Venezuela on the Brink with Fergus Hodgson
2017-04-23 · Guest: Fergus Hodgson (Latin America researcher) · 47:26
The tragic decline of Venezuela into socialism
Bob Zadek and guest Fergus Hodgson explore the tragic decline of Venezuela from a prosperous democracy to a socialist basket case. They discuss the ideological influence of Cuba, the erosion of property rights, and the broader cultural challenges facing Latin American development compared to success stories like Hong Kong and Chile.
Topics: Venezuela, Socialism, Hugo Chavez, Nicolas Maduro, Latin America, Economic Freedom, Property Rights, Cuba, Chile, Milton Friedman, Identity Politics
Speakers: Bob Zadek, Fergus Hodgson
Introduction: Hong Kong v. Venezuela [00:29]
Bob Zadek: Hello everyone, welcome to The Bob Zadek Show, the only live libertarian talk radio show on the air all weekend. I am your host, Bob Zadek. Thanks so much for listening this morning. 424-BOB-SHOW is where to join my conversation at any time. Callers are, of course, always welcome.
Has anybody out there besides me wondered how we end up on our planet with a country, a city-state, Hong Kong—tiny geographic area, small population, no natural resources whatsoever, basically nothing going for it—and that tiny speck on the planet has become one of the most prosperous areas, geographic areas, political areas on the planet?
As compared with, let’s take for example, Venezuela. A nice-sized country, nice-sized population, and the largest proven oil reserves on Earth. And Venezuela has been for a long time, and continues to be on an accelerating basis, an economic basket case. It’s on the brink of disaster. Who knows what will happen in Venezuela even in the short-term future? Will there even be a Venezuela?
Well, I ask the question, the leading question, “Who knows?” and I’d like to answer that. The man who knows is Fergus Hodgson. Fergus has studied Latin America for much of his adult life. He’s become intellectually fascinated by the goings-on, political and economic, in Latin America as well as the rest of our planet. And Fergus has been good enough to join us this morning from Ireland, I should add. Thank you very much, to explain what’s happening in our neighbors to the south, Latin America in general and Venezuela in particular. Fergus, thanks so much for joining us this morning.
Fergus Hodgson: Thank you, Bob. As you know, I’m a long-time listener to your show, so that makes it a particular privilege to join you. And this topic is so sensitive to me. It’s so important. Many of my best friends are Venezuelan and yes, I’ve traveled there twice and explored the country and been part of this battle fighting back against the people who have wrecked the country for many years now.
The Ideological Roots of the Collapse [02:54]
Bob Zadek: Now you say “people who have wrecked the country.” Of course, it always is people, but it also is a philosophy, an approach—a government approach. It is an approach to democratic principles and economic principles. So the people are only delivering a policy; they carry out a policy. So while of course it is the people, help us understand—give us the big picture, then we’ll drill down—how does a country with so much going for it as Venezuela—and I dare say the same question could be asked for others in Latin America, but we’ll focus on Venezuela for the minute—how did Venezuela find itself with so much going for it in such a sorry economic and political state, so that we can’t predict what’s going to happen in Venezuela even perhaps in the next six months?
Fergus Hodgson: That’s a lot of questions in one, Bob. But you are precisely right that it is ideology or philosophy that is driving it. I said people, but you’re correct to say that it’s a certain portion of people who are driven—well, motivated both by their own quest for power, but also motivated by Marxist ideology. And that is not limited to, not exclusive to Venezuela. There has been an infiltration of Venezuela of Marxist ideologues for a long time, particularly from Cuba. There are thousands of Cuban agents in Venezuela advising and supporting the regime. Nicolás Maduro, the president, his chief advisor actually worked with Che Guevara in Cuba back in the Cuban Revolution, if you can believe it. It’s crazy.
