“Good actions give strength to ourselves and inspire good actions in others.” Plato

Biofashion hit the catwalk in Colombia as models paraded down the catwalk wearing unique ‘eco-friendly’ designs by national designers.

Organic fashion made from leaves, seeds and branches saw jungle-esque constructions waltz down the runway. A nude model had her body painted with verdant designs, causing a flutter as she posed with live butterflies.

The annual show in Cali, Colombia showcases outfits made with all-natural materials, using live plants and green textiles.

Biofashion highlights the use of sustainable materials, in an industry which frequently employs sweatshops and child labour to produce ‘throwaway’ fashion.

The colours and flamboyant creations of Colombia designers Daniela Aristizabal, Reynaldo Giraldo and Ann Murcia evoked a carnival feel.

Their jubilant designs echo the recent clamour for ‘eco fashion’ and the shopper’s interest in the complete life-cycle of clothes, their green footprint, and whether they can be recycled.

Cubans will soon be allowed to buy and sell cars, ending the ban on trading cars bought after the 1959 revolution. But what will happen to Cuba’s classic cars?

President Raul Castro has decided to relax rules on Cuban car ownership, meaning locals can now buy or sell used vehicles freely for the first time in half a century. The new regulations also mean that Cubans can now own more than one used vehicle and will no longer lose their car if they emigrate.

It is thought that the move, along with new laws permitting home sales, are part of an effort to remodel Cuba’s crippled economy and encourage the private sector, ultimately moving hundreds of thousands of workers off the public payroll.

Although Cubans will be able to sell and buy used cars with more freedom, this pocket of economic liberty will still remain tightly controlled in some ways. The right to buy a new car, for example, will be limited to Cubans who earn some foreign currency, such as doctors, artists and musicians.

So what will these changes mean for the classic cars that have become an iconic and well-loved feature of Cuban roads? Parked in narrow streets and alleyways, battered and repaired Buicks and Chevrolets, are known to brighten up and dramatically complement the colonial buildings and natural landscape.

For travellers and photo opportunists it is unlikely that these cars will be disappearing from the Cuban landscape any time soon. Although new economic freedom means these classics will be moving into retirement, the shift is bound to be gradual.

Perhaps the biggest foreign-policy story of the past decade, thoroughly overlooked by the American media after 9/11 and its subsequent monomaniacal focus on terrorism, security and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is the fact that Latin America has essentially moved away from Washington’s influence.

This quiet revolution from below, in rejecting the Monroe Doctrine, first enunciated in 1823 whereby the U.S. essentially barred European powers from influence in Latin America, has essentially for nearly 200 years served as an ideological platform for countless U.S. interventions south of the border but has yet to register on the radar the politicians in Washington.

From Ecuador to Paraguay, Venezuela to Brazil, governments increasingly composed of representatives of the indigenous people, are more and more rebuffing Washington’s advice as they seek to determine their countries’ futures without undue interference from their giant North American neighbour.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Brazil, which after suffering decades of corrupt government and intermittent military dictatorship in 2003 elected Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as president, who’s adroit and progressive policies until he relinquished the proposed last year have laid the foundations for the dramatic rise of Brazil’s economy.

President Lula focused on social equality and improving the lot of the nation’s poor, and that and other policies such as reining in the rampant inflation that ravaged the country when he took office, saw him leave the presidency with an approval rating of 80 percent, a political achievement unmatched in any other country.

Lula put Brazil’s economic interests first and foremost, and spoke his mind prior to a G20 summit in March 2009, when in Brasilia, with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown squirming uncomfortably beside him, he addressed the issue of the global recession which had begun the previous year by telling reporters, “This crisis was caused by no black man or woman or by no indigenous person or by no poor person. This crisis was fostered and boosted by irrational behaviour of some people that are white, blue-eyed. Before the crisis they looked like they knew everything about economics, and they have demonstrated they know nothing about economics.” Challenged about his claims, Lula responded: “I only record what I see in the press. I am not acquainted with a single black banker.”

Indirectly addressing the West’s and in particular the United States’ obsession with security against terrorism in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Lula continued, “We do not have the right to allow this crisis to continue for long. We are determined to make sure the world financial system is vigorously regulated. You go to a shopping mall and you are filmed. You go to the airport and you are watched. I can’t imagine that only the financial system has no surveillance at all.”

