http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/provider/...0721&ID=5886929

Can someone from South of Texas explain this to me?


Is South America becomming the next communist bloc?

Nah, it's just Latin America and South America waking up and developing an agenda beyond the leaders' personal enrichment or a colonial power's wishes.

They'll calm down in a few years. No worries.

So the economic group is based on ideas of Capitalism?

They're not strictly based on free-market capitalism, but they're hardly communist.

Well Cuba is, and was quoted a lot, so I'm curious...

*pulls out dentist tools*

Mercosur (Where the hell they got the R from, I don't know - We spell it Mercosul, from sul = south) is a free trade zone including the richest countries in South America (Argentina and us), Uruguay and Paraguay, Venezuela since July 4 this year, possibly Bolivia sometime next year, and pretty much everyone else as associated nations except for the Guyana and Suriname (Which are expecting integration sometime before 2020), and French Guyana (Which isn't a country, but an ultramarine French protectorate and therefore part of the EU). Of course, Argentina has been messing with trade agreements for a while now, Venezuela has been turned into a banana republic by an insane dictator, and we're stuck with one of the worse governments ever elected democratically. But besides Chavez (Who is more of a totalitarian loonie than a communist, despite what Castro seems to think) South America is very much based on differing degrees of free-market capitalism. Some countries have a welfare state, some countries are chaotic messes that exemplify exactly why free-market capitalism doesn't work without regulation.

EDIT: As an addendum so you can make sense of this post, I happen to live in Brazil.
EDIT: As an addendum, MSNBC can't even get the names of people involved right, besides being pointlessly alarmist. It's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, not 'Ignacio'. I know Americans hate diacritics for some reason, but we need them because we don't like being restricted to rigid context pronounciation or to having just five vowel phonemes.

So this is another EU, not an attempt to prove socialism is better than capitalism?

It's neither. It's a free trade zone. We're not politically uniting with Argentina. I repeat. We are not politically uniting with Argentina. Keep your panties on. The Red Army isn't going into an uprising in South America to take over the world. Let me say that again. You should not expect hordes of Russian paratroopers to drop in Florida to take over. Is that clear?

So basically, we shouldn't expect any paratroopers, just thousands of people's clinging onto rubber rafts made from old shoes?

I'll be sure to stay away from the southern beaches.

Don't you get that already? Cuba is not in South America. Fidel was just visiting. Can't the man leave his country anymore without being accused of fostering communism?

Actually, I don't know how often they come from Cuba, but here, its all those elsavadorians and guatumalans, sneaking up through mexico!

I only say that because of the el savandorian and Guatuamalans who I'm very friendly with and hate illegals, because they had to pay an arm and a leg.