them.



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Labels: business, Congress, oil, science, taxes

Bovespa Rises to Record After Investment Grade Rating:

Brazil's Bovespa stock index jumped to a record after Standard & Poor's unexpectedly raised the country's credit rating to investment grade.
...
Brazil's rating was lifted to BBB-, Standard & Poor's lowest investment grade rating, the rating company said today.

S&P cited the country's "continuity" in maintaining its inflation targeting policy and government debt levels "increasingly in line" with investment grade countries.

Brazil became a net foreign creditor for the first time this year, inflation dropped to a seven-month low in February and the benchmark interest rate was at a record low 11.25 percent before this month's increase. The country's economy probably grew at a 4.8 percent rate last year, the fastest since 2004, according to the median economist estimate in a Bloomberg survey.

Things are looking up.

The big news in Brazil, however, is that soccer star Renaldo got caught with three transvestite prostitutes because of "psychological problems due to his knee injury."

When it comes to excuses, that's a new one.



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Labels: Brazil, business, sports

UPDATED
Wednesday night I wrote an article for Pajamas Media explaining the consequences if Nancy Pelosi delayed a vote on the Colombia Free Trade Agreement.

Yesterday Pelosi, who I now consider an enemy of America, changed the voting timeline rule on trade pacts from 90 days to whenever.

This is the first time in history that Congress failed to approve a major trade pact.

Monica Showalter of Investor's Business Daily yesterday afternoon describes why this is an evil move (yes, I am choosing my words carefully - it is an evil thing Pelosi has done). I post the editorial in its entirety (emphasis added):

Pelosi's War
Congress: The cowardly start more wars than the courageous. Nancy Pelosi's craven altering of House rules to kill off Colombia's trade pact brings that danger to the Andes. If war breaks out, her name will be on it.

April 10 may end up as a date which will live in infamy. The Speaker of the House not only refused to step forward and be counted on approving the vital Colombia free-trade agreement, she ran away from letting anyone else vote on it.

After President Bush submitted the pact to a vote under fast-track rules, she changed them to ensure it wouldn't go anywhere anytime soon. By a 224-195 House vote, the voting timeline rule on trade pacts was changed from 90 days to whenever. Pelosi now can hold up Colombia's treaty however long her caprice dictates.

"The message Democrats sent today," a bitter Bush warned after Thursday's vote, "is that no matter how steadfastly you stand with us, we will turn our backs on you when it is politically convenient."

Pelosi's move leaves Colombia, an ally, in limbo and uncertainty. She may think her clever maneuver was done in a vacuum, but it wasn't. In Venezuela's capital of Caracas, where Hugo Chavez holds forth, and in the jungles of Colombia, where drug terrorists hide out, Pelosi's move was watched closely.

Indeed, within hours of the vote, Latin American media already were calling Pelosi's maneuver the "Chavez Rule."

The Venezuelan dictator is no doubt fascinated at how Pelosi could do this to America's best ally in Latin America, punishing a vibrant democracy by isolating it from all the other nations that have sought and won free trade.

Unlike, say, military aid, this deal costs the U.S. nothing, is too small to have much impact on the U.S. economy and is mainly about ending tariffs on U.S. goods sold in Colombia, matching the no-tariff trade that Colombian firms already get here.

Free trade was what Chavez's enemy, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, considered his best weapon. And Pelosi knocked it right out of his hand, just to placate her party's union supporters.

Only a month ago, Chavez sent 10 tank divisions to the Colombian border after Colombia's army blew away a FARC terrorist kingpin. He warned he would bring war inside Colombia.

Encircled by tanks not only in the East by Venezuela but also in the South by Chavez's cat's paw, Ecuador, Colombia asked the U.S. for just one thing: to pass the free-trade agreement. No tanks. No jets. Just free trade.

Now without it, Chavez might be emboldened to strike. After all, he'll hear from congressional sources that Pelosi probably won't bring up a vote on the trade pact for at least several months. He'll use that time to pick fights with its now-forsaken neighbor. The fact that Colombia can't get even a trade pact tells him all he needs to know about American commitment.

So even though the pact was not rejected outright, its absence will be inherently destabilizing. There's nothing Chavez or his FARC allies dread more than Colombia armed with trade rights that will boost its economy beyond the allure of Chavista populist promises.

