Bi-Partisan Problem

[whottt]

look what a few billion dollars of writeoffs did to the banking industry. What would a $50 trillion writeoff look like. also, 40 trillion is off the balance sheet debt (promises).

hmm...ok, so how about we nuke everyone we owe money too?

[2centsworth]

hmm...ok, so how about we nuke everyone we owe money too?

we would nuke ourselves.

[ElNono]

Well, let's just say your plan has no legs to stand on.
Venezuela is actually a democracy (pretty corrupt one, like the rest of South America), but still a democracy. They applied for membership to the Mercosur (which is pretty much the equal to the Euro Union, but less developed. At this time they're about to create a central bank for the region) and been already approved by Argentina and Uruguay (pending is the approval of Brazil and Paraguay). Obviously an attack to any member country is an automatic offense to the rest of the countries.
Further, they supply natural gas to a bunch of these countries, so taking away that would be a real serious problem. Not to mention that all these countries lost sympathy for the US long time ago (the exception being Chile and perhaps Colombia).
It would also be a huge international headache, because most of these countries have investments and their actual population descendant from Spain (from colonial times) and Italy (from WW1 and WW2). So 'coalition' support for an unilateral action like that would be at the very least very problematic.
Now this is not to say some countries wouldn't like to see Chavez go. However, not like that. It would actually reinforce Chavez's view that the US is an imperialist country.
Let's also not forget that South America is well versed in guerrilla wars, starting from the 70's during most of military governments in the region, until now, with the Colombian FARC.

So I see that move pretty much as a no go, unless Chavez does something terribly stupid (which could happen, but would be really rare, since he already has enough oil money to keep his people and neighbors happy).

To be honest with you, the real problem is with politicians from both ends of the spectrum spending like crazy and not thinking where that money is going to come from. We're going to need some fundamental changes in the way politicians think about spending money. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening, so I think going through really bad times is unavoidable at this point.

[2centsworth]

Well, let's just say your plan has no legs to stand on.
Venezuela is actually a democracy (pretty corrupt one, like the rest of South America), but still a democracy. They applied for membership to the Mercosur (which is pretty much the equal to the Euro Union, but less developed. At this time they're about to create a central bank for the region) and been already approved by Argentina and Uruguay (pending is the approval of Brazil and Paraguay). Obviously an attack to any member country is an automatic offense to the rest of the countries.
Further, they supply natural gas to a bunch of these countries, so taking away that would be a real serious problem. Not to mention that all these countries lost sympathy for the US long time ago (the exception being Chile and perhaps Colombia).
It would also be a huge international headache, because most of these countries have investments and their actual population descendant from Spain (from colonial times) and Italy (from WW1 and WW2). So 'coalition' support for an unilateral action like that would be at the very least very problematic.
Now this is not to say some countries wouldn't like to see Chavez go. However, not like that. It would actually reinforce Chavez's view that the US is an imperialist country.
Let's also not forget that South America is well versed in guerrilla wars, starting from the 70's during most of military governments in the region, until now, with the Colombian FARC.

So I see that move pretty much as a no go, unless Chavez does something terribly stupid (which could happen, but would be really rare, since he already has enough oil money to keep his people and neighbors happy).

To be honest with you, the real problem is with politicians from both ends of the spectrum spending like crazy and not thinking where that money is going to come from. We're going to need some fundamental changes in the way politicians think about spending money. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening, so I think going through really bad times is unavoidable at this point.