Aventuras economicas de Mister Chavez (acabam saindo caras para Venezuela)

Venezuela tendrá que pagar a Exxon 908 millones de dólares

Reuters
Caracas, 1 de enero de 2012

Las claves

• Fuentes del Gobierno de Venezuela consideraron "favorable" el veredicto.
• Las petroleras Exxon y ConocoPhillips introdujeron arbitrajes contra Venezuela en el 2007 solicitando más de 40.000 millones de dólares en compensación, pero Venezuela dijo que estimaba pagar no más de 2.500 millones de dólares por ambos casos.

El informe

Venezuela enfrenta más de 20 arbitrajes internacionales

Exxon Mobil dijo el domingo que un panel de arbitraje internacional le concedió unos 908 millones de dólares en el litigio que mantiene con Venezuela por la nacionalización de sus activos en el país, cifra inferior a lo solicitado inicialmente por la firma estadounidense.
El veredicto de la Cámara de Comercio Internacional(ICC por su sigla en inglés) fue conocido el sábado y fuentes del Gobierno de Venezuela dijeron a Reuters que lo consideraban “favorable” para el país de la OPEP, pero no hablaron de un monto.
“La decisión de la ICC confirma que (la petrolera estatal) PDVSA tiene una obligación contractual con Exxon Mobil. La decisión de la ICC es por 907,58 millones de dólares”, dijo un portavoz de la empresa mediante un correo electrónico.
Asdrúbal Oliveros, director de Ecoanalítica, comentó en la red social Twitter que “si ese es el monto definitivo, es claro que PDVSA salió ganando” y recordó que todavía están pendientes otro arbitraje conExxon en un tribunal del Banco Mundial y el caso conConocoPhillips, que es de mayor magnitud.
Las petroleras Exxon y ConocoPhillips introdujeron arbitrajes contra Venezuela en el 2007 solicitando más de 40.000 millones de dólares en compensación, pero Venezuela dijo que estimaba pagar no más de 2.500 millones de dólares por ambos casos.
“La valoración de los activos de Exxon en Venezuela estaba en el orden de 4.500 millones de dólares”, agregó Oliveros.
El portavoz de la petrolera estadounidense dijo más tarde el domingo que a la fecha no se conoce una decisión sobre el arbitraje que se sigue ante el Centro Internacional de Arreglo de Disputas Relativas a Inversiones (Ciadi), que depende del Banco Mundial.
“En cuanto al arbitraje en el Ciadi, está previsto entregar los alegatos en febrero”, explicó el ejecutivo de la petrolera.
Exxon operaba la asociación estratégica Cerro Negro para extraer y mejorar crudo extrapesado en la vasta Faja del Orinoco, así como el convenio de exploración a riesgo La Ceiba, que no había iniciado su producción.
Como parte de estos negocios, PDVSA además participa con 50 por ciento de interés en la refinería de Chalmette, en Louisiana, que es operada por Exxon, y tiene acciones en la unidad Merey Sweeney, de la refinería de Sweeney, operada por Conoco.
A diferencia del caso Conoco, la disputa entre Exxon y el Gobierno del presidente Hugo Chávez ha sido muy hostil.
En el 2008, la estadounidense obtuvo una orden cautelar de un juez británico para congelar hasta 12.000 millones de dólares en activos externos de la estatal Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), pero la corte luego desestimó el caso en espera de la resolución arbitral, que cursa en dos tribunales simultáneamente.
El ministro de Energía Rafael Ramírez dijo a Reuters este año que Venezuela esperaba un fallo de la ICC para antes de que culminara el 2011 y puntualizó que el Gobierno pagaría una compensación “justa”.
Dijo también que Venezuela estimaba pagar no más de 2.500 millones por ambos arbitrajes (Exxon y Conoco) y descartó la posibilidad de acordar un arreglo amistoso, aunque Chávez no desestimó esta opción hace algunas semanas cuando fue consultado al respecto en una rueda de prensa.
Las dos firmas estadounidenses se retiraron del país a finales de 2007 tras la ocupación de sus negocios por parte de PDVSA y de personal militar. Los obreros pasaron a la nómina de la estatal, que ahora mantiene la participación mayoritaria en todos los proyectos petroleros del país.