Last July while visiting Zambia Lula noted, “We had a debt of $30 billion to the International Monetary Fund but when I took office, we repaid the IMF and we don’t owe anymore to the IMF. On the contrary, the IMF owes us $14 billion. We have $250 billion in our currency reserves.”

Now the crown jewel in Brazil’s economy, the government-managed Petrobras energy company is to build on Lula’s sound fiscal foundation and stated that it intends to double its output within the next four years. Furthermore, echoing Lula’s reluctance to rely on foreign financial funding, Petrobras said that its plan to more than double oil output will boost the company’s cash flow and eliminate the need to tap debt markets in less than a decade, as profits from oil sales will be enough to cover both operating and debt costs, according to Petrobras Chief Financial Officer Almir Barbassa.

Earlier this year Petrobras announced its plans to invest $224.7 billion in increasing production through 2015, more than any other major oil producer in the world, as it develops some of the world’s largest discoveries in three decades outside of the Caspian basin.

Barbassa said modestly, “Cash flow will be enough to pay debt amortizations and the investments we will have. Few companies in the world can say this.”

A government focused both on social reform and prudent economic policy while the country’s largest company purchases a policy of minimizing foreign borrowing through a pay-as-you-go policy – what radical concepts.

It would seem that the future of Petrobras is quite bright, and if Washington bothers to listen to its rising southern economic superpower hemispheric neighbour it might even learn a few things about fiscal accountability, if the Republicans in Congress can be momentarily dissuaded from their efforts to drive America’s international credit ratings over a cliff.

Many people tend to think of the large stone statues, or moai, for which Easter Island is world-famous as just big heads, but the statues are actually torsos, with most of them ending at the top of the thighs (although a small number of them are complete, with the figures kneeling on bent knees with their hands over their stomachs). This image from a excavation shows you the scale of the statues, and how deep they were buried.

For US$9 a day, workers toil in the bowels of a mine that once funded an empire.

When the Spanish came to Cerro Rico (Rich Mountain) in the 16th century, they hoped to find gold. But the cone-shaped mountain looming over the city of Potosi and now riddled with makeshift tunnels and unstable shaft systems produced silver.

“You could build a silver bridge from the mountain to Madrid from what was mined here,” said Freddy Suarez, a guide who takes visitors to see Cerro Rico.

“For 20 years I worked in the mine after starting at 10. My father was a miner here too. There is still as much silver in there as has been taken out, but it is getting harder to get to and more dangerous. Tunnel collapses are common and the dangers our ancestors faced are still present.”

A century after the Spanish arrived, Potosi was one of the biggest cities in Latin America and the wealthiest in the world. The busy extraction of silver and other minerals also made it the largest site of physical exploitation in the world, right through the 17th century.

“Vale un Potosi” (It is worth a Potosi) became a commonly used expression to describe vast wealth, after Quixote blurted it out in Cervantes’s Don Quixote.

But the apparent wealth of Potosi, the highest city in the world at 4,090 metres, overlooked the human sacrifice that made it possible.

Countless natives were taken into forced servitude to toil in the mines alongside African and Indian slaves, working in squalid and extremely dangerous conditions. While records of fatalities were not kept, historians and geologists estimate that about eight million perished in Potosi during the Spanish colonial period, from 1546 to 1825.

“Miners believe that their ghosts are still in the mines,” Mr Suarez said, adding that Cerro Rico’s nickname – The Mountain That Eats Men – is still used today.

After coming out of Potosi’s cobbled, narrow streets, the road up to the mine is dotted with stalls selling cigarettes, dynamite, ammonia and soft drinks to tourists, all meant to be given as presents to the miners.

Working conditions in the mine are primitive: the air is unbearably hot and stuffy due to a lack of ventilation and is thick with dust generated from the blasting of rocks. The tunnels are poorly lit and narrow, restricting the workers’ movement. The only signs of modernity are the pneumatic drills that have replaced pick axes.

Lung disease, mercury poisoning and exhaustion cause sickness and death among the miners, whose life expectancy is less than 40 years. And accidents, especially with dynamite and falls from unstable ladders, are still common.

“Hear that?” said Mr Suarez, as a tapping sound rang out on the ventilation pipes. “It means there are going to be explosions, the number of taps indicate the number of blasts. Four taps, four blasts.”

Mr Suarez took the tour group down two levels for shelter from the explosions. “We will wait here until we get the all clear,” he said, before a series of blasts shook the mine and dust rained down through the tunnels.