At Argentina's 2005 Summit of the Americas in Mar del Plata, Chavez made his enmity toward free trade known by hurling insults at the president of Mexico and vowing to "bury" free trade.

Now, thanks to Pelosi's bid to shunt Colombia off to trade limbo, the potential for war in a tinderbox Andean region — over any border incident or FARC terrorist attack — has been heightened.

The world and its dictators don't sleep. The cowardly number that Pelosi did on Colombia likely will prevent the soft power of free trade from working, instead opening the gates to the hard power of war — and pulling in the U.S. whether Pelosi likes it or not. If so, we'll have the her to thank.

Nancy Pelosi has covered herself in a cloak of shame and infamy. Unfortunately for us, everybody in the hemisphere will have to pay the consequences.

The message Pelosi has sent the world is that in America, the only superpower in the world, political squabbles take precedence over security interests.

I expect she'll be paying Hugo a visit soon.

UPDATE
Drop Dead, Colombia
Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi blocks a trade deal with America's closest South American ally

That political turf-staking, and the Democrats' decreasingly credible claims of a death-squad campaign against Colombia's trade unionists, constitutes all that's left of the case against the agreement. Economically, it should be a no-brainer -- especially at a time of rising U.S. joblessness. At the moment, Colombian exports to the United States already enjoy preferences. The trade agreement would make those permanent, but it would also give U.S. firms free access to Colombia for the first time, thus creating U.S. jobs. Politically, too, the agreement is in the American interest, as a reward to a friendly, democratic government that has made tremendous strides on human rights, despite harassment from Venezuela's Hugo Chavez.

Read the rest, at that arm of the vast right-wing conspiracy, the Washington Post.

At that other arm of the VRWC, the Boston Globe, Edward Schumacher-Matos adresses the "killing union organizers" meme:

While the murder of even one union organizer is deplorable, the numbers being used are so misleading that they should not be cited in opposing the agreement.

All sides agree that the killings are dramatically down, and no one accuses the government of orchestrating them. By the unions' own count, the killings dropped from a high of 275 in 1996 to 39 last year. The government says 26.

The assumption by the Democrats is that all were killed for union organizing. It is an assumption implied in reports they cite from groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Those groups, however, rely on Colombian unions for their numbers, instead of collecting their own. The number of convictions now being won in the union's own cases reveals that perhaps one-fifth, and almost certainly less than half, of the killings had to do with unionism.

Of convictions won in 87 cases since the first one in 2001, almost all for murder, the ruling judges found that union activity was the motive in only 17, according to the attorney general's office. The judges found 15 of the cases had to do with common crime, 10 with passion, and 13 with being guerrilla members. No motive was established in 16 of the cases.

The unions don't dispute the judicial findings, and deep in their reports say that they, in fact, have no idea of suspect or motive in 79 percent of their cases going back to 1986. The killings, in other words, are isolated and not part of a campaign against unionizing. The unions further benefit from the reduced paramilitary and guerrilla violence. The convictions have cut impunity. The government provides protection, from free mobile phones to bodyguards, for nearly 2,000 union leaders.

But hey, Nancy can't be bothered with the truth.

More at SwordsCrossed and Red State

Not satisfied with cement, Chavez has now set his sights on nationalizing steel, and his armed forces are now occupying 32 sugar plantations. Apparently, Chavez is so afraid of getting whacked with a sugar cane that he's decided to make a preemptive strike. We have a golden opportunity to strengthen a relationship with an improving Democratic nation that unfortunately is next door to a president who is a socialist kook. Too bad our Democratic "leaders" would rather let that opportunity pass.

But fear not, the Dems are not too proud to scalp Colombia off some bucks, Is Hillary Running on Colombian Cash? Does the bear poop in the woods?

Via Maggie
The WSJ reports Nancy's doublespeak:

Mrs. Pelosi herself spoke with the Colombian ambassador to the U.S. to offer assurances that the House action wasn't meant as a show of disrespect and could ultimately lead to passage, according to an aide to the congresswoman. Mrs. Pelosi said the deal could still come before the House this year, if Colombia takes steps to stem violence against labor organizers and if the White House moves to accept Democratic demands for action on competing priorities, such as expanded food assistance to the poor.

