Chavez Jokes He Is More Right-Wing Than 'Comrade' Obama || What I Learned as Romania's 'Comrade' Car Czar

Chavez Jokes He Is More Right-Wing Than 'Comrade' Obama

Texas Fred | Fox News

Thursday, June 04, 2009

President Hugo Chavez claimed this week that he and his Cuban ally Fidel Castro are more conservative than left-wing U.S. President Barack Obama, referring to the American government bailout and takeover of General Motors, Reuters reported.

The Venezuelan leader was giving a speech on the "curse" of capitalism on Tuesday as GM was filing for bankruptcy and preparing for Washington to take control of 60 percent of the 100-year-old symbol of American capitalism.

"Hey, Obama has just nationalized nothing more and nothing less than General Motors. Comrade Obama! Fidel, careful or we are going to end up to his right," Reuters quotes Chavez joking on a national TV broadcast.

Socialist Chavez has nationalized most of Venezuela's economic sectors, including many oil projects that include joint ventures with private companies that give his government a 60 percent stake.

Obama says he will quickly sell off GM, but for now the government controls the automaker and has injected $30 billion of taxpayer money into the company.

Chavez also on Tuesday accused the CIA of plotting to kill him.

Chavez has previously accused the U.S. of plotting to overthrow him or invade Venezuela, but Tuesday was the first time he has made such accusations since warmly greeting President Barack Obama at an April summit in Trinidad and Tobago.

Austrian Economics :: Why Austrian Economics Matters

Austrian Economic Theory: Why Austrian Economics Matters

by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. | Lew Rockwell.com

Economics, wrote Joseph Schumpeter, is "a big omnibus which contains many passengers of incommensurable interests and abilities." That is, economists are an incoherent and ineffectual lot, and their reputation reflects it. Yet it need not be so, for the economist attempts to answer the most profound question regarding the material world.

Pretend you know nothing about the market, and ask yourself this question: how can society's entire deposit of scarce physical and intellectual resources be assembled so as to minimize cost; make use of the talents of every individual; provide for the needs and tastes of every consumer; encourage technical innovation, creativity, and social development; and do all this in a way that can be sustained?

This question is worthy of scholarly effort, and those who struggle with the answer are surely deserving of respect. The trouble is this: the methods used by much of mainstream economists have little to do with acting people, and so these methods do not yield conclusions that have the ring of truth. This does not have to be the case.

The central questions of economics have concerned the greatest thinkers since ancient Greece. And today, economic thinking is broken into many schools of thought: the Keynesians, the Post Keynesians, the New-Keynesians, the Classicals, the New Classicals (or Rational Expectations School), the Monetarists, the Chicago Public Choicers, the Virginia Public Choicers, the Experimentalists, the Game Theorists, the varying branches of Supply Sideism, and on and on it goes.