“Before the dust settles, the rocks are carried up in bags to different levels and then loaded on to containers and then pushed out in ore carts where other miners sift through for silver deposits.”

In the lower levels, where adults cannot squeeze through, children wriggle in to extract rocks that may have silver or the less precious zinc.

Working for 10 hours a day the miners chew coca leaves to suppress hunger and fear. A firm golf ball-sized wodge is formed in the mouth and typically lasts for a whole shift. No food is eaten in the mine as miners believe this would make them less alert. Women are prohibited except in tour groups.

“There are 250 miners who work officially in here but 8,000 people work around the mine in analysing the output,” Mr Suarez said.

“Miners get 65 bolivianos a day (Dh33) and work six days a week. However, there is nothing stopping miners freelancing and they get paid according to what they can carry out themselves in their own hands.

“This is often very little, say a couple of bolivianos a day, but they all dream of finding a lump of silver.”

Juan, Enrique and Miguel spend their shifts on level five, deep in the bowels of the mountain. They drill the holes then stuff them with dynamite.

“I have been working here for five years,” said Juan, 18. “We try to keep track of the silver seam but with the dust it can be hard to see. Also there are other minerals down here like zinc, not as valuable as silver. We try to avoid a zinc seam, there is no money in it.”

Working deep inside Cerro Rico has given rise to a dark sense of humour among those who spend their days there.

“We are underground like those in the cemetery,” said Enrique, 19, caked in dust and struggling for breath, with red eyes and a mouth full of coca leaves. “Except they are better looked after.”

On October 23rd of this year, President Cristina Fernandez won re-election receiving 54% of the vote, 37 percentage points higher than her nearest opponent. The President’s coalition also swept the Congressional, Senatorial, Gubernatorial elections as well as 135 of the 136 municipal councils of Greater Buenos Aires. In sharp contrast President Obama, according to recent polls is trailing leading Republican Presidential candidates and is likely to lose control of both houses of Congress in the upcoming 2012 election. What accounts for the monumental difference in voter preferences of incumbent presidents? A comparative historical discussion of socio-economic and foreign policies as well as responses to profound economic crises is at the centre of any explanation of the divergent results.

Methodology

In comparing the performance of Fernandez and Obama it is necessary to locate them in an historical context. More specifically, both presidents and their immediate predecessors, George Bush in the US and Nestor Kirchner (deceased husband of Fernandez) in Argentina confronted major economic and social crises. What is telling, however, are the diametrically opposing responses to the crises and the divergent results. On the one hand sustained growth with equity in Argentina and deepening crises and failed policies in the US .

Historical Context: Argentina : Depression, Revolt and Recovery

Between 1998 – 2002, Argentina experienced the worse socio-economic crises in its history. The economy nose-dived from recession to full scale depression, culminating in double digit negative growth in 2001 – 2002. Unemployment reached over 25% and in many working class neighbourhoods, over 50%. Tens of thousands of impoverished middle class professional lined up to receive bread and soup only blocks away from the Presidential palace. Hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers, ‘piqueteros’ (picketers), blocked major highways and some raided trains shipping cattle and grain overseas. Banks closed depriving millions of depositors of their savings. Millions of middle class protestors organized radical neighbourhood councils and linked up with unemployed assemblies. The country was heavily indebted, the people deeply impoverished. The popular mood was moving toward a revolutionary uprising. Incumbent President Fernando De la Rua was overthrown (2001) scores of protestors were killed and wounded, as a popular rebellion threatened to seize the Presidential palace. By the end of 2002, hundreds of bankrupt factories were ‘occupied’, taken over and run by workers. Argentina defaulted on its external debt. In early 2003, Nestor Kirchner was elected President, in the midst of this systemic crisis and proceeded to reject efforts to enforce debt payment or repress the popular movements. Instead he inaugurated a series of emergency public works programs. He authorized payments to unemployed workers (150 pesos per month) to meet the basic needs of nearly half the labour force.

The most popular slogan, of the multitudinous movements occupying the financial districts, factories, public buildings and the streets was “Que se vayan todos” (“All politicians get out’). The entire political class, parties and leaders, Congress and presidents were rejected outright. But while the movements were vast, militant and united in what they rejected, they had no coherent program for taking state power, nor national political leadership to lead them. After two years of turmoil, the populace turned to the ballot box and elected Kirchner with a mandate to produce or perish. Kirchner heard the message, at least the part which demanded growth with equity.

