Today, the 2012 Index of Economic Freedom launches. For 17 years, The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal have reported on the status of economic freedom around the world, measuring 184 nations across the globe according to rule of law, limited government, regulatory efficiency, and open markets. Globally, the 2012 Index noted a general decline in economic freedom across the board, with nations throughout the world unsuccessfully trying to “spend their way out of recession.” The United States itself dropped from ninth to 10th, continuing a slide that last …
On June 20, the government of Belize expropriated the 70 percent ownership interest in the Belize Electric Company (BEL) held by the shareholder-owned, Canada-based energy giant Fortis. Belize Electric Company Limited (BECOL), a hydroelectric business that Fortis also owns, has not been expropriated—yet. Fortis has invested more than $400 million in Belize. BEL is insolvent and $27 million in debt. BEL officials blame the insolvency on the government of Prime Minister Dean Barrow, saying they were forced to sell electricity in Belize at rates lower than the cost to acquire …
On May 28, former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya returned home nearly two years after the June 2009 actions that removed him from office for violations of the national constitution. Accompanied by Venezuela’s foreign minister Nicholas Maduro and delivered via Air Hugo Chavez, Zelaya was greeted by thousands of cheering admirers. He returned under a deal struck with current Honduran President Porfirio Lobo on May 22. The agreement was brokered with the assistance of the unlikely combination of democratic Colombia and authoritarian Venezuela, and it enjoys the blessing of U.S. Secretary …
After a major foreign policy speech, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was asked to comment on the drug violence in Mexico. She answered quite frankly: We face an increasing threat from a well-organized network drug trafficking threat that is, in some cases, morphing into or making common cause with what we would consider an insurgency in Mexico and in Central America. The Mexican government quickly challenged the statement. The Secretary’s top diplomat for Latin America, Arturo Valenzuela, also questioned the correctness of the Secretary’s views. He asserted that Mexico in …
The election of Laura Chinchilla of the National Liberation Party on February 7 to the presidency of Costa Rica is an important milestone for Central America. President-elect Chinchilla has become Costa Rica’s first female president and the fifth woman elected president of a Latin America state since 1990. Her election represents a further blunting of the populist Left’s mythical invincibility in the region, and offers a pleasing counterpoise to the likes of anti-American machismo of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. In Panama, Honduras, Chile, and now Costa Rica, leaders of the …