Venezuela enfrenta más de 20 arbitrajes internacionales

Reuters
Caracas, 1 enero 2012

Exxon Mobil dijo el domingo que un panel de arbitraje internacional le concedió unos 908 millones de dólares en la disputa que mantiene con la estatal Petróleos de Venezuela por la nacionalización de sus activos en el país, cifra inferior a lo solicitado inicialmente por la firma estadounidense.
El veredicto de la Cámara de Comercio Internacional (ICC por su sigla en inglés) fue conocido el sábado y fuentes del Gobierno de Venezuela dijeron a Reuters que lo consideraban “favorable” para el país de la OPEP, pero no hablaron de un monto .
Las masivas expropiaciones del presidente venezolano, Hugo Chávez, han desencadenado más de 20 arbitrajes ante diferentes instancias, entre los que destacan, además del caso con Exxon Mobil, otro con la también estadounidense ConocoPhillips.
A continuación una lista de los principales casos contra Venezuela aún pendientes ante el Centro Internacional de Arreglo de Disputas Relativas a Inversiones (Ciadi), que depende del Banco Mundial, sin incluir los que se ventilan en otros tribunales:
* Exxon Mobil: Se introdujo en octubre del 2007, poco después de que el Gobierno tomara los activos de la petrolera, que operaba el proyecto Cerro Negro en la Faja del Orinoco y el convenio de exploración a riesgo La Ceiba en Occidente.
A principios del 2008 Exxon sorprendió al Gobierno venezolano, al acompañar sus peticiones de arbitraje con un recurso de congelación de hasta 12.000 millones de dólares en activos externos de Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), medida que finalmente fue descartada por un tribunal británico.
Aunque Exxon aspiraba a recibir hasta 15.000 millones de dólares, en 2010 la estatal PDVSA informó que la firma había restringido su reclamo a unos 7.000 millones de dólares. Venezuela ofrecía pagar hasta 1.000 millones de dólares.
* ConocoPhillips: Es el arbitraje más oneroso que enfrenta Venezuela, con una aspiración de indemnización de 31.000 millones de dólares por la nacionalización de dos proyectos en el Orinoco y dos convenios de exploración.
En octubre el tribunal recibió una petición de descalificación de uno de los árbitros, pero en un prospecto de deuda, PDVSA dijo hace pocos meses que espera asistir a una audiencia determinante entre el 10 y el 14 de enero, lo que podría conducir a un veredicto este año.
* Cemex y Holcim: Entre 2008 y 2009, luego que la mexicana Cemex y la suiza Holcim no lograran acuerdos con Venezuela, solicitaron arbitrajes ante el Ciadi por la expropiación de la industria cementera.
Sus reclamos involucran unos 2.000 millones de dólares en conjunto. Aunque Holcim y Venezuela dijeron que llegaron a un arreglo amistoso, el caso no ha sido retirado de la Corte.
A inicios de diciembre, Venezuela dijo que pagará 600 millones de dólares a la mexicana Cemex, en un acuerdo de compensación por la nacionalización de su filial local que alcanzan las partes tres años después de que la cementera solicitara arbitraje a un tribunal internacional.
* Gold Reserve y Cristallex: En el 2009 la minera canadiense solicitó arbitraje por la revocatoria de dos proyectos auríferos. Su solicitud de compensación se elevó en agosto a 2.100 millones de dólares.
La canadiense Vanessa Ventures tiene un reclamo similar por un proyecto de más de 1.000 millones de dólares.
En enero las firmas Highbury International y Rammstein Trading introdujeron otro caso relacionado con minería y el último caso minero en ventilarse mediante arbitraje corresponde a la canadiense Crystallex, que solicita 3.800 millones de dólares por el proyecto Las Cristinas.
* Tidewater: Tras esperar por meses a que Venezuela compensara a las 76 empresas de servicios petroleros que expropió en mayo del 2009, la estadounidense Tidewater solicitó arbitraje para recuperar el valor de sus embarcaciones, estimado en unos 45 millones de dólares.
* Universal Compression Internacional Holdings: La firma, adquirida por la estadounidense Exterran, fue otra afectada por las expropiaciones del 2009. Introdujo arbitraje en el 2010 por sus activos, valorados en 400 millones de dólares. Se pidió la descalificación de uno de los árbitros.
* OPIC Karimum: Introducido en el 2010 por una filial de la estatal taiwanesa CPC Corp , que tenía una porción minoritaria en los proyectos petroleros Golfo de Paria Este y Oeste. Se discute una petición de descalificación de árbitro.
* Tenaris: Las siderúrgicas Tenaris y Talsa, controladas por el argentino Techint, solicitaron arbitraje contra Venezuela por la nacionalización en 2009 de una de sus filiales, Matesi.
Un año antes el Gobierno había estatizado la Siderúrgica del Orinoco (Sidor), en donde participaba el grupo argentino, por la que acordó pagar 2.000 millones de dólares.
* Owen Illinois: La fabricante estadounidense de envases de vidrio solicitó arbitraje en septiembre por la expropiación de sus dos plantas en Venezuela el año pasado, que representaban 5 por ciento de sus operaciones mundiales.
Poco antes la estadounidense Koch Industries introdujo un caso similar ante el Ciadi por la toma de Fertinitro, una empresa mixta para la producción de fertilizantes que compartía con la estatal Pequiven y la italiana Snamprogetti.
(Fuentes: reportes de Reuters y página web del Ciadi: www.worldbank.org/icsid)

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Addendum 3 Jan 2012: 

Venezuela to pay Exxon $255m in oil dispute

Continue reading the main story

Business of Energy

• Gas pipeline gets Turkey go ahead
• Break down
• Gas squeeze
• Energy uncovered

Venezuela has said it will pay Exxon Mobil $255m (£164m) in compensation for assets nationalised in 2007 - less than a third of what an arbitration panel awarded the oil giant.

The ruling may be a boost to President Hugo Chavez.

The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) in Paris had ruled that PDVSA, Venezuela's state oil company, was required to compensate the US firm. 

It said PDVSA should pay Exxon $908m.

But PDVSA said that debts owed by Exxon and court action meant the amount it would actually pay would be much less.

Exxon said the ICC award gave the company "$907.6m of real financial benefit in the form of debt relief and cash".

PDVSA said Exxon had previously used international courts to freeze $300m in Venezuela's US accounts, and added that Exxon owed $191m relating to the financing of an oil project in Venezuela, as well as $160m that the arbitration tribunal said was due.

Exxon had reportedly sought $10bn in compensation for the nationalisation of its heavy crude upgrading project in Venezuela's oil rich Orinoco belt.

"After four years of arbitration, the real amount determined by the ICC tribunal indeed represents less than the exorbitant sum initially demanded," PDVSA said in the statement.

The Venezuelan government said in September it had offered Exxon $1bn to settle the case.

Future cases

It is one of many arbitration cases currently under consideration after Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez ordered the nationalisation of the assets of some oil companies including Exxon and Conoco Phillips.

"They must be elated that they got off so cheap. It's certainly a happy new year for Venezuela," said Russ Dallen at Caracas Capital Markets after the ICC announced its ruling.

The decision was made by an arbitration tribunal at the ICC. Under the rules of the arbitration, its decisions are binding.

Exxon will hope for a better result in the next case concerning the nationalisation of its Cerro Negro heavy oil project, which is being heard by a different arbitration panel.

An Exxon spokesman said: "The larger ICSID (International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes) arbitration against the government of Venezuela is ongoing and is expected to be argued in February for the fair market value of the project.

"We recognise Venezuela's legal right to expropriate assets subject to compensation at fair market value."

Much of Venezuela's so far untapped reserves are harder-to-process heavy oil, and the Venezuelan government has been keen to increase state revenues from these reserves.

Analysts have said the country's aggressive nationalisation strategy may have deterred foreign investors and limited oil production.

But despite the moves, which saw Exxon and Conoco Philips leave the country, other oil firms have continued to invest.

In 2010, US firm Chevron and Spain's Repsol signed investment deals to exploit resources in the country's Orinoco belt.

The World in 2012 - Jessica Mathews

Como sempre, uma análise americanocêntrica, mas razoavelmente objetiva sobre a situação no mundo, nos EUA e um pouco em todas as partes.
Ou seja, temos um bocado de incertezas pela frente...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

The World in 2012

How will 2011 be remembered?

