Keep it Simple in South America.

We are now under a lot of stress from an economy that has no one managing, but with a lot of people trying to take advantage, in times like this there are some measures that we must address.

If instead of complicated derivatives models we use this crisis to simplify the processes, to simplify the taxes, to simplify the investments we can achieve more buy adding more people to the economy.

In the case of Latin America there is a huge amount of infrastructure projects that are needed buy many different governments, from airports to ports, from housing to water processing plants, from bridges to railroads, why not let the private sector come in?

All those projects can be developed as a concession for 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 or even 99 years.

For that the only requirement are very good contracts, very stable environments and an admant will to not break contracts.

Ok this will leave Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguai and Venezuela out of the picture, maybe this is a good thing, since they will perceive what they are losing compared to their more stable and law abiding neighbors like Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Uruguay.

Just as an example the city of Rio de Janeiro have an endless list of problems, a small and outdated port, slums all over the city, decadent military bases, unfinished university campus, insufficient public transportation system, etc...

If the port is sold to the private sector, if the military bases are sold to the private sector a whole new city could be built between the shores of "Baia da Guanabara" and Avenida Brasil, the military bases could be sold to companies that would build a series of new districts with the proper infrastructure and would later sell the housing projects to the population living on the near slums, after the population is relocated to the new areas (close to their previous ones, but with much better infrastructure) the slums could be removed and a new infrastructure could be built on those areas as well.

Anyone can check google earth an see that this is almost obvious, those areas could be integrated to the subway and train systems, those areas could have hospitals and schools built from day zero and become an example for other cities in the region.

The military bases would be bought by market value, the military could use the money to renovate their outdated equipment and move their bases to new areas with more need for their services like the borders of Brazil with Bolivia, Colombia and Venezuela helping also to protect the Amazon, who need an army in Rio if you can send a missile from thousands of kilometers away that can blow the city out of this world?

We need the army helping to protect our borders, we need the army helping to protect our florest, our wildlife, our native brazilians, etc...

This is simple, this would free our government budget to focus in three major areas, education, public health and public safety.

End of the Quarter

World is under an economic turmoil and we still have the quarter numbers to execute. The interesting part of this is that after all that gambling and all those fiction projects we still have to go back to sell more and more. Ok! I can do it, but isn't about time to people review some concepts, some procedures. I don't think we can keep believing on the myth of all market will go up. I'm just looking to find out where is the bottom and what is at the bottom.

FED lends US$ 30 billion to Brazilian Central Bank

This a very interesting day, the USA central bank has lended US$ 30 billion in US currency in exchange for the same amount of Brazilian currency (of course the exchange rate was used) to help the Brazilian authorities cope with the crunch for dollars in Brazil.

Brazil after many years is finally becoming a predictable economy with very sophisticated and severe controls to maintain inflation under control and reduce the external and internal deficit.

Since 1994 Brazil has been reducing the inflation, reducing the government debts, has repaid the IMF and has been amassing very substantial reserves in US dollars, currently the reserves are US$ 203 billion.

What is really interesting is this kind of operation in Latin America was only done between the FED and the central banks of Brazil and Mexico.

Can anyone imagine how much upset Cristina and Chavez are right now?

So what is going to happen now with Venezuela

Chavez has been destroying Venezuela little by little year after year, I have been in that country many times since 1983.

I was there on 9/11 when the towers came down and I was there after that as well and every time I see a more deteriorate country, with more problems, more conflicts and more people feeling hopeless.

Mr. Chavez like some of his friends in Boliva, Brazil (thank God we managed to contain them here), Ecuador, Paraguai and Nicaragua have a firm belief that they can go against the market rules.

They are expelling the foreing companys, foreign capital anf foreing nationals if they were the devil and they only want to exploit those poor nations.

Funny that at the same time all those countries have been losing the most competent technicians and bureaucrats who have left their homelands to another countries and those countries need maximize their resources they lack the personel.

Now we are going to a recession that will hit them when they need to be more prepared, now they won't have human resources and capital (unless China manages to convince them to step aside and let them be invaded by Chinese operators) to develop their resources and improve their economies.

What Venezuela will do with the state of the art jets from Russia, PDVSA already lack technical people to develop and operate their own oil industry (Venezuela's production is shrinking quarter after quarter), how can they help Bolivia and Ecuador?

Maybe one of the greatest benefits of this crisis will be that those countries will have to get rid of those chief of state and to once more embrace their own destiny and to overcome their own limitations.

We can only hope and pray!