Thu, 11 May 2006

Bolivian Says He Won't Pay Energy Companies

This kind of thing doesn't even qualify as a bizarre sort of "eminent domain" - it's just theft, pure and simple, with an armed gang (wearing uniforms, in this case) seizing the property of others.

This will insure that there will be no further investment in the disintegrating infrastructure in Bolivia, and I predict the Bolivian economy will tank entirely within a few years. You cannot sustain any economy on the principle of theft - it doesn't work any better when you steal from oil companies than when you rob peasants blind. Robbery is robbery, pure and simple.

President Evo Morales today ruled out any compensation for nationalized oil and gas resources.

(link) [New York Times

/Politics | 0 writebacks | permanent link

comment...

 
Notes: If you put a <mailto:> link in the URL field your address will not be mangled: this could be a bad idea as your email address could be easily harvested by bots designed for SPAM. The comments field should now format correctly for line feeds and carriage returns: when you hit the 'Enter' or 'Return' keys in your comment it should break to a new line. The text should wrap cleanly. Please let me know if it doesn't. No HTML tags will pass through - entering links seems to be the main cause of comment SPAM. Also, please be sure that Javascript is enabled in your browser before attempting to post a writeback. Sorry for any inconvenience, but this really helps cut down on the amount of comment SPAM I have to deal with.
 
 Name:
 URL:(optional)
 Title: (optional)
 Comments:  
Save my Name and URL/Email for next time