Jessica Tuchman Mathews

Carnegie Endownment, December 29, 2011

Without question, 2011 will be remembered for the Arab Awakening, and perhaps—it’s too soon to know for sure—a political awakening in Russia as well.

The one story that could compare to the Arab Awakening is the euro crisis. If the eurozone or the European Union comes apart, the events will be comparable in historical significance to what’s happened in the Middle East. 

The killing of Osama bin Laden and even Japan’s devastating earthquake and tsunami and subsequent nuclear crisis do not rise to the same historic level. The Fukushima accident put a huge question mark over the likelihood of a nuclear renaissance. Global warming may still turn the world toward nuclear energy as a non-carbon-emitting form of electrical power—it’s too early to say. But it was a huge event for Japan and elsewhere with countries as big as Germany choosing to phase out nuclear plants and others slowing down plans for nuclear growth. The latter is probably a good thing, particularly in China and India, as plans envisioned extremely rapid growth. Slower growth will increase the likelihood of safer development. 

2011 turned out to be a huge surprise. Things happened that no one predicted two weeks before they took place. Surprise was the leitmotif of the year and it would be wise for us to expect the unexpected again in 2012. 

What are the major global issues that will define 2012?

2012 should be another historic year. The first thing to look at is the quartet of issues in the Middle East—Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and Iran. 

Elections in Egypt are moving forward; whether the military will give up the power it took on in the wake of Mubarak’s ouster is a huge question mark. The disturbances we have seen in the last several days and weeks are a preview of what could happen after the new parliament is finally elected. The signs are not encouraging. 

Within moments after the end of the war in Iraq and the departure of U.S. troops, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki made astonishing moves against Sunni leaders—on the very heels of the last American troops crossing the border. It’s too soon to say whether Iraq is going to unravel, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the situation gets much worse. 

At this time next year, Bashar al-Assad will be a former president and the present Syrian regime will be gone. But the questions are how it ends, the extent of the violence along the way, and how much life is lost. Will the international community play a constructive role and will the Arab League step up as it did in Libya and prove more effective than it has so far? There are huge consequences for—at the very least—Lebanon, Iran, Israel, and Turkey.

We are entering a particularly dangerous period in Iran. The latest intelligence is that Iran is planning to expand enrichment activities at an underground facility near Qom. Israel is engaged in a debate over whether to attack before such a facility is fully operational. The politics of this for the U.S. administration in an election year are awful. This would be a war that Israel can start but can’t finish. Meanwhile, Republican candidates are trying to outdo each other on bellicosity toward Iran. The United States could be drawn into military action that would cause global oil prices to skyrocket and in all probability lead to an outbreak of Shia terrorism. 

Elsewhere, the euro crisis could tip the world into recession. It is still unclear whether the crisis can be resolved and whether the eurozone will survive.  

There is also the continuing question of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Things in Pakistan are going from worse to horrible. Tensions are on the rise between its powerful military and the civilian government, and it is imaginable that a military coup could end yet another era of civilian rule in 2012. And this is all complicated by the war in Afghanistan, which is not going well. In this decade-long war, the two highest years for NATO casualties are 2010 and 2011. 

At home, given the so-called supercommittee’s failure to agree on ways to reduce the deficit last summer, there is a real concern about the budget cuts that are supposed to follow.  Sweeping, across-the-board cuts in defense spending, rather than cuts shaped to fit the external, strategic environment, could be terribly damaging.  Yet attempts to wriggle out from under the requirement for automatic cuts in 2013 only underline America’s inability to put its fiscal house in order at a time when many other countries are tackling vastly more difficult problems. The picture of our fractured, gridlocked politics is having a major impact abroad on other countries’ perceptions of U.S. influence and power—and, of course, on the desirability of the U.S. example. This is costly in ways that are hard to pinpoint or quantify but undeniable in impact. 

And finally, what will happen in Russia’s upcoming presidential election is now uncertain. The recent parliamentary elections suggest that the new middle class and younger generations in Russia are going to stand up and say “enough.”  In street protests through December, opponents are saying “we want a voice in governance, we insist on being taken seriously, and we don’t want another twelve years of Vladimir Putin.” The old social contract between state and society may no longer be acceptable to a large percentage of the population. If this happens, we don’t know how Putin will respond, and I’m sure he doesn’t either. A dramatic weakening of Putin’s legitimacy, even if he is reelected, can’t help but have major impacts for Russia’s foreign policy. 

All of this just scratches the surface of what 2012 will hold for the world. 

Will the Arab Awakening continue?

Yes, it will. The year 2012 will be a bumpy year, but this is not unexpected. The Arab Spring was a misnomer. It is not a season, or even a yearlong process of change. Rather, 2011 was the beginning of a decade or multi-decade period of profound transformation in the Arab world. 

People must think of the Arab Awakening in these terms and not believe that one election in one country is the defining moment from which there is no turning back. All of the hysteria over Islamists coming to power in Egypt is one example of this type of thinking. In fact, democracy will likely be a moderating influence on Islamists over time because governing is so much more demanding than is opposition. The first elections are not the end of the road, but only the beginning. 

The year ahead will be a difficult time for the new governments, however, as they will face huge challenges in delivering economic progress. People across the region are demanding economic gains, but it is difficult in the current context to see how governments can deliver. 

Does the euro crisis threaten global economic growth in 2012? Is the end of the euro near?

It is too often forgotten that the European Union is a larger economic entity than the United States. What happens in Europe has enormous implications for the global economy, but the size of the impact will be determined by how the eurozone changes and whether it suddenly implodes or finds a way to incrementally move toward survival. 

Europe seems committed to saving the euro. The problem is that taking the steps necessary to do so requires an enormous degree of political will by each individual government. In order to get political approval at home, leaders need to wait until the economies are teetering on the brink. At every stage, the political process can only be pushed one step ahead when there is no choice but to act. This process keeps repeating itself. 

The problem with this is that it means that the cost of saving the euro keeps going up. Europeans can’t get ahead of the markets. If leaders had been able to do eight months ago what they did in December, it would have been enough to gain the markets’ confidence and stop the downward spiral. But it wasn’t possible politically. Having the global economy’s toes over the edge of the abyss is not a comfortable way to go forward. 

