Img: Courtesy of Comedy Central (Viacom)

Reality? No… but no less entertaining and ripe with “subtle messages.”  I also recall reading in roughly late Aug/ early Sept a headline scroll on the bottom of Boomberg TV — “Mexicans buy back Texas, flock to real estate markets as housing prices drop and the Mexican Peso continues to appreciates.”

If you like satire mixed with crude, over-top humor about current events… particularly US Domestic Immigration Policy and the state of the US Economy, definitely check out this link to the latest episode of South Park.

Del canal Argentino – Infinito

Article 1: Russia Lends Venezuela $4 Billion in Return for Oil Projects - By Daniel Cancel of Bloomberg News

Russia agreed to lend Venezuela $4 billion through 2013 for defense spending in return for gaining access to heavy crude and offshore gas fields in the South American country.

Russia’s OAO Rosneft and OAO Gazprom signed a cooperation accord with Venezuelan state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA late yesterday at a ceremony in Caracas led by President Hugo Chavez and Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin.

“We’re working on large-dimension projects from oil, gas and petrochemicals to finance, banking and trade,” Chavez said on state television.

Click here to read the full article direct from the Bloomberg

Article 2 = China’s JAC Motors to build plant in Brazil - By Vivian Pereira and Brad Haynes of Reuters News

To Note:
* 80 pct of capital will come from local SHC Group
* Government driving up the cost of imported carsBy Vivian

Pereira and Brad HaynesSAO PAULO, Oct 7 (Reuters) – The Brazilian operator of China’s JAC Motors brand announced a 900-million-real ($510 million) investment to build a factory producing affordable cars in the world’s No. 4 auto market.

JAC Motors will provide 20 percent of the capital, with the rest coming from the local SHC Group run by businessman Sergio Habib, SHC said in a statement on Friday.

The plant in Bahia state, expected to produce 100,000 vehicles annually beginning in 2014, will be the second producing Chinese-branded cars in Latin America’s largest economy, where authorities are pushing up the cost of imported cars.

Click here to read the full article direct from the Reuters News

Article 3: Friction between China & Bolivia

Bolivian energy minister alleges deception by Jindal Steel in big iron ore mining deal, courtesy of the Associated Press via the Washington Post

LA PAZ, Bolivia — A senior Bolivian official is threatening to end the government’s contract with India’s Jindal Steel & Power Ltd. over its alleged failure to meet investment commitments in a huge iron ore mine.

Energy Minister Jose Luis Gutierrez says Jindal deceived Bolivia in failing to honor its end of the biggest mining investment of President Evo Morales’ nearly six-year tenure.

Click here to read the full article direct from the Associated Press via the Washington Post

Article 4 = Ecuador firm wants to sell rice in the name of Gandhi - By Maneesh Chhibber of the IndianExpress.com

An Ecuador-based company has attempted to use the name and photograph of Mahatma Gandhi for marketing its rice. But an Indian lawyer has challenged the move before the Trademark Office of Ecuador. The case is scheduled to come up for hearing tomorrow.

According to Lalit Bhasin, who is also president of the Society of Indian Law Firms, the owner of the Ecuadorian company, Valverde Munoz, applied for grant of trademark for the name and label of “Arroz Gandhi” (Arroz means rice).

Click here to read the full article direct from IndianExpress.com

Article 5: Mitt Romney on Mexico, China and defense – By Dr. James M. Lindsay and courtesy of CNN News

Dr. James M. Lindsay you would think knows about the topic, as CNN makes a special point to note — Dr. James M. Lindsay is a Senior Vice President at the Council on Foreign Relations and co-author of America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy, and whom writes his own blog, which you can access by clicking here.

By James M. Lindsay, CFR.org

Mitt Romney has taken exception to Rick Perry’s comment over the weekend that he would consider sending American troops into Mexico to help end the drug war raging there. Romney told the New Hampshire Union Leader that Perry’s suggestion is “a bad idea:”

Let’s build a fence first, and let’s have sufficient border patrol agents to protect it. And if the Mexican government wants us to help it with logistics, intelligence, satellite images, I’m sure we can provide the sort of support we provided in Colombia.

You can expect to hear more about Mexico at next Tuesday’s GOP debate. If Romney makes the Colombia comparison again, he probably should explain what the United States did there. Most people don’t know.

