Reply #8: If you read down, the article, some things might tick you off

[gorbal]

They don't give another side on the point made below-

But critics say the cooperatives are a replay of policies that already have failed across Latin America. For several decades after World War II, many Latin American nations engaged in state-sponsored economic programs designed to boost local industries and keep out imports.

"The underlying assumption of the program was that the state could do a better job than the private sector, which is inherently self-aggrandizing and doesn't look after the interests of the workers or the broader public," Boston University Professor David Scott Palmer said.

Several nations ended up defaulting on huge loans that they had taken out to finance state-owned industries, generating a hemispheric economic crisis in the early 1980s. The crisis pushed most of Latin America into embracing free-market policies that broke down barriers to imports, foreign investment and privatization of state-run monopolies.

Now, the pendulum is swinging back to the left in countries such as Venezuela whose leaders say free trade hasn't done enough to reduce poverty and inequality.

In a round about way, they make it sound like they are blaming the "economic crisis" on coop's....even if that is not the case.