The global coalition of oil cursed citizens: My minimum minimorum on exiting Iraq!

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

My minimum minimorum on exiting Iraq!

I was never in favor of the invasion of Iraq but, once it occurred, I pleaded for a scheme that would put its oil revenues directly into the pockets of all the Iraqis, and thereby set an example that could help to empower the democracy in all the other countries that are cursed with the centralization of their oil revenues… the mother of all oil curses. Unfortunately, the supposed builders of democracy forgot to bring with them to Iraq such a fundamental building block.

Now, when exiting Iraq, as a minimum minimorum, we should at least aspire that the next Saddam Hussein, whenever he will appear, should not find it easier to be the next Saddam Hussein.

Below, the link to one place where I pleaded

https://www.carnegiecouncil.org/publications/archive/policy_innovations/commentary/000083

Where I come from

I was named Diversification Manager in the Venezuela Investment Fund that was created in 1974 to handle the oil income surpluses of the nation.

I entered the Fund its very first day, and I left a couple of weeks later, the same day my desk arrived, utterly frustrated when the Fund was requested to analyze, and obviously endorse, in just four days, the economic feasibility studies of a 4 billion dollar investment known as the Fourth Plan of SIDOR, the big Venezuelan iron and steel complex.

With an “if something goes wrong with this project the Venezuelans might have the right to hang us in Plaza Bolívar, and I’m much too young for that” I slammed the door on the public sector … for the following 28 years... except for a short two year stint as an Executive Director in the World Bank.

I have lived through two immense oil revenue bonanzas in my country and I am absolutely convinced that when the oil revenues a government receives exceed 5% of the nations GDP, or 15% of its exports, or 25% of all taxes paid by citizens, the balance of power is so fundamentally affected that bad governance and bad citizenship becomes the major malignant symptoms of the oil-curse.

There is not one single word or idea that I hear today from politicians, or from well-intentioned groups of mostly non-oil-cursed professionals as in EITI or the Resource-Charter, and that I have not heard before with respect to making better use of oil revenues.

The only route to go is keeping the oil revenues from the politicians and giving these directly to the citizens in an orderly fashion.

The global coalition of oil cursed citizens

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

My minimum minimorum on exiting Iraq!

Where I come from

Down with the Oiligarchs!

Down with the Petrocrats!

Kings and beggars

In Venezuela

21st Century Asocialism

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