Ridiculous little woman. The Colombians aren't buying her line: Colombia is struggling for its life while Nancy gets off playing House: Colombia's Plata Says Rejecting Trade Accord Same as Sanctions

"Not having a trade agreement is almost like having trade sanctions imposed in the sense that you've been downgraded, or are at least now one level below the other comparable economies in the continent" that do have trade deals, such as Mexico, Chile, Peru and Central America, Trade Minister Luis Guillermo Plata said in an interview.

Additionally,

The delay "is a calamity for the world trading system," said Fred Bergsten, the director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington. "This undermines the whole basis of international confidence in the U.S. as a trading partner."

National Review has more.

Via Judith, Pelosi's bad faith

Via Larwyn, Obama: Trade with Cuba- Good... Trade with Colombia- Bad




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Labels: business, Colombia, Democrats, economics, Nancy Pelosi

Green rubbers coming your way?

We knew that Brazil has been working hard towards reducing its dependency on foreign energy, but they're working hard at reducing its dependency on foreign condoms, too:
Brazil makes 'rainforest' condoms

Having experienced the type of bugs one finds in the rainforest, that doesn't sound all that sexy, but it sounds like rainforest rubbers are a good idea,

The Brazilian government has begun producing condoms using rubber from trees in the Amazon.

The health ministry says the move will help preserve the largest rainforest in the world.

It will also cut dependence on imported contraceptives, which are given away to fight Aids.
...
The new state-run factory is in the north-western state of Acre, and will initially produce 100 million condoms a year, which will be known by the name Natex.

Officials believe that not only will it generate income for Amazon residents, but it will involve using a product which is widely available and can be obtained without destroying large areas of the rainforest.

Apparently the Brazilian government's the world's largest buyer of condoms,

purchasing more than a billion of the contraceptives in recent years

I'll leave it to my readers to come up with puns and jokes, but this program is one more reason why I'm so optimistic on Brazil: the country is developing local industry to meet its needs, and to export to the world.

Good for them, good for everybody.



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Labels: Brazil, business, Latin America

The Argentinians tend to vent their political frustration with cacerolazos, where they congregate in public places and bang on kitchen pots, usually cheap tin pots that make the most noise. They all agree on a time of day to hold the cacerolazos so anyone who wants to join in from the privacy (?) of their front yard, their farm, or their apartment in New York City will be banging at their pots at exactly the same hour.

I know Argentinians who have engaged in cacerolazos in Miami, FL, Tokio, Japan, and Montgomery, NJ. The one in Montgomery has Princeton address, so maybe I should say Princeton.

Absurd as this gesture may sound, it points to a chronic situation in Argentinian politics: the choice of Peronist populism over an open economy.

Yesterday I linked to Mary Anastasia O'Grady's article, Tax Rebellion in Argentina

To wit, while a strong peso made Argentines prosperous in the 1990s, it was incompatible with the rigid, closed economy. The situation is the same today: Either the economy is opened, labor markets are made flexible and the business climate improves or the government clings to a weak peso policy as a way to compensate for an uncompetitive economic model and inflation comes back. Take your pick.

By choosing the latter, the Kirchners have won the support of that segment of the Argentine economy loyal to the principles of 20th-century fascist Juan Peron. These include labor militants, government bureaucrats, the Peronist political machine and the likes of Mr. D'elía, whose thugs act as Mrs. Kirchner's informal enforcers. But by generating inflation and provoking shortages Kirchneromics is also fueling widespread discontent.

The Mr. D'Elia the article refers to is Luis D'Elia, described by the Guardian as "a controversial protest leader and former government official." D'Elia was deputy secretary for land reform under the Nestor Kirchner administration. Last week D'Elia's cohorts, apparently sent by the Kirchners, started beating up the hapless crowd engaging in a "cacerolazo" in front of the government palace, La Casa Rosa (the pink house).

(I use the Kirchners in plural. Presidenta Cristina Fernandez and her husband, former presidente Nestor Kirchner are a two-for-one deal, much as Hillary and Bill would be, if we elect her.)

Amateurs with tin pots are no match for professional thugs, so you know how that turned out. You would think the Kirchners would deny any association with D'Elia,

But instead of distancing herself from D'Elia's violent behavior, Fernandez seated him behind her a night later during a speech in which she defending her higher taxes on soy exports and appealed to farmers to respect public order.