Unfortunately, it’s hard to see any alternative. The terrible connection between politics and economics will continue as the necessary economic steps are impossible to sell at home if the economy isn’t on the brink. 

So far, there has been a strong determination to preserve the euro, but one wonders when exhaustion will set in. Moreover, the markets won’t let this dance continue forever. For better or worse, the situation will be resolved in the next year. The recovery, however, will take many years. 

How will the U.S. presidential election shape America’s foreign policy?

There are three areas where politics will most obviously impinge on policy. The first is China. The United States has a long history in which the party out of power—whether Democratic or Republican—hammers the party in power for being too nice to China. 

This year will be no exception. China will undergo a leadership transition of its own. There will be an election in Taiwan, and if the current government there, which has favored rapprochement with Beijing, is replaced, there is a chance that tensions could rapidly rise across the Taiwan Strait, destabilizing the region. Regardless of how this plays out, the U.S. administration will hear loud demands to be tough on China in ways it wouldn’t otherwise do. Indeed, President Obama’s recent talk of the U.S. “pivot” toward Asia is likely a preemptive move against just such attacks. 

The next issue is Israel. President Obama will be under a great deal of pressure to prove that he loves Israel as much as the Republicans, at the same time that Israel’s current government is, to be polite, not exactly a constructive force for peace. With the building of settlements continuing and the constant drumbeat in Israel to take action against Iran, this issue could pose a major challenge to the American administration. 

The third area that could be a major focus of the campaign is a contest to see who can sound the toughest on Iran. The truth is that the world may ultimately need to live with an Iran that has the capability to make nuclear weapons—a so-called “screwdriver’s turn away.” If the Iranians are smart, this will be their goal. 

The biggest threat from an Iranian nuclear weapon is not that Iran’s rulers are lunatics who will start a nuclear war, but that it will set off a nuclear arms race in one of the most dangerous regions in the world and where governments have the money to pay for it. 

It is enormously important that the United States does all that it can to prevent this from happening. The Obama administration has tried hard without success. The president’s outstretched hand was spurned by Tehran. However, sanctions are having an effect and diplomacy to get Russia and China to cooperate in this respect is plodding ahead. We can’t forget, however, that if the Assad regime falls in Syria, Iran will lose its most important ally. Governments that are weakened abroad often make moves at home to prove their mettle and distract their people from the loss. 

Will China’s leadership transition affect its global outlook? What does it mean for the balance of power in Asia?

While this is a generational change of leadership in China, we are most likely to see continuity of policy. But there are still many questions about China even under its current leaders. 

Particularly, there is uncertainty over how aggressive and nationalistic China will be in asserting its territorial claims, most notably in the South China Sea. China took aggressive steps in 2010 but seemed to recognize the lack of wisdom in those actions and backed off significantly this year. Beijing will also have to manage the leadership transition in North Korea, which is always a time when that insecure, dangerous country is most difficult to deal with. 

At the same time, China faces economic questions of its own. Beijing will need to boost household spending, but this poses all kinds of strains at home for a new generation of leaders. While China will wrestle with the resulting problems and economic growth will slow significantly, I don’t see this as likely to become a crisis. 

What does the U.S. exit mean for Iraq and the region? How does the end of the Iraq war influence American power in the Middle East?

When an authoritarian leader is removed—whether by revolution or external force—a power vacuum is left behind. It is nearly always filled by factions fighting over the distribution of power, and I’ve previously warned that the presence of the American occupation in Iraq delayed this struggle but was unlikely to ultimately prevent it from occurring. 

The end of the nine-year war in Iraq gives the United States the chance to leave some of the responsibility behind. But what this means in concrete terms depends entirely on what happens in Iraqi politics. If sectarian strife rises, there will be an entirely new set of problems on everyone’s hands, particularly if Iranian influence grows. 

The Iraqi government needs to stay committed to the agreed-upon distribution of power between Shia, Sunnis, and Kurds. If it does, there is hope. It is too early to say how this will play out, but one has to say that al-Maliki’s choosing to accuse his vice president of treason within hours of the U.S. departure is anything but encouraging. 

How will the international community address growing fears about Iran’s nuclear ambitions?

Intelligence suggests that the Iranians are planning to expand enrichment cascades in an underground facility near Qom. The United States has apparently told Tehran that this is a redline that shouldn’t be crossed. 

The Israelis are seemingly champing at the bit, saying that this is an existential and unacceptable threat and that they will need to act before the facility is up and running. If Israel acts first alone, the United States will undoubtedly be sucked in and share all of the blame with Israel, but enjoy none of the positive political boost at home that it would have had if it had taken the lead. 

The worry is that politics will nudge the U.S. administration into taking a catastrophic action. The first thing that would happen would be a huge increase in oil prices. With a fragile global economy this could be terrible. There would also be Shia terrorism, as Iran has been preparing for this scenario to play out for years and will activate terrorist cells. In the end, I believe the United States would deeply regret a military escalation. 

What does 2012 hold for the war in Afghanistan and stability in Pakistan?

The U.S. military says that it is winning the war in Afghanistan, but I don’t see any signs of this—quite the opposite actually. There is an enormous mountain to climb to meet the withdrawal deadline in 2014 and leave behind a stable country not under the thumb of the Taliban. 

The defining issue in Afghanistan is the U.S. withdrawal date. On the one hand, it’s easy to say that it was unwise to set a date, but on the other hand, there is the impatience of the American public to put an end to this very long conflict and a legitimate question of whether another ten or twenty years of fighting in that country could really make things better. 

Nonetheless, the deadline is looming. There are few indications that NATO and Afghanistan can build security forces capable of keeping the country whole and protected from a Taliban resurgence. The government, weak and rife with corruption, and Afghan forces will require much more funding than Afghanistan itself can afford. This makes them a ward of the international community for the indefinite future—no one has focused on this reality yet but obviously it isn’t a healthy outcome. 

At the same time, the situation in Pakistan is only getting worse and the country is high on the list of worries for 2012. There are indications that there is a renewed move against the civilian leaders by the military. Every civilian government in Pakistan’s history has been deposed through military action and the country’s economy is in a horrible state. 