Context: The US under Bush-Obama

The last years of the Bush administration and the Obama presidency presided over the worse socio-economic crises since the Great Depression of the 1930’s. Unemployment and underemployment rose to almost a third of the labour force by 2009. Millions of homes were foreclosed. Bankruptcies multiplied and banks were on the verge of collapse. Negative growth rates and a sharp decline in income, increased poverty and multiplied the number of food stamp recipients. Unlike Argentina , discontented citizens took to the ballot box. Attracted by the demagogic “change” rhetoric of Obama, they placed their hopes in the new president. The Democrats won the Presidency and a majority in both houses of Congress. The first priority of Obama and Congress was to pour trillions of dollars in bailing out the banks, even as unemployment deepened and the recession continued. Their second priority was to deepen and expand overseas imperial wars.

Obama increased the number of troops in Afghanistan by 30,000; expanded the military budget to $750 billion dollars; launched new military operations in Somalia , Yemen , Libya , Pakistan and elsewhere; augmented military aid to Israeli colonial armed forces; signed military pacts with Asian countries ( India , Philippines , Australia ) proximate to China .

In sum Obama gave maximum priority to expanding the militarized empire, depleting the public treasury of funds to finance the recovery of the domestic economy and reducing unemployment.

In contrast, Kirchner/Fernandez curtailed the power of the military, cut military spending and channelled state revenues toward employment programs, productive investments and non-traditional exports.

Under Obama the crises became an opportunity to revive and consolidate the financial power of Wall Street. The White House augmented the military budget to expand imperial wars by deepening the budget deficit and then proposed to cut essential social programs to ‘reduce the deficit’.

Argentina from Crises to Dynamic Growth

In Argentina the economic catastrophe and popular uprising provided Kirchner with an opportunity to bring about a basic shift from militarism and speculative pillage to social programs and sustained economic growth.

The electoral victories of both Kirchner and Fernandez reflect their success in creating a ‘normal’ capitalist welfare state. After 30 years of US backed predator neo-liberal regimes, this was a great positive change. Between 1966 and 2002, Argentina suffered brutal military dictatorships culminating in the genocidal generals who murdered 30,000 Argentines from 1976to 1982. From 1983to 1989 Argentina ’s suffered under a neo-liberal regime (Raul Alfonsin) which failed to deal with the dictatorial legacy and which presided over triple digit hyper-inflation. From 1989 – 1999 under President Carlos Menem Argentina witnessed the biggest sell-off of its most lucrative public firms, natural resources (petrol included), banks, highways, zoo and public toilets to foreign investors and kleptocratic cronies for bargain basement prices.

Last but not least, Fernando De la Rua (2000 – 2001), promised change and proceeded to deepen the recession that led to the final catastrophic crash of December 2001 and the closing of the banks, the bankruptcy of 10,000 firms and the collapse of the economy.

Against this background of total and unmitigated failure and the human disaster of US – IMF promoted “free-market” policies, Kirchner/Fernandez defaulted on the external debt, re-nationalized several privatized firms and the pension funds, intervened the banks and doubled social spending, expanded public investment in production and increased popular consumption, on the road to economic recovery. By the end of 2003 Argentina turned from negative to 8% growth.

Human Rights, Social Programs and Independent Foreign Economic Policy

Argentina ’s economy has grown over 90% from 2003 – 2011, over three times that of the United States . Its recovery has been accompanied by a tripling of social spending, especially on programs reducing poverty. The percentage of poor Argentines has declined from over 50% in 2001 to less than 15% in 2011. In contrast US poverty has risen over the same decade from 12% to 17% and is on an upward trajectory over the same period.

The US has become the country with the greatest inequalities in the OECD with 1% controlling 40% of the country’s wealth, (up from 30% in less than a decade). In contrast, Argentina ’s inequalities have shrunken by half. The US economy has failed to recover from the deep recession of 2008-2009, during which it declined by over 8%. In contrast Argentina declined less than 1% in 2009, and has been growing at a healthy 8% (2010-2011). Argentina has nationalized pension funds, doubled basic pensions and introduced a universal child welfare program to counter malnutrition and guarantee school attendance.

In contrast 20% of children in the US are now suffering from poor diets, drop-out rates are increasing for adolescents and malnutrition affects over 25% of minority children. With more social cuts in health/education under way, social conditions can only worsen. In Argentina the income of wage and salaried workers has increased over 50% over the decade in real terms, while in the US they have declined by nearly 10%.

