Ebear, I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this latest development.

I think I've pretty much covered it over the last few posts. Zooming out, I'd have to agree with joeking. It's the Economy... nothing else matters at this point because if they don't make a dent in all that bad stuff he mentioned, they're finished. May as well pack up and go home.

My thoughts fall in line with those of Otto - this has some significant underlying political overtones which have yet to be determined. The ONLY thing these guys do that is NOT political is use thebathroom, IMO.

That may be. It may also be that we're reading way too much into it and that it really is just a ship of fools with no one at the helm. Hard to tell from here, so what we need to do is fall back on the fundamentals. Ask ourselves what's really important, and again, I think joeking nailed it. It's the Economy. The rest is just noise.

My thoughts are that Acosta has performed his job well, got an assembly majority, formed a major base around Correa, got full consensus behind the mining draft.

if we look at the constitution efforts to date, much work has been done, but it has been fraught with delays and seems to be mired in the detials. Clearly the timetable was FAR to ambitious (and I'm not casting doubt on the abilities of the Ecuadorians, ANY government would face formidable obstacles with such a time table).

Ambitious is not the word for it. This thing looks like it was designed to fail. Now that's a whole other conspiracy theory for you...LOL!

Seriously though, this is what you get when you put a bunch of academics in a room and hand them a deadline. Failure. It doesn't matter if they're left right or center. It's the lack of real world experience that makes the difference. Most people here understand compromise. The art of the deal. Academics don't get that. They are all about proving something - usually a flawed theory - or simply that they know better because their degree makes them somehow smarter than the rest of us. Marxists are the worst. They talk talk talk about world revolution, but toss 'em an AK and tell 'em to go do it, and they can't even load the clip. Good thing too, or they'd shoot themselves in the foot.

<snipped some other good stuff which we've covered elsewhere>

While my analytical depth on this may be somewhat supefical, I believe that the leadership is most concerned with getting the mining draft pushed through so the public can find work, and so dollars can start to fill the coffers.

Exactly. And don't understimate your skills, or overestimate mine. I have a stake here, which sharpens my focus, but I'm no kind of expert. I have a slight advantage in speaking the language, but the rest of it's as weird to me as to everyone else.

Acosta was usefull up until now (though foreign investors will clearly beg to differ), but as the transition occurs, he is clearly an impediment to a unified front to attrct much-needed foreign investment dollars.

He may yet find his niche. Perhaps as Minister of the Environment <wince> in the next administration? Don't write him off completely. It's a very small pool of talent down there, so these guys tend to get recycled as a matter of necessity.

ebear