Latin Leaders Blast Bailout

The most explicit anti-capitalist analysis of the U.S.‘s proposed bailout of major finance firms is not domestic, but rather international. A cadre of left-leaning leaders in Latin America is ramping up criticism of Bush’s crony capitalism, arguing that the U.S. economic crisis was caused by the driving logic of American imperialism: fast money at the expense of the poor.

The Guardian:

Without ever pronouncing the two words “United States”, Cuba’s first vice-president Jose Ramon Machado Ventura condemned Washington yesterday, telling the leaders gathered at the United Nations that the country’s quest for fast money at the expense of the poor was to blame for the world crises currently threatening the “existence of mankind”.

As Latin America elects more and more leftist leaders, its presidents suggested they are tired of decades of reliance on a nation that they said was not able to keep its own country from the brink of financial collapse.

“The prevailing world order, unjust and unsustained, must be replaced,” Machado Ventura said.

Chilean president Michelle Bachelet stressed that South American leaders held their own regional summit last week when civic disruptions broke out in Bolivia. The Union of South American Nations, created in May, met again yesterday in New York to keep Bolivia from political calamity.

Read more

AP photo / Seth Wenig

Jose Ramon Machado, vice president of Cuba, addressed the United Nations Wednesday with harsh words for U.S. imperialism and its effects both inside and outside its borders.