Hugo Chavez Is Dead

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has died after a two-year battle with cancer, ending the socialist leader's 14-year rule of the South American country, Vice President Nicolas Maduro said in a televised speech on Tuesday.

The flamboyant 58-year-old leader had undergone four operations in Cuba for a cancer that was first detected in his pelvic region in mid-2011. His last surgery was on December 11 and he had not been seen in public since.

"It's a moment of deep pain," Maduro, accompanied by senior ministers, said, his voice choking.

Chavez easily won a new six-year term at an election in October and his death will devastate millions of supporters who adored his charismatic style, anti-U.S. rhetoric and oil-financed policies that brought subsidized food and free health clinics to long-neglected slums.

Detractors, however, saw his one-man style, gleeful nationalizations and often harsh treatment of opponents as traits of an egotistical dictator whose misplaced statist economics wasted a historic bonanza of oil revenues.

Chavez's death opens the way for a new election that will test whether his socialist "revolution" can live on without his dominant personality at the helm...

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - We're In the Money - Trickle Down

The central banks have created a new era of permanent prosperity.

All you have to do is believe. And everyone can be rich. Your turn will be coming soon.

One might feel better about the corporate profits and new highs in stocks, and the abundance of bank reserves, most of which is driven by policy and the Fed, if it was not such a transparent attempt to once again approach severe economic problems by using a 'trickle down' approach.

This is going to fail, and the consequences may be quite severe.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - New High On Dow Industrials - Blue Skies

Hair of the dog.

No worries mate.

You can stick a fork in Europe, China may be in a bubble, your neighbors may all be unemployed, but Ben has your back.

 

Chalmers Johnson: End of Empire, Signs of Decay

"History teaches us that the capacity of things to get worse is limitless. Roman history suggests that the short, happy life of the American republic may be coming to its end... [the US will probably] maintain a facade of constitutional government and drift along until financial bankruptcy overtakes it.

Of course, bankruptcy will not mean the literal end of the United States any more than it did for Germany in 1923, China in 1948, or Argentina in 2002-03.

It might, in fact, open the way for an unexpected restoration of the American system, or for military rule or simply for some development we cannot yet imagine. Certainly, such a bankruptcy would mean a drastic lowering of our standard of living, a loss of control over international affairs, a process of adjusting to the rise of other powers, including China and India..."

Chalmers Johnson, Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, 2007