Click here to read the full article direct from CNN

Note the author of this blog (me) does not always agree with what Mr. Oppenheimer says, but his article no less merits a quick read.  Some major points which any reader giving this a quick skim should note –>

1/ The Obama Administration has left the post of Head Latin American affairs vacant for 5 months.  So much for making good on promises back in 2008 to forge closer ties with the region… Big disappointment here, but not any worse or better than the disappointment / let down his predecessor Bush Jr also produced.  It seems the last President to care at all about the region was Clinton who did more than organize summits… He laid the foundation for FTA’s with countries in the region via NAFTA

2/ Obama did not visit Brazil, the growing powerhouse and member of the BRIC club until 3 years into his presidency. When he did visit, he received nothing but criticism for going through with the official visit between the heads of state of the Western Hemisphere’s two largest economies… because the visit happened to coincide with start of Western Military efforts in Libya. For the US media which pointed the finger at Obama, shame on you, the President does not physically need to be in the United States to be “Commander and Chief,” especially for an internationally organized, and initially French lead military mission.  For Obama, shame on you too! It took you three years to visit Brazil!  I think for Brazilians this is an obvious insult, but even for the rest of South America (and Latin America as a whole), Obama, Bush Jr. and the United States… well… Latin America is feeling a bit as if they are being ignored.  One thing is certain – China is not ignoring Latin America, nor is India, Russia or even small players like Singapore which is investing to expand the Panama Canal.  

3/ As Ray Walser,  Senior Policy Analyst for Latin America at The Heritage Foundation very appropriately points in a 2009 publication “U.S Policy toward Latin America in 2009 and Beyond”  From 1996 to 2006, total U.S. merchandise trade with Latin America grew by 139percent, compared to 96 percent for Asia and 95 percent for the European Union. In 2006, the U.S. exported $223 billion worth of goods to Latin American consumers(compared with $55 billion to China). Fifty-one percent of U.S. energy imports originate from Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, and Brazil.

Excerpt from Oppenheimer’s article –>

U.S. diplomatic ties with Latin America, which have been in limbo for months, got a small boost last week when President Barack Obama nominated Roberta Jacobson as top State Department official in charge of Latin American affairs. But that alone will not do much to revert the gradual loss of U.S. clout in the region.

Granted, the career diplomat gets high marks from almost everybody in Washington’s small world of Latin American affairs specialists. Unlike her predecessor Arturo Valenzuela, a political appointee whose nomination in 2009 was blocked for several months by Conservative republicans, the Senate is expected to easily confirm her nomination.

Among the most urgent issues Jacobson would have to deal with would be the long-stalled U.S. ratification of the free trade deals with Colombia and Panama, the escalating violence in Mexico, and the April 2012, 34-country Summit of the Americas in Colombia.

On a wider spectrum, she would have to find new ways to improve ties with the region at a time when China has eclipsed much of the previous U.S. economic influence in South America’s commodity producing countries.

Click here to read Oppenheimer’s full article via the Kansas City Star

To realize why I titled this post the way I did, you must for your own good watch this Reuters video which gives a good outline of the gold market to the very end.  Anyone who has ever walked the streets of Madrid or Barcelona between 1995-2010, knows the image of a Peruvian/ Bolivian/ other South Americans with big card board signs which say : “we buy and sell gold/silver.”

Well, like the Japanese, Spain is also inventing machines/ robots to do the work– the work being, the exchange/ commerce of gold bars.

For the record I know very little about the machine and welcome clarification from any reader.  However, the fact that Reuters mentions Spain as the first country to do this, makes me think back to the Spanish history lessons I learned from my mother and grandmother growing up as a Peruvian-American in NYC–which are of the same yolk as the history lessons taught to US-Americans about the British/ French in North American schools.

I had to learn this “Iberian” history from my family, because the US public school system gives two $h!ts about the fact that more than half the American CONTINENT (singular) was not actually colonized by English speakers.

Good evening to all from Shanghai.

Click here to access the full article direct from SeekingAlpha.

Travel to any country in Latin America and you will see the visible hand of China at work: a computer manufacturing plant in Mexico, a copper mine in Peru, a football stadium in Costa Rica. In the year 2007, the thought of China in Latin America would have appeared, at best, improbable. But in a three-year stretch, China signed free trade agreements with Chile, Peru and Costa Rica, inked billions of dollars worth of deals in oil and mining projects throughout the region, and supplanted the US as Brazil’s biggest trading partner. Once almost unseen in Latin America, China’s bilateral trade has risen from $12bn in 2000 to well over $150bn today.

Given the importance of its new Asian friend, Latin Americans are rolling out the red carpets to Chinese business delegations and jumping on planes not only to Beijing but also to Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Tianjin.

Rationale Behind Chinese Investments in Latin America [...]