What is this particular fuss about?
Argentinian farmers have had to pay a 35% income tax on profits, and a 35% export tax. That's bad enough. What's making it worse is that the current administration has raised the export tax from 35% to 44%. With rising commodity prices,

if the price of soy goes up... the "retention rate" increases until the government can end up taking as much as 95% of any marginal increase in farmers' gross income.

As Anastasia O'Grady explains in her article,

Mrs. Kirchner says the tax increase is a redistribution mechanism, suggesting that growers and ranchers have to be forced to share more of their good fortune with others. But the greater motivation behind the export-tax increase is inflation.

This government, it seems, will do just about anything to reduce inflation except the one thing that would solve the problem: Let the peso strengthen. It has imposed price controls on businesses; frozen, and then subsidized, energy prices; and prohibited the export of beef.

Allow me to point out that Argentinian beef is one of the best in the world. Prohibiting its export is a foolish measure indeed. But I digress.

Planting, harvest, transport and the cost of land eat up another 50%, therefore it's not surprising that the farmers are protesting.

Protesting farmers have stopped trucks carrying farm produce, making them turn back or dump their goods on the side of the roads.

The farmers continue their strike, and Cristina is promising not to cut taxes, but to subsidize small and medium-sized farmers.

Price controls lead to shortages, inflation and black markets, but the Kirchners are not above fudging the numbers, either:

Last year it fired the director of the government's agency for inflation data because she refused to fudge the numbers. Even so, prices rose by an estimated 20% in 2007 and expectations for this year remain high. This would explain the new round of confiscatory export taxes. By discouraging farmers from sending food abroad, the government thinks it can increase food supplies inside the country and damp prices.

While making farmers furious and reducing the incentive to produce, this does nothing to address the causes of the inflation, which are monetary expansion and the failure of the economy to attract investment and expand productive capacity. A strong peso and a commitment from the government to respect private property are what's needed to confront rising prices.

That's not about to happen any time soon. The Kirchners are willing to send in the thugs to prevent it.

Special thanks to Siggy for the links.



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Labels: Argentina, business, economics

I'm proud to announce that I'm now a member of the Forbes Business and Finance Blog Network.

Labels: blogs, business, Forbes

David Leonhardt of The NYT has a clear article explaining the credit crunch: Can't Grasp Credit Crisis? Join the Club

It really started in 1998, when large numbers of people decided that real estate, which still hadn't recovered from the early 1990s slump, had become a bargain. At the same time, Wall Street was making it easier for buyers to get loans. It was transforming the mortgage business from a local one, centered around banks, to a global one, in which investors from almost anywhere could pool money to lend.

The new competition brought down mortgage fees and spurred some useful innovation. Why, after all, should someone who knows that she's going to move after just a few years have no choice but to take out a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage?

As is often the case with innovations, though, there was soon too much of a good thing. Those same global investors, flush with cash from Asia's boom or rising oil prices, demanded good returns. Wall Street had an answer: subprime mortgages.

Because these loans go to people stretching to afford a house, they come with higher interest rates - even if they're disguised by low initial rates - and thus higher returns. The mortgages were then sliced into pieces and bundled into investments, often known as collateralized debt obligations, or C.D.O.'s (a term that appeared in this newspaper only three times before 2005, but almost every week since last summer). Once bundled, different types of mortgages could be sold to different groups of investors.

Investors then goosed their returns through leverage, the oldest strategy around. They made $100 million bets with only $1 million of their own money and $99 million in debt. If the value of the investment rose to just $101 million, the investors would double their money. Home buyers did the same thing, by putting little money down on new houses, notes Mark Zandi of Moody's Economy.com. The Fed under Alan Greenspan helped make it all possible, sharply reducing interest rates, to prevent a double-dip recession after the technology bust of 2000, and then keeping them low for several years.

All these investments, of course, were highly risky. Higher returns almost always come with greater risk. But people - by "people," I'm referring here to Mr. Greenspan, Mr. Bernanke, the top executives of almost every Wall Street firm and a majority of American homeowners - decided that the usual rules didn't apply because home prices nationwide had never fallen before.

And that's a faulty premise if there ever was one.

Home prices nationwide collapsed during the Great Depression.

Unfortunately only a few people know that: Some, because they remember their parents and grandparents talking about what happened then, others because they live in areas of the rust belt where housing prices never recovered after the steel industry left town.