Argentina ’s dynamic growth of GNP has been fuelled by growing domestic consumption and dynamic export earnings. Argentina has a consistent large trade surplus based on favourable market prices and increased competitiveness. In contrast domestic consumption has stagnated in the US , the trade deficit is close to $1.5 trillion dollars and revenues are wasted on non-productive military expenditures of over $900 billion a year.

While in Argentina the impulse for a policy of default with growth came about because of a popular rebellion and mass movements, in the US popular discontent was channelled toward the election of a Wall Street financial con-man named Obama. He proceeded to pour resources into rescuing the financial elite instead of letting them go bankrupt and funding growth, competitiveness and social consumption.

The Argentine Alternative to Bailouts and Poverty

The Argentine experience goes counter to all the precepts of the international financial agencies (the IMF, World Bank), their political backers, and publicists in the financial press. From the first year (2003) of Argentina ’s recovery to the present, the economic experts have “predicted” that its growth was “not sustainable” – it has continued robustly for over a decade. The financial writers claimed the default would lead to Argentina being shut out of financial markets and that its economy would collapse. Argentina relied on self-financing based on export earnings and re-activation of the domestic economy and confounded the prestigious economists.

As growth continued, the critics in the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal claimed it would end once “unused capacity was exhausted”. Instead growth earnings financed the expansion of the domestic market and created new capacity for growth especially to new markets in Asia and Brazil .

Even as late as October 25, 2011, Financial Times columnists still prattle about “the coming crises” in the manner of messianic fundamentalists who predict the pending apocalypse. They harp on “high inflation”, “unsustainable social programs”, “overvalued currency”, and more predictions of “the end of prosperity”. All these dire warnings occur in the face of continued growth of 8% in 2011 and the overwhelming electoral victory of President Fernandez.. Anglo-American financial scribes should focus on the demise of their free market regimes in Europe and North America instead of denigrating an economic experience from which they might learn.

In refutation of the Wall Street critics, Mark Weisbrot and his associates point out (“The Argentina Success Story”, Center for Economic Bad Policy Research, Oct. 2011) that Argentina ’s growth was based on the expansion of domestic consumption, increased manufacturing exports to regional trading partners as well as traditional agro-mineral exports to Asia . In other words Argentina is not totally dependent on primary exports; it has balanced trade and is not over dependent on commodity prices. In regard to high inflation, Weisbrot points out that “inflation may be high in Argentina but it is real growth and income distribution that matter with regard to the well-being of the vast majority of population”, (page 14) (my emphasis).

The US under Bush-Obama has pursued a totally perverse and divergent path to that of Kirchner-Fernandez. They have prioritized military spending and expanded the security apparatus over the productive economy. Obama and Congress have vastly increased the police state apparatus, reinforced their political influence over regressive budgetary policies while increasingly violating human and civil rights. In contrast Kirchner/Fernandez have prosecuted dozens of human rights violators in the military and police and weakened the military’s political power.

In other words the Argentine Presidents have weakened the militarist pressure bloc which demands greater arms and security expenditures. They created a state more accommodative to their political project of financing economic competitiveness, new markets and social programs. Bush-Obama revived the parasitical financial sector further unbalancing the economy. Kirchner/Fernandez ensured that the banking sector financed the growth of the export sector, manufactures and domestic consumption. Obama slashes social consumption to pay creditors. Kirchner-Fernandez imposed a 75% “haircut” on bondholders in order to finance social spending.

Kirchner-Fernandez have won three presidential elections, each by a larger margin. Obama may be a one-term president, even with the billion dollar campaign funding from Wall Street, the military industrial complex and the pro-Israel power configuration.

The popular opposition to Obama, especially the “Occupy Wall Street movement” has a long way to go to emulate the success of the Argentine movements that rousted incumbent presidents, blocked highways paralyzing production and circulation and imposed a social agenda that prioritized production over finance, social consumption over military expenditures. The “Occupy Wall Street Movement” has taken a first step toward mobilizing millions of active participants necessary to creating the social muscle that turned Argentina from a US style client state into a dynamic independent welfare state.

“Mom, romance is dead. It was acquired in a hostile takeover by Hallmark and Disney, homogenized, and sold off piece by piece.” Lisa Simpson, The Simpsons

Procopio Gamboa Villalobos School, located ten miles from La Fortuna in the shadow of the Arenal volcano, Cost Rica, is performing an amazing feat of alchemy – turning old clothes into new computers. The school, which serves 300 children in grades one through six, has been chronically short of funds for needed improvements to its technology in particular and for the campus in general.