Please visit SeekingAlpha to read the full article

In addition to Colombia, the article also shares data complied by Economatica on the growth of the other major stock exchanges in the region, which is what CSA will be sharing with you today.  To read the full article from the Latin Business Chronicle click here.

Colombia – Best performer in Latam last year, IGBC (Colombia’s benchmark) stock index has grown in value by 927.9% during the past 10 years, and average decline in value of transactions in 2008 was 2.3%—lower than all other countries in the region

Brazil – Latin America’s largest stock market, Ibovespa (Brazil’s benchmark) stock index has grown 301.3% during the past 10 years, and the average decline of transitions in 2008 compared with 2009 was 13.6%.

Mexico – IPC (major benchmark index in Mexico) has grown 250.5% during the past 10 years, and the average decline in transactions last year was 13.9%

Venezuela – The Caracas stock index has grown by 916.5% during the past 10 years, and the average decline in transactions was 29.5% last year—the second worst in Latin America.

Argentina – The Merval inces has grown by 321.3% during the past ten years, and had the worst average decline in transactions last year, suffering a decline of 54.4%.

Peru – The Lima stock index (IGBVL) has been one of the regions best performing in the past few years.  Seeing growth of 671.1% during the past 10 years, and a decline in average transactions last year of 21%.

Chile – Last but not least, Chile’s IPSA index has grown by 218.8% over the past 10 years, and the average decline in transactions last year was a mere 3.6%-second best next to Colombia.

• The CAF President, accompanied by an official delegation, visited the Asian country to deepen trade and investment links between Latin America and China.

• The Corporation is playing its characteristic catalytic role attracting funds from other latitudes for the progress of the region.

CAF President & CEO Enrique Garcia visited Peking, accompanied by a delegation from the Corporation, with the objective of deepening trade and investment ties between Latin America and China.

The working agenda included CAF participation in the Latin America-China Investors Forum (LA-CIF), organized by Latin Finance Magazine, along with a series of meetings with China Development Bank (CDB), EximChina, China Construction Bank, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), and Sinocapital, among others.

Promoting investment and trade between the two regions

At the LA-CIF Forum, CAF President Garcia, along with the president of HSBC China, Richard Yorke, and the deputy governor of the China Development Bank, Jian Gao, was one of the keynote speakers at the inaugural session which was attended by a large number of business leaders, bankers, investors, government representatives, academics and media.

During his remarks, Garcia spoke of the important role that China is playing in the current international economic and financial situation and its contributions to mitigating the effects of the global crisis. He emphasized the complementarity of the economies of the two regions and the positive impact which China’s accelerated growth has had on Latin American investments and exports.

He underlined the enormous potential of bi-regional relations and CAF’s interest in deepening them with a view to building a valuable bridge between Latin America and China. “The Corporation is committed to supporting Latin American countries in opening of new horizons in Asia and strengthening a long-term integrated development agenda. Its catalytic role will help attract new actors to channel additional resources, both economic and technological, in order to achieve sustained development and move toward stronger economies stimulated by competitive advantages.”

China Development Bank: a strategically

One of the most important high-level meetings held by the mission was with the China Development Bank Corporation (CDB), represented by its Governor Chen Yuan.

The two institutions, based on the excellent level of relations and successful joint work which has led to increased knowledge of China and of Latin America, agreed to sign a new cooperation agreement in the near future. The accord will define new lines of credit; move forward with cofinancing operations to benefit small, medium-sized and large enterprises; set up a trust fund; and promote exchange of personnel.

“Through CAF we have come to know more about Latin America,” Governor Yuan said. “We recognize the potential which the region represents and we have worked hard to make this into real cooperation. CAF is the best partner for us.”

Garcia said bilateral relations began in 2006, following identification of a series of common interests. He expressed his satisfaction that CAF had contributed to the important work which CDB is doing in Latin America, and the joint financing of projects in the region. “Our activities during this visit to China – the CAF president concluded – mean we are playing a catalytic role by contributing ideas and resources from other regions in favor of regional development.”

New steps in expanding relations with China Eximbank

As part of its strategy of deepening relations with Asia, the CAF mission also met with the Export-Import Bank of China (China Eximbank) which has become an important source of financing for capital goods, technology and infrastructure projects around the world.

At the meeting, the two institutions reaffirmed their interest in working jointly in areas of common interest. They agreed to sign a framework cooperation agreement in the near future which will cover lines of credit and joint operations with a view to actively promoting trade and investment initiatives in the framework of horizontal cooperation between developing countries.

Now lets compare the two ETF’s.

Mexico – EPU.mx (Bolsa)

EPU.mx - Mexican Stock Exchange

United States – EPU (NYSE)

EPU - New York Stock Exchange