When I lived in Convent Station housing prices plummeted when several of the major employers in the area (ATT, Henckles, Exxon, Allied Corporation) had major layoffs. Several homeowners defaulted on their mortagages.

I was working in real estate at the time, and several of my coworkers used to be amazed that I didn't "make" my customers overstretch themselves to the max. A lot of my coworkers' clients had overstretched themselves to the point where, once they closed on the houses they bought, they had zero money left to furnish the place.

Then those homeowners got laid off. Their houses (which had furniture only in the bedrooms, a table and chair in the kitchen, and a sofa and TV in the family room), when shown to prospective sellers, spelled one word in big neon letters:
D-E-S-P-E-R-A-T-I-O-N
They sold at a loss. Some of them defaulted.

But, as the article says, many people live under the illussion that house prices don't come down:

Based on that idea, prices rose ever higher - so high, says Robert Barbera of ITG, an investment firm, that they were destined to fall. It was a self-defeating prophecy.

And it largely explains why the mortgage mess has had such ripple effects. The American home seemed like such a sure bet that a huge portion of the global financial system ended up owning a piece of it. Last summer, many policy makers were hoping that the crisis wouldn't spread to traditional banks, like Citibank, because they had sold off the underlying mortgages to investors. But it turned out that many banks had also sold complex insurance policies on the mortgage debt. That left them on the hook when homeowners who had taken out a wishful-thinking mortgage could no longer get out of it by flipping their house for a profit.

Many of these bets were not huge, but were so highly leveraged that any losses became magnified. If that $100 million investment I described above were to lose just $1 million of its value, the investor who put up only $1 million would lose everything. That's why a hedge fund associated with the prestigious Carlyle Group collapsed last week.

After seeing what happened in Morris County in the late 1980s, here's what I would advise anyone buying a house:
Don't think of your home as a speculative instrument; instead think of it as a secure roof over your head.

Since it's not a speculative instrument, get a traditional mortgage. If you get a fixed-rate 15 yr mortgage and live in the house for only 5 years because you need to relocate, you have not subjected yourself to mortgage rate fluctuations and you are not dependent on real estate values appreciating in order to recover your investment. If you live 15 years in that house, you own the house free and clear. Real estate values may fluctuate but you won't be losing your house.

The Husband and I have been extremely conservative and have bought the houses we have lived in where the mortgage payments could be met by only one salary - the lesser salary. This is because throughout the course of our carreers we have been laid off and we didn't want to have to worry about "where is the mortgage money" coming from if one employer went bust.

Your job is secure, you say? Then think about the effect the loss of your spouse's income, or a devastating illness (on yourself) would have on your ability to pay those bills.

As to thinking that real estate prices can not come down, or that big profits do not come from big risks, reality's biting now.
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Labels: business, real estate

I've been reading about Jerome Kerviel since the story of his $7,000,000,000 loss first hit the news.

All along I keep asking myself, is he the fall guy?

How can a trader (not a manager, partner or senior partner) who was in profit by nearly $2 billion at the start of 2008 lose that kind of money that fast without anyone noticing, especially when SG was looking into his transactions since last April?

This morning's WSJ's front page story:
In a French Twist, Infamous Trader Gets Hero Treatment
Bank Finds It Hard to Say Au Revoir to Mr. Kerviel; 'Che Guevara of Finance'

Considering how Che Guevara bankrupt the Cuban bankins system, at least the analogy holds.

Because of the ridiculousness of French employment laws, SG can't fire him right now

Société Générale has stopped paying Mr. Kerviel and told him not to come to the office, but it hasn't managed to formally fire him. French law stipulates that to do that, the bank must first call him in for a sit-down meeting and explain its dissatisfaction. He has the right to bring along a trade-union official, a lawyer or anyone else he'd like.

That will be complicated: A pair of Paris judges this week released Mr. Kerviel from custody but forbade him to have contact with the bank. "This is a very peculiar case," says Emmanuel Dockès, a law professor at l'Université Lyon 2, Mr. Kerviel's alma mater in central France.

The article points out that apparently Kerviel didn't profit personally from all those high-risk transactions over the past two years.

My guts tell me that even if Kerviel didn't profit, somebody at SG did.

Indeed, a curious case.