The U.S.-Pakistan relationship is at a particularly low ebb. Washington will need to rethink its relationship with Islamabad. Up until now, the way the United States has spent its money in Pakistan has unintentionally encouraged Pakistan to overspend on the military and allowed it to be obsessed with India in a self-destructive manner. The United States has always shaped its policies toward Pakistan with another larger goal in mind—in this case, Afghanistan. With very few options that look promising, Washington needs to find a way to more constructively affect the course of events. 

How significant is Kim Jong Il’s death in North Korea?

Since Kim Jong Il’s death there has been much silly punditry spinning worst-case scenarios about what comes next in North Korea. This is neither a moment of crisis nor a great opportunity to reunite the two Koreas. 

The most likely outcome is that there will be a long period of mourning followed by an uneasy period of transition when Kim Jong Eun tries to consolidate power. The legitimate worry is that the new leaders will try to prove their toughness by conducting missile tests or otherwise provocative behavior. Ultimately, I believe, the third generation of Kims will rule, but this will probably be the last generation of this dynasty. 

Is 2012 another lost year in the global fight against climate change?

Yes, I think so. Very little will happen this year. The United States is the problem, and with the presidential election in November there will not be movement in Congress. China is more ready to act, but it has a bigger challenge. India will wait for the United States and China. And Russia, a major, underappreciated contributor to carbon emissions, is far from being ready to take positive action. 

The science is terrifying. We need fast global action in the next five years if the planet is to stay at a safe temperature. There is no reason to be optimistic that major action will begin on the needed scale without a major climate disturbance to propel countries to act. 

We are in a waiting game given climate denial in the United States. I don’t believe this denial actually has anything to do with doubts about the science. It is ideological and economic: people know that it will take major government action and leadership to deal with climate and that the present winners and losers in the economy will be different. 

The United States needs to act for there to be global progress, and in the end we will have to price carbon. As soon as carbon is priced, change will follow. We will eventually take action, but the questions are how long it will take, how much it will cost, and how much irreversible damage will be done to the planet. One thing is certain: the longer we wait the more painful it will be. 

Governantes irresponsaveis deveriam ser processados por crime contra o patrimonio publico

O dia em que políticos irresponsáveis forem processados criminalmente por obras mal planejadas, mal conduzidas e, sobretudo, totalmente sem projetos sérios, vai terminar essa mania brasileira de começar obras sem qualquer administração séria.
Esse crime de Lula, contra o patrimônio de toda a nação, deveria ser levados ao tribunais, sob a Lei de Responsabilidade Fiscal. O dia em que um presidente, um governador, um prefeito, forem levados às barras dos tribunais e às barras da cadeia, por obras irresponsáveis como essa, teremos menos desperdício dos recursos públicos, menos gastos criminosos, e maior eficácia no uso do dinheiro do cidadão.
Lula deveria ser processado por isso, e com ele metade do seu governo.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

Transposição cada vez mais cara

O Estado de S.Paulo, 01 de janeiro de 2012

Decidida e iniciada às pressas por interesse político-eleitoral, sem que houvesse estudos que dirimissem dúvidas quanto à sua viabilidade econômica nem projetos executivos para assegurar a boa execução dos trabalhos, a transposição do Rio São Francisco está ficando cada vez mais cara para os contribuintes e ainda não se sabe quanto, afinal, custará nem quando estará concluída. Responsável no governo pelo projeto, o ministro da Integração Nacional, Fernando Bezerra, agora anuncia que, mesmo depois de licitadas todas as obras necessárias e assinados os respectivos contratos, nova licitação terá de ser feita, ao preço de pelo menos R$ 1,2 bilhão, para recuperação do que se deteriorou e execução do que deveria ter sido feito, mas não foi.

O custo de R$ 5 bilhões, anunciado quando as obras foram iniciadas, em 2007, vem sendo revisto desde então. Se as novas obras a serem contratadas ficarem no valor previsto pelo governo, o total alcançará R$ 6,9 bilhões. Mas ainda não se sabe quanto mais será gasto com a nova licitação. "Só vamos ter certeza do valor quando concluirmos o processo licitatório e fecharmos o contrato", disse o ministro ao Estado. Isso ainda levará algum tempo, pois o ministro pretende lançar a licitação em março.

Certamente, quando o contrato for fechado, o ministro e todos os brasileiros saberão quanto mais custará esse projeto eleitoreiro idealizado pelo ex-presidente Lula e que sua sucessora Dilma Rousseff se comprometeu a concluir. Mas nem depois de fechados os novos contratos se terá certeza de que não haverá outros custos adicionais.

A transposição do São Francisco é uma amostra exemplar do padrão de gestão petista. Decisões são tomadas não com base em cálculos econômico-financeiros ou estudos sobre a importância e a urgência do projeto para a região e para o País, mas tendo em conta os interesses do PT e de seus aliados de ocasião.

Em obras essenciais, projetos são mal elaborados - às vezes nem existem projetos executivos -, o que abre espaço para renegociações de preços, que o Tribunal de Contas da União (TCU) vem acompanhando com atenção, tendo vetado várias delas, e para a execução de serviços em condições inadequadas, e que por isso precisam ser refeitos, com custos adicionais para o contribuinte.

No início de dezembro, a reportagem do Estado percorreu trechos das obras da transposição em Pernambuco e constatou a existência de estruturas de concreto estouradas, vergalhões de aço abandonados e enferrujados, paredes de contenção rachadas e canteiros de obras fantasmas. Muito do que havia sido executado estava se perdendo, por falta de continuidade das obras - outra característica do governo petista, que, por deficiência administrativa, não tem conseguido assegurar o ritmo normal de execução de vários projetos. Na ocasião, o ministro disse que a recuperação não implicaria custos adicionais para o governo.

Agora, reconhece que haverá novas licitações. "Não diria que foi erro de projeto, mas o projeto básico não estava detalhado e foi incapaz de identificar as situações de campo", disse, ao tentar justificar a paralisação dos trabalhos em diversos setores, a revisão de contratos e a realização de nova licitação. É uma confissão de que não havia projetos adequados para uma obra das dimensões da transposição.

Para o objetivo político-eleitoral a que se destinava, a obra já cumpriu seu papel, pois o projeto de transposição foi um dos maiores responsáveis pela esmagadora vitória que a então candidata do PT obteve nos municípios que serão diretamente beneficiados - e, por dever de gratidão eleitoral, ela assumiu o compromisso de concluir a obra.

