THE REDS ARE COMING, THE REDS ARE COMING!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070323/bs_nm/latam_summit_slim_dc;_ylt=AuHPH9DmkpDzz4tgmXoX5AeyBhIF

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Venezuela's nationalization of telecommunications and energy companies will not be widely copied in the rest of Latin America because most governments need private investment, Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim said on Thursday.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez recently took over telecoms company CANTV and ordered foreign oil majors to give up ownership of crude oil operations in a drive that has upset financial markets and the United States.

Slim, the world's third-richest man and Latin America's most influential business leader, said he did not see many other countries following Chavez's lead.

"I don't think there's a tendency. It would be a step back," Slim said at the Reuters Latin American Investment Summit.

Unlike oil-rich Venezuela, many Latin American countries cannot afford to scare off private investors, said Slim, who has close contacts with many governments in the region.

"On the contrary, I think what they are looking for is a combination of private and public investment," said Slim, 67, whose business empire includes Latin America's biggest mobile phone company, a bank, retailers and infrastructure firms.

"Having telecommunications as a state monopoly is a backward step that would be rejected by everyone because it would also mean control of content and limiting freedom."

Chavez has declared a socialist revolution in Venezuela and is taking over parts of the economy which he says are strategic, such as oil projects and power utilities.

Venezuela will offer to buy out stock in CANTV (TDVd.CR) (NYSE:VNT - news) next week, expecting to take a share of 60 to 70 percent in the country's biggest telephone company.

Slim, whose fortunes soared after he bought Mexican state-run phone company Telmex in 1990, praised Peruvian President Alan Garcia and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as the kind of left-of-center leaders who had good relations with the markets.

The Mexican, who is worth $49 billion according to Forbes magazine, met Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega last month to discuss health, education and road-building projects.

"I found him open to private investment," Slim said.

Ortega, a former Marxist guerrilla, was a Cold War foe of the United States when he ruled Nicaragua in the 1980s and aligned it with the Soviet Union.

By cali373 on Mar 23, 2007, 07:13 in Politics & the war.

Mr. Hollywood says on Mar 23, 2007, 13:51:

Shouldn't that be The Reds AREN'T Coming?

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cali373 says on Mar 26, 2007, 14:48:

I was being sarcastic in the sense that in the U.S. attemps to condition us to believe that others are at our door step ready to take over our homes and way of life. Like Chavezs' supposively overwelming influence to destabilize democracy of the entire continent, yet one man that has much influence and first hand knowledge of Latin American economies does not think so.

On a side note one of Carlos Slim's companies is Comcel.

Smile if you are a thinker!

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Mr. Hollywood says on Mar 26, 2007, 14:51:

The US attempts...? Don't you mean the right wing nutjobs at the extreme fringe of the Republican party in the US? And a few locos in Miami.

Most citizens of the US couldn't give a rat shit about Chavez or Castro or commies.

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cali373 says on Mar 27, 2007, 11:28:

OK, how about mainstream media? but yes I agree that most do not care about or Castro or commies because most people have too much shit to worry about in their daily lives.

Smile if you are a thinker!

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Mr. Hollywood says on Mar 28, 2007, 14:48:

Curious I don't really see the mainstream media in the US beating the drum about Chavez or Castro. But I consider mainstream US media to be the NY Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, etc. I'm not really a TV watcher so there could be a whole anti-red frenzy I'm unaware of.

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