UPDATE
Via Tristan, France in Need of an SEC?



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Labels: business, crime, France, Societe Generale

Last night Miguel of The Devil's Excrement, Siggy and I started by discussing maletagate - the news story of the Venezuelan caught trying to go into Argentina with US$ 800,000 in cash in a suitcase intended for Kirchner's campaign. Said Venezuelan had taken 11 trips to Argentina prior to the one when he was caught.

Daniel of Venezuela News and Views was unable to join us due to internet connection problems, but later in the podcast oil industry expert and former PDVSA executive Gustavo Coronel of Las Armas del Coronel called in and we also talked about the Canada-Libya oil agreement.

Here's an article with background information: Petro-Canada, Libya Agree on $7 Billion Spending Plan

Dec. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Petro-Canada, the country's third- largest oil company, and Libya's state-run National Oil Corp. agreed to invest about $7 billion in exploration projects in the North African nation.

``Petro-Canada will pay 50 percent of all development capital and will receive a 12 percent entitlement share of production,'' the Canadian company said today in statement. That's a reduction of its share of output from existing oil ventures in Libya, National Oil said yesterday.

The Calgary-based company signed today an agreement with National Oil on the development of the fields in Libya's Sirte Basin. Its existing participation agreements and old exploration production-sharing accords were converted into six new pacts.

Petro-Canada was the fourth company to revise its contract with Libya in about a month, following Italy's Eni SpA, Occidental Petroleum Corp. of the U.S., and Austria's OMV AG. Libya is negotiating contract renewals to secure better terms as oil prices soar, National Oil Chairman Shokri Ghanem said last month.

Petro-Canada also said it agreed to pay $1 billion in a bonus and invest $460 million over the next seven years for exploration of the Sirte region. The Canadian company's projects pump about 100,000 barrels of oil a day in Libya now. Its output will double in the next five to seven years and stay at the higher level for a decade, the company forecast.

Concessions Ending

Most of the concessions were scheduled to end in 2015 and the new agreement extends the company's participation by 30 years, according to Petro-Canada's Web site.

The company received a percentage of revenue under the old agreements, making it difficult to compare to receiving output under the new terms, spokesman Tom Carney said.

``We've just gone to a completely different contractual form,'' he said in a telephone interview. A national oil company ``is going to want to say they've done a good deal for themselves, but we think we've done a pretty good deal as well.''

Petro-Canada rose 31 cents to $50.66 at 10:31 a.m. on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The stock has gained 6.1 percent this year.

Imperial Oil Ltd., owned 70 percent by Irving, Texas-based Exxon Mobil Corp., is Canada's largest oil company by sales, followed by EnCana Corp. Both companies are based in Calgary.

Why Canada bypassed Venezuela's oil altogether is one of the subjects we discussed. (Related article: The War on Energy Security.)

Listen to the podcast. I'm sure you'll find it most informative.

Special thanks to Miguel, Gustavo and Siggy.

Cross-posted at Heading Right


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Labels: Blog Talk Radio, business, oil, podcasts, politics, Venezuela

I was invited to a bloggers' conference call with Republican House Policy Chairman Thaddeus McCotter, along with several other bloggers. TechRepublican and Simple Country Girl blogged about it.

My question to him was on free trade and Latin America: since I firmly believe the best foreign aid the USA can provide developing countries is through free trade, and in view that the agreement with Peru just passed (the one with Colombia is still in the works), where do the Republican congressmen stand?

Congressman McCotter firmly believes in free trade with free nations. He explained that we shouldn't be trading with Communist China as we do now while they're killing their people. Trade with China imperils trade with Latin America and Africa while at the same time it distorts trade in the entire world. The US should have a consistent policy: "Free trade with free nations".

A policy I can certainly agree with.

UPDATE, Saturday 15 December
Betty Inclan tells me that Congressman McCotter has a You Tube page



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Labels: business, Republicans, trade

Men motivated by 'superior wage'

Scans reveal that being paid more than a co-worker stimulates the "reward centre" in the male brain.

Traditional economic theory assumes the only important factor is the absolute size of the reward.

But researchers in the journal Science have shown the relative size of one's earnings play a major role.

If I were a waging type, I'd bet you that if they scanned my brain the findings would be similar.

I'll be posting the Carnival shortly. This is one busy morning!

Labels: business, money