To meet the need, Principal Yaniny Guzman and other school supporters have launched a project to create a used clothing store. Space has been set aside at the school to serve as a collection point for donations from community members and from abroad. When the inventory reaches a sufficient size, everyone in the area is notified of the hours the store will be open, and the sale is on.

With volunteer labour and donated merchandise, 100% of the proceeds from the clothing sales are returned to the school for the purchase of computer equipment and for the development of an environmental education program. Longer term, the school hopes to raise enough money through the store to construct a new building that can serve for both physical education and for the expansion of the environmental education classes.

Two incumbent presidents are running for re-election in 2012, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Barack Obama in the United States. What makes these two electoral contests significant is that they represent contrasting responses to the global economic crises:

Chavez following his democratic socialist program pursues policies promoting large scale long-term public investment and spending directed at employment, social welfare and economic growth: Obama guided by his ideological commitment to corporate financial capitalism, pours billions into bailing out Wall Street speculators, focuses on reducing the public deficit and slashes taxes and offers government subsidies to business in the hope that the banks will lend, the private sector will invest.

Obama hopes the corporate sector will start to hire the unemployed. Chavez’s economic strategy is directed toward increasing popular demand by increasing the social wage. Obama’s strategy is directed toward enriching the elite, hoping for a “trickle down” effect. Chavez’s economic recovery program is based on the public sector, the state, taking the lead in light of the capitalist market induced crises and the failure of the private sector to invest. Obama’s economic recovery and employment program depends wholly on the private sector, utilizing tax handouts to stimulate domestic investments which generate employment.

According to the experts and politicians, the socio-economic performance of each President will be decisive in determining whether either President will be re-elected in 2012.

Measuring the Performance of Presidents Chavez and Obama in the Face of the Economic Crises

Over the past three years, both presidents faced a deep socio-economic crises resulting in increased unemployment, economic recession and popular demands for political leadership in formulating an economic recovery program.

President Chavez responded via a large scale program in public spending on social programs. Billions were allocated in a massive housing program designed to create one million homes over the next several years. Chavez lessened military tensions and reduced frontier conflicts by negotiating a political agreement with the rightwing Santos regime in Colombia.

Chavez increased the minimum wage, social security and pension payments, increasing consumption among low income groups, stimulating demand and increasing revenues for small and medium size businesses. The state embarked on large scale infrastructure projects, especially highways and transport, creating jobs in labour intensive activities. The Chavez government sustained living standards by instituting price controls on food and other essentials, which sustained popular demand at the expense of profiteering by the owners of super markets. The Chavez government nationalized lucrative gold mines and repatriated overseas reserves in the course of financing its demand driven economic recovery program, eschewing tax concessions to the rich and bailouts of bankrupt banks and private businesses.

Obama rejected any large scale long term public investments to create jobs: his proposed “Jobs for America” proposal will at best temporarily reduce unemployment by less than five-tenths of one percent. In pursuit of policies benefiting Wall Street bondholders, Obama became deeply involved in deficit reduction, meaning large scale cuts in public spending especially in social expenditures. Obama, in agreement with the extreme rightwing, agreed to regressive proposals to reduce tax payments for popular Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security programs. His proposals to fund “Jobs for America” depends on cuts in the Social Security tax which ensures a reduction in payments and a deficit or worse, which would facilitate privatization – handing social security to Wall Street, a trillion dollar plum.

Obama ignores mortgage foreclosures of over 10 million families – increasing homelessness and habitation downgrades, in favour of bailing out banks and home mortgage swindlers.

Obama increased military spending, multiplying overseas combat troops, clandestine terror operations and the domestic spy apparatus, increasing the deficits at the expense of productive investments in education, technology skill upgrades and export promotion.

Unlike Chavez who makes a point of highlighting positive job and education policies for Afro and Indo-Venezuelans, Obama ignores the 50% unemployed big-city young (18-25) Afro-Americans and Latinos in favour of serving white Wall Street bankers.

In contrast to Chavez who pegged pensions and wages to inflation and enforced price controls, Obama froze federal salaries and social security payments resulting in a seven percent decline in real income over the past three years.

