Who's afraid of Kirchner's oil nationalization?

[marmar]

from the Asia Times:



Who's afraid of Kirchner's oil nationalization?
By Cyrus Bina


Argentina's President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner at a press conference on April 16 announced the seizure of a 51% control in oil company YPF and reasserted Argentina's control over its oil deposits.

The key phrase in this spectacular act was "recovery of sovereignty and control". YPF was Argentina's longtime national oil company, whose assets, including oil deposits, were owned by the Argentinian public until 1993. In 1999, YPF was taken over by Repsol, Spain's once national oil company. The YPF oil reserves amounted to two-thirds of Repsol's ownership of oil reserves before re-nationalization.

On April 26, Argentina's Senate voted 63 to 3 confirming the takeover. The expropriation bill was taken up by the lower house of Argentina's Congress and passed by 207 to 32 on May 3. This bill is the latest in the carefully considered series of socioeconomic reversals against the 1990s' happy-go-lucky privatizations, known as neoliberalism, in Latin America and elsewhere in the world.

The brunt of the Thatcherite period of transvestite politics and war, dubbed as the Iron Lady Era, and the recklessness of the generals in charge in the 1980s and assorted civilian governments, hostage to neoliberal economic policies throughout the 1990s, made Argentina a basket-case between cannibalistic policies on the one hand, and the plight of capital flight on the other. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/NE08Dj05.html

[xchrom]

1. good for her!

[amandabeech]

4. So long as she doesn't stage a military attack against Spain or the British in the Falklands.

I'm sure others here have the opposite opinion with respect to the Falklands, but I favor self-determination in most circumstances and everything I've read indicates that the Falkland islanders' ancestors came from the U.K. and the islanders consider themselves British.

I hope that Kirchner looks to our predicament because many of us have certainly found out just how expensive foreign adventures are when the natives are not cooperative. Not that all of us had to learn that through recent experience, of course.

[Jackpine Radical]

2. Cry for us, Argentina.

We lack the god sense to follow your model.

[abelenkpe]

3. This will probably begin to happen more.

In different countries too

[xchrom]

5. It happened in Bolivia - after this - as well. Nt