Nationalistic Socialism In Practice

And no, I don't mean Naziism. I mean the anti-internationalist/anti-American/neo-Marxist rhetoric which commonly comes from S. America these days.

This week's example is... Evo Morales in Bolivia. You may remember that Mr. Morales unceremoniously booted foreign companies out of his country last year, because they were exploitative and keeping the poor down and etc. Well... it didn't seem to work so well:

Bolivia is courting foreign energy investors again, less than 15 months after President Evo Morales ordered troops to occupy oil and gas fields as part of his plan to take control of the country's natural resources.

Investment in natural gas exploration and production has plummeted in the wake of Morales's nationalizations and contract revisions, putting at risk his promise to add 20 million cubic meters of gas exports a day to Argentina by 2011, almost triple the current amount. Without new sources of gas, Argentina, Chile and Brazil, Bolivia's biggest gas customer, face a growing prospect of energy shortages and rationing.

``The government is realizing it needs foreign investors, but it wishes it didn't,'' said Carlos Alberto Lopez, a Bolivian oil and gas analyst and former secretary of energy. ``Venezuela has been a big disappointment for them and now they are knocking on everyone's doors,'' he said by phone from Santa Cruz.

Morales's plans to rely on Venezuela's state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA, known as PDVSA, haven't panned out yet. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez pledged in May 2006 more than $1.5 billion of new investment to explore for oil and gas and to build refining facilities and service stations.

You bite the hand of international economics, and it bites back. Hard.