Word: weisbrot
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...economy has averaged almost 5% annual growth since Morales came to office, Bolivia's best performance in three decades. "Bolivia is the most profound example that the conventional wisdom of economic growth - that you need to attract foreign capital at all costs - is just not true," says Mark Weisbrot, director of the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington...
Despite the energy nationalization and Morales' strident anticapitalist rhetoric, Weisbrot adds, foreign investment is higher now than it was under many of Morales' predecessors. Much of that success was driven by the decade's abnormally high prices for commodities like natural gas, and it was hardly expected from a man who, like Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, did not attend college and concedes he didn't know what inflation meant before he became President. "When Morales admitted [during a visit to the U.S.] that it wasn't until after his election that the concept was explained...
...Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a liberal Washington think tank, says backing away from restoring Zelaya "sends an ugly signal that the U.S. doesn't really consider the era of using military coups in the region to be over." He adds it would fuel charges that Obama has been cowed by a small group of conservative Republican Cold Warriors in Congress. Led by South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, they recently journeyed to Honduras to show their support for Micheletti and are holding up diplomatic appointments to protest Obama's opposition to the coup...
...home - if oil prices don't rebound and the economy continues to slide. "The futures markets seem to think oil prices will rise soon enough that Chávez won't have to dip into his foreign reserves, which are about 25% of Venezuela's GDP," says Mark Weisbrot, head of the Center for Economic Policy and Research in Washington. "So I don't think Chávez will have too big a problem getting through the crisis." But other economists say Chávez won't be able to sustain the social largesse at home and petro-diplomacy abroad...
...positively to Bolivia's vote. Responding to a reporter's question, acting State Department Spokesman Robert Wood said, "we congratulate the Bolivian people on the referendum... we look forward to working with the Bolivian Government in ways we can to further democracy and prosperity in the hemisphere." Says Mark Weisbrot, director of the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research: "it's a hopeful sign" for the future of relations between the two countries. The previous U.S. administration would most likely have remained silent on Bolivia's electoral processes...