Tendo chegado ao estágio que chegou, é importante que a obra seja concluída, no menor prazo e ao menor custo possíveis. Mesmo usada como peça de propaganda eleitoral, a obra está muito atrasada. O ex-presidente Lula queria inaugurar o Eixo Leste em seu mandato, mas faltam 30% das obras. A nova previsão é a inauguração no fim do mandato da presidente Dilma Rousseff. O Eixo Norte tem menos de metade das obras pronta e não estará concluído antes de dezembro de 2015.

Voce confia no governo? Nao deveria... (mas se aplica a todos...)

The Year Governments Lost Their Credibility

Floyd Norris. 

The New York Times, December 30, 2011

For most of 2011, it appeared that the year would be decent, if not particularly interesting, for investors.

Then Europe announced its second plan to rescue Greece, the first one, reached more than a year earlier, having turned out to be completely inadequate. That’s when 2011 became exciting and the losses began to pile up.

The summit meeting of European leaders on July 21 in Brussels called for private investors to take losses of 21 percent on some Greek bonds, but for a rescue package to keep losses from being worse. At first markets reacted with enthusiasm, but that deal did not last long enough to even write out the details.

The European leaders had drastically underestimated the problem and misunderstood the risk that fears of default would spread to other countries.

Within weeks, it became clear that 2011 would be remembered as the year that governments lost their credibility. Markets, which had always assumed that major Western governments would honor their obligations, struggled to learn to adjust to a new world where that was not so certain.

At the same time Europe was failing to come to grips with its problems, President Obama was in negotiations with Congressional Republicans over a possible deal to raise the debt ceiling and avoid an American default. In the end, there was no default, but the fact that some politicians seemed to think one was a good idea was unsettling to investors. In August, Standard & Poor’s cut the country’s credit rating from AAA to AA-plus.

Oddly, the downgrade of the United States seemed to help its financial markets. Whatever a rating agency might think, the United States seemed to be a bastion of safety and relative certainty. Treasury bond prices rose and yields fell. And the American stock market, while it became extremely volatile, more than held its own. Depending on what index is used, American stocks rose a little or fell a little during the year, although they ended lower than they had been when the European leaders announced their Brussels agreement. The MSCI index for the United States ended with a 2 percent rise.

Late in the year, Europe tried again to find a way out of its financial morass, and may have done a better job. The European Central Bank offered unlimited three-year loans to European banks, which seemed to be willing to take the money — at a 1 percent interest rate — and buy government securities that will mature before the central bank’s loan must be repaid. In the final week of the year, Italian debt auctions produced rates of 3.2 percent on six-month bills, but more than double that for 10-year-bonds. European share prices seemed to stabilize.

The accompanying charts document the trend in share prices for the world and for 12 stock markets, using MSCI indexes to assure comparability, and document how the investment world changed as it became clear that the July 21 Brussels accord had accomplished little. The indexes include reinvested dividends, and are all calculated in dollars. The countries shown are six nations in the euro zone, the area most directly affected by the European deliberations, and six other major markets around the world.

A Rescue That Soured

The year was well on its way to being a decent one for stocks in most countries until July 21 — when European leaders reached agreement on a Greek rescue package that included “voluntary” haircuts for private investors in Greek government bonds. At first, the agreement was well received by markets, but as it became clear that the deal would not hold, stock markets became weaker and much more volatile. Related Article »

On July 22, the day after the Brussels accord, the MSCI world index — which includes markets in all developed economies but not in emerging markets like China — was up 7.1 percent since the end of 2010. Even poor Greece had a stock market that was almost even for the year, thanks to a 7.5 percent rise on that day.

As the year neared an end, the Greek market was down more than 60 percent. From its 2007 high, the market has lost 92 percent of its value. From top to bottom during the Great Depression, the Dow Jones industrial average fell just 89 percent.

The pain was also intense in other European countries. In all of the other five euro zone countries shown — Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Portugal — prices declined significantly after that July meeting. Germany, the dominant economy in Europe, and the one that did the most to keep the bailout packages from growing too large, suffered the most. Italy, down 19.5 percent after the meeting, did the best.

Outside the euro zone, the loss of confidence also echoed. India’s stock market lost nearly a third of its value after the summit meeting, and China’s fell by nearly 20 percent. The losses in the United States, Britain and Japan were smaller.

The rise in volatility was even more impressive. The charts show the proportion of trading days in each market in which prices either rose or fell at least 2 percent during the day. For the world as a whole, the proportion went from 1 percent in the months before the summit meeting to more than a quarter of the days after that. In Germany, about one day in two exceeded that threshold after the meeting.

When the euro was created in 1999, Europeans voiced hope that a common currency would help the Continent reassert its economic influence in the world. In 2011 that happened, although not in the way the creators of the euro had envisioned.

Floyd Norris comments on finance and the economy at nytimes.com/economix.