According to the latest US Census Bureau data (September 2011), under Obama over 46.2 million Americans live in poverty, the highest figure ever. Median household income dropped 2.3%between 2009-2010.The number of Americans in poverty increased from 13.2% in 2008 to 15.1% in 2010. Nearly one out of four children live in poverty in 2010, as over 2.6 million more US citizens were impoverished in a single year. In contrast, and in line with Obama’s trickle down economic policies, the number of wealthy Americans – earning over 100,000 dollars – have suffered little or no impact: luxury specialty stores, like Tiffany’s, report a 15% increase in sales.

The lowest 10% of the population suffered the most, a fall in income of 12.1% between 2009-2010 while the 10% with the highest income saw a decline of 1.5%. Of the 34 members of the OCED the US along with Mexico, Chile and Israel has the worst social class inequalities. Obama’s top-down stimulus policies saved the bankers by sacrificing the working and middle class.

Political and Economic Consequences of Top Down and Bottom Up Economics

The political and economic consequences of Obama’s “top down” and Chavez “bottom up” socio-economic polices are striking in every respect. Venezuela grew 3.6% in the first half of 2011 while the US stagnated at less than 2%. Worse still, during the second half of the year Obama and his advisers expressed fear that the US is heading toward a “double dip” recession – negative growth. In contrast the President of Venezuela’s Central Bank predicted accelerated growth for 2012.

While US unemployed remains above 9% and combined with underemployment rose to over 19%, Venezuela ’s vast public housing and infrastructure investments are generating jobs and lowering the numbers of un and under employed in the formal and informal labour market. Obama’s pandering to Wall Street bankers and deficit reduction hawks and his vast increase spending on overseas wars and the domestic security apparatus, has bankrupted the treasury. In contrast, Chavez has nationalized lucrative private sector mines, banks and energy enterprises and decreased military tensions increasing resources for social programs such as food subsidies. Obama’s deficit reductions have led to massive firings in education and social services.

Chavez social expenditures have augmented the number of public universities, secondary and primary schools and clinics. Millions have lost their homes as Obama ignored the forced evictions of the mortgage banks, while Chavez has made a start in solving the housing deficit via one million homes.

Obama lends at virtually no interest to private banks who fail to lend to productive enterprises to create jobs, preferring overseas speculation in overseas (Brazilian) bonds with higher interest rates. Chavez invests directly in productive labour intensive infrastructures programs, agricultural self-sufficiency projects and developing downstream processing plants, refineries and smelters.

As a result of the reactionary top down economics he practices and his overt threats to cut basic social programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, Obama’s popularity has fallen over the past three year from 80% to 40% and heading downwards. Moreover, his pro-Wall Street fiscal and militarist policies – deepening an extending Bush and Rumsfeld’s wars and terror operations – has turned the US political climate further toward the extreme right. As of the last quarter of 2011, Obama appears vulnerable to electoral defeat.

In contrast President Chavez, riding the wave of economic recovery, based on positive programs of social expansion and public investments, has seen his popularity rise from 43% in March 2010 to 59.3% as of September 7, 2011. The US backed opposition is fragmented, weak and unable to challenge the overwhelmingly positive popular perceptions of the housing and infrastructure projects benefiting the mass of workers, construction companies and contractors.

Chavez is vulnerable on issues of personal security, administrative corruption and inefficiency. But he is seen to have taken important steps to correct these problem areas. Graduates of a new police academy provide honest, efficient community linked policing, which, in pilot projects have reduced violent crime by 60%. Efforts to end bureaucratic corruption and inefficiency are still pending.

Conclusion

Comparing Chavez and Obama’s presidency presents a sharp contrast between a successful bottom up socialist informed economic recovery program and a failed top down capitalist stimulus program. While the American public expresses its hostility to private banking’s pillage of the treasury, government threats to the last remnants of the social safety net and Obama’s failure to lower persistent high levels of un and underemployment, Chavez’s popularity rises along with the positive “good feeling” among three-fifths of the electorate to his presidency. If the Chavez government continues and deepens his ‘bottom up’ economic stimulus program and the economy continues to expand and he recovers from cancer he will in all likelihood be re-elected by a landslide in 2012.

In contrast if Obama continues to truckle to the corporate and financial elite and slash and burn social programs he will continue his downward slide into well-deserved defeat and oblivion.

Venezuela’s economic recovery via advanced social programs is a powerful message to the American people: there is an alternative to regressive ‘top down’ economic policies: it’s called democratic socialism and its advocate is President Chavez, who talks to and works for the people as opposed to the con-man Obama who talks to the people and works for the rich.