STP, while I think about this interesting Latin post, including an objective reply, may I invite you - as a self admitted Anglophile - to read today's article in The Economist, titled: "Disunited states of Europe". Please meet Churchill again... In my opinion, poor Mr. Cameron will be taken to task pretty soon, as will Frau Merckel.
http://www.economist.com/node/21559387
Yea, although this is perhaps not the best thread to have this discussion, but I give it to you that the British not always been constructive EU members. You have to remember that it's an island (which is the first sentence of a famous history of the UK, the title of which escapes me at the moment).
Also, I'm a great believer in the necessity of 'countervailing power,' I always get a little nervous when everybody looks one way.
However, the EU itself has not always been 'constructive.' Embarking on an half-baked monetary union might very well turn out to be one of the more destructive economic ideas of the century. One can make a pretty solid case in favor of the UK's view of what the EU should have been (a free trade area) if you compare it to the unmitigated disaster that is EMU, I'm afraid.
STP, interesting post about another important regional market for LNG, as well as many other commodities, products and services. Although I would agree to disagree with Argentina's centralization policy, I feel there are factors at work that perhaps we do not fully understand as yet.
1. My Argentine, Bolivian, Colombian and Peruvian contacts increasingly show anti Spanish sentiment, at a time when part of both the Latin and the Spanish population are preparing to re-migrate to South America, partly due to economic distress in Europe, which is very unfortunate.
2. Some of the most reputed Spanish companies, including Telefonica and Repsol, are consistently associated with oligopolistic pricing practices that hold back future growth and development. My source at Camisea in Peru states that the local population pays a higher price for gas than Repsol’s export clients.
If this is true, and other Spanish companies behave like this, I would say, “Nationalize the colonial lot”. Good citizenship norms are as important as foreign investor expectations. I am surprised, though, that the Argentine government chose to nationalize, apparently without a sound, strategic alternative in place. If that is so, it is a very clear negative.
We should move this discussion to the varia forum
I know only a little about Argentina and next to nothing about these other countries. The nationalization of YPF in Argentina is economically stupid (although politically sound, I'm afraid) and no oligopolistic behavior was levelled at the company but underinvestment and underexploration which, if they even hold, were a direct consequence of government policies to keep energy prices low for consumers.
They simply do not have the resources to develop these large shale plays, which require tens of billions of dollars.
Argentina is an interesting case though. They recovered very rapidly from the default and had a booming economy for quite some time (an interesting example for the likes of Greece), but as so often, when the sensible economist (Lavanga) left the government, they then became opportunistic out of political, not economic considerations, and wasted much of the gains made between, say 2002-2008, as has happened so often in their history.
Please, move to varia forum.
The discussion is important nonetheless.