This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, November 9th, 2015.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The Bolivarian Alliance is a group of countries aiming to provide a counterbalance to American

power, but their methods in retaining power in their own countries run

from suspicious to dictatorial.

Now that the commodities boom has subsided state-owned oil revenues in Venezuela, among

other countries, are in decline.

Fergus Hodgson is editor-in-chief of the Pan Am post we spoke last week.

In Latin America what has the commodities boom given to those countries and what countries are we talking about

in particular Venezuela Ecuador Bolivia they well Cuba doesn't really have anything but they're

basically invested in Venezuela to such

agree that they live off it.

So because in these countries there's a great tradition of and a heightening of the nationalization

of industries, any sort of commodities boom, in this case it's oil and natural gas,

that will flood the national coffers with revenue,

and they will use it to buy votes to increase their power to expand the

police state or the power of the state to engage in all sorts of redistribution programs

and to just make a mess of an economy and that's why many

companies simply won't deal with these nations for example I know someone from Chevron and

they've had this long-term battle legal battle with Ecuador and they of course would never invest in that country again.

All right, so this commodities boom has created a lot of wealth, delivered a lot of wealth to these countries, and this has given rise to what in English

would be the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America.

...