Educacao na Finlandia: um modelo universal? - The Atlantic

Provavelmente não. Difícil emular um país pequeno, relativamente homogêneo, com forte identidade nacional, desprovido de maiores recursos, à parte os naturais (que ele sempre explorou) e seus recursos humanos, notoriamente excelentes.
Mas, sempre surge a pergunta do ovo e da galinha: a Finlândia é o sucesso que é depois que construiu penosamente seu sistema de educação de qualidade, e por isso ficou rica, ou ficou rica primeiro e por isso pode financiar um sistema totalmente estatal e de primeiríssima qualidade no setor educacional?
O que veio antes?
Provavelmente é um processo complexo, que atuou interativamente, um elemento (a educação) reforçando os outros - a qualidade de vida, o desempenho produtivo, a excelência nos produtos que oferece ao mundo -- sem que seja possível separar um dos elementos constitutivos para fazê-lo funcionar como alavanca em outros processos nacionais de modernização social, econômica ou tecnológica.
Os fatores culturais são sem dúvida predominantes, mas também os desafios que o país sempre enfrentou, com o gigante russo ali ao lado querendo dominar um povo orgulhoso de sua cultura e desejoso de preservar sua independência e personalidade nacional. A identidade cultural deve ter funcionado, mas aqui cabe referir-se ao papel de elites esclarecidas, que souberam levar o país à essa situação de bem-estar material (primeiros lugares no IDH) e de excelência educacional absoluta.
Algo semelhante ocorre na China, independentemente do caráter autoritário de seu regime político atualmente (mas esse é um parênteses em sua longa história, que aliás sempre foi autoritária). A China era a nação, a sociedade, o Estado mais avançados do mundo, durante vários séculos. Depois, por idiotice de seus dirigentes -- um ou dois imperadores incompetentes fazem o desastre -- começou uma longa fase de decadência, acrescida da dominação e da humilhação estrangeiras (europeia, americana, japonesa). A China foi, possivelmente, o país que mais sofreu ao longo do século XX, como dezenas de milhões de mortos (tanto pelas invasões e guerras estrangeiras, quanto pelo delírio econômico e político do totalitarismo maoista). Agora a China renasce, e como a Finlândia, começa a se situar nos primeiros lugares em matéria de excelência educacional.
Vale a pena ler esta matéria da Atlantic Review, sobre a educação finlandesa, e seus possíveis ensinamentos para os Estados Unidos. Provavelmente não servem para os EUA, e para Brasil, tampouco, a não ser pelo lado elementar: professores bem formados, bem pagos, trabalhando em regime de constante avaliação dos pares, o que também ocorre na China.
Um elemento distingue de início: em países muito grandes, diversificados, regionalmente e socialmente muito diversos como esses dois gigantes continentais, seria impossível ter um único sistema estatal eficiente, e de toda forma, nem EUA, nem o Brasil vão abandonar (pois seria impossível) a combinação de estatal e privado na oferta educacional. Mesmo se os EUA não são um modelo de educação universal, seu sistema descentralizado funciona muito melhor do que o sistema relativamente centralizado e estatizado do Brasil (para a educação fundamental e média). Eles são mais democráticos e abertos do que o Brasil, mas isso tem a ver com fortes elementos culturais, também.
Uma coisa é certa: o Brasil está fazendo tudo errado em matéria educacional e está muito longe de corrigir as bobagens que faz, pois sequer tomou consciência dessas bobagens...
Ou seja, vai demorar para consertar por aqui...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida 
PS.: Alias, a Finlândia NÃO é um país escandinavo, mas isso os americanos não devem saber, pois eles continuam meio ruinzinhos em geografia...

What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success 

NATIONAL : THE ATLANTIC | 29 DE DEZEMBRO DE 2011

http://pulse.me/s/4t26A 

The Scandinavian country is an education superpower because it values equality more than excellence.

Sergey Ivanov/Flickr

Everyone agrees the United States needs to improve its education system dramatically, but how? One of the hottest trends in education reform lately is looking at the stunning success of the West's reigning education superpower, Finland. Trouble is, when it comes to the lessons that Finnish schools have to offer, most of the discussion seems to be missing the point.
The small Nordic country of Finland used to be known -- if it was known for anything at all -- as the home of Nokia, the mobile phone giant. But lately Finland has been attracting attention on global surveys of quality of life -- Newsweek ranked it number one last year -- and Finland's national education system has been receiving particular praise, because in recent years Finnish students have been turning in some of the highest test scores in the world.
Finland's schools owe their newfound fame primarily to one study: the PISA survey, conducted every three years by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The survey compares 15-year-olds in different countries in reading, math, and science. Finland has ranked at or near the top in all three competencies on every survey since 2000, neck and neck with superachievers such as South Korea and Singapore. In the most recent survey in 2009 Finland slipped slightly, with students in Shanghai, China, taking the best scores, but the Finns are still near the very top. Throughout the same period, the PISA performance of the United States has been middling, at best.
Compared with the stereotype of the East Asian model -- long hours of exhaustive cramming and rote memorization -- Finland's success is especially intriguing because Finnish schools assign less homework and engage children in more creative play. All this has led to a continuous stream of foreign delegations making the pilgrimage to Finland to visit schools and talk with the nation's education experts, and constant coverage in the worldwide media marveling at the Finnish miracle.
So there was considerable interest in a recent visit to the U.S. by one of the leading Finnish authorities on education reform, Pasi Sahlberg, director of the Finnish Ministry of Education's Center for International Mobility and author of the new book Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland? Earlier this month, Sahlberg stopped by the Dwight School in New York City to speak with educators and students, and his visit received national media attention and generated much discussion.
And yet it wasn't clear that Sahlberg's message was actually getting through. As Sahlberg put it to me later, there are certain things nobody in America really wants to talk about.

