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citizens throughout the region are beginning to say "NO!" to the Washington Consensus and subsequently elect leaders who will convey their sentiment. As such, abstention from these dysfunctional SAPs is now contagiously spreading in the region as it leans to the political left.

A more scrutinizing examination of how the Washington Consensus and its SAPs operate will shed some light on the rationale for the region's popular sentiment toward what Chavez refers to as the Empire. SAPs typically consist of six parts that are adhered to by the borrowing country. These include privatization, cuts in government spending, imposition of user fees, promotion of exports, higher interest rates, and trade liberalization [3]. This may or may not look good on paper, but in reality these measures have generally only worsened conditions in any country that has adopted them.

To highlight simply the most intrusive of these policies, privatization is one of the primary remedies mandated by policy makers. Under privatization, the borrowing country agrees to sell its government-owned enterprises to private owners who are usually foreign investors.

Take Venezuela for example, by the mid-90's, Chavez's predecessors had sold most of the country's oil production rights to foreign investors. As such, the revenue from this primary resource was no longer available. What the people witnessed instead was capital flight and a downward spiral in economic stability.

Chavez came to power and immediately repossessed the country's oil production rights and exported the foreign investors. Privatization is the most effective way to manipulate a desperate nation led by corrupt officials. Although the offering price to purchase the industry fell well below market value, the politicians who were brokering the deal came out with their pockets full.

This has happened not only with petroleum in Venezuela, but also with resources like copper in Chile, water in Bolivia and bananas in Nicaragua and Honduras. It can be difficult to identify a country in the region that has not fallen victim to this scheme.

While detailing on just one of the six parts relevant to SAPs, privatization is traditionally known to produce some of the worst impacts on the borrowing country. The end result is that the country becomes more dependent on future borrowing for debt maintenance, and thus ends up integrated in a vicious cycle of remediation which has no end in sight.

Failing U.S. neo-liberal policies and the region's response

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