This is John Batcher, a conversation with my good colleague Joseph Umar, Executive Director of

Security Society about Bolivia, President Arse and La Paz. There is a forest fire that's choking the residents of La Paz, but that is not what Joseph

refers to when he says a crisis.

He's talking about a financial crisis, building for some time.

Bolivia is critical to understand because it is a project of the left of center governments

that have taken sway over these last years in South America.

Lula de Silva was recently in La Paz to visit with Arse, who's been controversial, but now he's seen as a man who needs a boost by the

other left of center governments. Morales is always a factor here. Evo Morales has been floating around like an angel, an angel of bad

acting ever since he was obliged to flee the country from a corrupt election. Nonetheless, it's in his interest to see

Arsei succeed and his Bolivia succeed. So Joseph very carefully analyzes what can go wrong and why.

Bolivia, the next crisis, question mark,

Joseph O'Mire speaks.

More of this tonight.

But really what's the story in Bolivia is that during the whole time of

Evel Morales they had this kind of this this mirage that the Bolivian government

painted that their economy was a success story.

Their macroeconomic stability was successful.

They looked at, you know, say, look at Venezuela,

had hyper-inflation, Nicaragua had high levels of poverty.

Bolivia was on the up and up because their macroeconomic stability

looked relatively positive.

What they didn't tell, and they were hiding these numbers from the Bolivian people

...