* * *

During the afternoon that Sahlberg spent at the Dwight School, a photographer from the New York Timesjockeyed for position with Dan Rather's TV crew as Sahlberg participated in a roundtable chat with students. The subsequent article in the Times about the event would focus on Finland as an "intriguing school-reform model."
Yet one of the most significant things Sahlberg said passed practically unnoticed. "Oh," he mentioned at one point, "and there are no private schools in Finland."
This notion may seem difficult for an American to digest, but it's true. Only a small number of independent schools exist in Finland, and even they are all publicly financed. None is allowed to charge tuition fees. There are no private universities, either. This means that practically every person in Finland attends public school, whether for pre-K or a Ph.D.
The irony of Sahlberg's making this comment during a talk at the Dwight School seemed obvious. Like many of America's best schools, Dwight is a private institution that costs high-school students upward of $35,000 a year to attend -- not to mention that Dwight, in particular, is run for profit, an increasing trend in the U.S. Yet no one in the room commented on Sahlberg's statement. I found this surprising. Sahlberg himself did not.
Sahlberg knows what Americans like to talk about when it comes to education, because he's become their go-to guy in Finland. The son of two teachers, he grew up in a Finnish school. He taught mathematics and physics in a junior high school in Helsinki, worked his way through a variety of positions in the Finnish Ministry of Education, and spent years as an education expert at the OECD, the World Bank, and other international organizations.
Now, in addition to his other duties, Sahlberg hosts about a hundred visits a year by foreign educators, including many Americans, who want to know the secret of Finland's success. Sahlberg's new book is partly an attempt to help answer the questions he always gets asked.
From his point of view, Americans are consistently obsessed with certain questions: How can you keep track of students' performance if you don't test them constantly? How can you improve teaching if you have no accountability for bad teachers or merit pay for good teachers? How do you foster competition and engage the private sector? How do you provide school choice?
The answers Finland provides seem to run counter to just about everything America's school reformers are trying to do.
For starters, Finland has no standardized tests. The only exception is what's called the National Matriculation Exam, which everyone takes at the end of a voluntary upper-secondary school, roughly the equivalent of American high school.
Instead, the public school system's teachers are trained to assess children in classrooms using independent tests they create themselves. All children receive a report card at the end of each semester, but these reports are based on individualized grading by each teacher. Periodically, the Ministry of Education tracks national progress by testing a few sample groups across a range of different schools.
As for accountability of teachers and administrators, Sahlberg shrugs. "There's no word for accountability in Finnish," he later told an audience at the Teachers College of Columbia University. "Accountability is something that is left when responsibility has been subtracted."
For Sahlberg what matters is that in Finland all teachers and administrators are given prestige, decent pay, and a lot of responsibility. A master's degree is required to enter the profession, and teacher training programs are among the most selective professional schools in the country. If a teacher is bad, it is the principal's responsibility to notice and deal with it.
And while Americans love to talk about competition, Sahlberg points out that nothing makes Finns more uncomfortable. In his book Sahlberg quotes a line from Finnish writer named Samuli Puronen: "Real winners do not compete." It's hard to think of a more un-American idea, but when it comes to education, Finland's success shows that the Finnish attitude might have merits. There are no lists of best schools or teachers in Finland. The main driver of education policy is not competition between teachers and between schools, but cooperation.
Finally, in Finland, school choice is noticeably not a priority, nor is engaging the private sector at all. Which brings us back to the silence after Sahlberg's comment at the Dwight School that schools like Dwight don't exist in Finland.
"Here in America," Sahlberg said at the Teachers College, "parents can choose to take their kids to private schools. It's the same idea of a marketplace that applies to, say, shops. Schools are a shop and parents can buy what ever they want. In Finland parents can also choose. But the options are all the same."
Herein lay the real shocker. As Sahlberg continued, his core message emerged, whether or not anyone in his American audience heard it.
Decades ago, when the Finnish school system was badly in need of reform, the goal of the program that Finland instituted, resulting in so much success today, was never excellence. It was equity.

* * *

Since the 1980s, the main driver of Finnish education policy has been the idea that every child should have exactly the same opportunity to learn, regardless of family background, income, or geographic location. Education has been seen first and foremost not as a way to produce star performers, but as an instrument to even out social inequality.
In the Finnish view, as Sahlberg describes it, this means that schools should be healthy, safe environments for children. This starts with the basics. Finland offers all pupils free school meals, easy access to health care, psychological counseling, and individualized student guidance.
In fact, since academic excellence wasn't a particular priority on the Finnish to-do list, when Finland's students scored so high on the first PISA survey in 2001, many Finns thought the results must be a mistake. But subsequent PISA tests confirmed that Finland -- unlike, say, very similar countries such as Norway -- was producing academic excellence through its particular policy focus on equity.
That this point is almost always ignored or brushed aside in the U.S. seems especially poignant at the moment, after the financial crisis and Occupy Wall Street movement have brought the problems of inequality in America into such sharp focus. The chasm between those who can afford $35,000 in tuition per child per year -- or even just the price of a house in a good public school district -- and the other "99 percent" is painfully plain to see.

* * *

Pasi Sahlberg goes out of his way to emphasize that his book Finnish Lessons is not meant as a how-to guide for fixing the education systems of other countries. All countries are different, and as many Americans point out, Finland is a small nation with a much more homogeneous population than the United States. 
Yet Sahlberg doesn't think that questions of size or homogeneity should give Americans reason to dismiss the Finnish example. Finland is a relatively homogeneous country -- as of 2010, just 4.6 percent of Finnish residents had been born in another country, compared with 12.7 percent in the United States. But the number of foreign-born residents in Finland doubled during the decade leading up to 2010, and the country didn't lose its edge in education. Immigrants tended to concentrate in certain areas, causing some schools to become much more mixed than others, yet there has not been much change in the remarkable lack of variation between Finnish schools in the PISA surveys across the same period.
Samuel Abrams, a visiting scholar at Columbia University's Teachers College, has addressed the effects of size and homogeneity on a nation's education performance by comparing Finland with another Nordic country: Norway. Like Finland, Norway is small and not especially diverse overall, but unlike Finland it has taken an approach to education that is more American than Finnish. The result? Mediocre performance in the PISA survey. Educational policy, Abrams suggests, is probably more important to the success of a country's school system than the nation's size or ethnic makeup.
Indeed, Finland's population of 5.4 million can be compared to many an American state -- after all, most American education is managed at the state level. According to the Migration Policy Institute, a research organization in Washington, there were 18 states in the U.S. in 2010 with an identical or significantly smaller percentage of foreign-born residents than Finland.
What's more, despite their many differences, Finland and the U.S. have an educational goal in common. When Finnish policymakers decided to reform the country's education system in the 1970s, they did so because they realized that to be competitive, Finland couldn't rely on manufacturing or its scant natural resources and instead had to invest in a knowledge-based economy. 
With America's manufacturing industries now in decline, the goal of educational policy in the U.S. -- as articulated by most everyone from President Obama on down -- is to preserve American competitiveness by doing the same thing. Finland's experience suggests that to win at that game, a country has to prepare not just some of its population well, but all of its population well, for the new economy. To possess some of the best schools in the world might still not be good enough if there are children being left behind.
Is that an impossible goal? Sahlberg says that while his book isn't meant to be a how-to manual, it is meant to be a "pamphlet of hope."
"When President Kennedy was making his appeal for advancing American science and technology by putting a man on the moon by the end of the 1960's, many said it couldn't be done," Sahlberg said during his visit to New York. "But he had a dream. Just like Martin Luther King a few years later had a dream. Those dreams came true. Finland's dream was that we want to have a good public education for every child regardless of where they go to school or what kind of families they come from, and many even in Finland said it couldn't be done."
Clearly, many were wrong. It is possible to create equality. And perhaps even more important -- as a challenge to the American way of thinking about education reform -- Finland's experience shows that it is possible to achieve excellence by focusing not on competition, but on cooperation, and not on choice, but on equity.
The problem facing education in America isn't the ethnic diversity of the population but the economic inequality of society, and this is precisely the problem that Finnish education reform addressed. More equity at home might just be what America needs to be more competitive abroad.