So how did Venezuela become this economic disaster? And I want people to know that the disaster is beyond what many of us can comprehend. They have reached hyperinflation. An average salary there will be about $30 per month. I mean, it really has gone to as low as you can go. And often I hear headlines saying Venezuela is on the brink or Venezuela is going to collapse, and I’m thinking, it’s already there. I mean, what else can collapse? What else can go wrong? I don’t really understand.
The Supreme Court of Justice that Venezuela has has already annulled the parliament, so basically it’s a dictatorship. But it was already a dictatorship before that. So it is an extremely sorry state. And you were right to point out that this is in contrast to the potential of the country, both in terms of resources, geographic location, the history of the country. So yes, in the early part of the 20th century, there was oil discovered and utilized, and that led to the flowering of a country to become one of the wealthiest in the region, to reach first-world levels of development, and to transition to a democracy in the late 1950s.
However, there’s a problem. This is known as the resource curse, that countries that become too dependent on one particular element of the economy tend to have more corruption, greater political instability, and that has obviously shown itself in Venezuela. And since the 1958 transition to democracy, there has been a growth in a redistributionist or socialist state. And there was also a growing class division in the country.
And the instability culminated in the 1990s with two coup attempts on the country led by Hugo Chávez, who went to prison and was later pardoned and then ran for president as an anti-establishment candidate. He was a student of Fidel Castro, who of course was the communist dictator of Cuba for more than 50 years. And he basically imported that ideology and approach to Venezuela. And over the last 17, 18 years now, he and his successor, Nicolás Maduro, have been converting Venezuela into a socialist basket case.
And in terms of actual data on this, in terms of the policy outcomes, my favorite ranking of economic freedom—you could say a comparison between as good as we can get in this world for capitalism versus socialism—is from the Fraser Institute in Canada. And Venezuela is 159th and the absolute lowest in the world of those that can be ranked, those that have data available.
Bob Zadek: Fergus, there’s a question in your narrative. In ‘58, Venezuela adopted, if that’s the right verb, democratic principles. Now, that tells me the population aspired to democracy. They wanted democracy. Why were they so easy to let it slip away? The same people who wanted democracy, I would think, would want to preserve it. And yet it all has slipped away. Help me understand the collective psychology of the country that allowed democracy that they fought for and achieved to slip away.
The Fragility of Democracy and Identity Politics [11:24]
Fergus Hodgson: That’s a wonderful question, Bob. It’s not unique to Venezuela. Many countries struggle to have any kind of stable democracy. And one of my mentors, a Cuban, has written an article on what he titled “Wiki-Constitutionalism,” given the tendency among Latin American nations to adjust or reform or write new constitutions seemingly every other year. I think the record is maybe the Dominican Republic—one of the countries has had something like 70 different versions of a constitution.
So my own view is that it’s really a function of the populace. As you said, the people wanted democracy, but it takes time to learn and to understand that democracy is a fragile approach to governance. It’s vulnerable. Just as the United States Constitution is not a self-enforcing document, democracy is not guaranteed. People can game that system and convert it to a dictatorship, which has happened in Venezuela. And they achieve this by going through certain strategies where they may control the courts, control the media, control the voting system until there are no competitors.
In the case of Venezuela, those in power in particular targeted all political competitors. And right now there are over 140 political prisoners. This number has been growing over the years, but in particular, the most prominent competitors to those in power have simply been ruled out, either barred from running as candidates or placed in prison, in the case of Leopoldo López.
Now, why have they failed to uphold democracy? I just think, as we discussed before, there are vulnerabilities in democracy. And in the case of a place like Venezuela, it’s a very divided society. In terms of the history, it was made up originally of the indigenous people, the native people, the slave population, and the Spanish who ruled it. So you had a problematic beginning. And then it was a lot of immigration, which obviously built that middle class and invested in the country.
But it was a divided society of haves and have-nots. And that meant that when people got into power, there was always this arm-wrestle. And that’s why, as I said, Chávez, who was late in the game, he was an anti-establishment candidate and there was this almost sense of vengeance. He was a man of incredible ego and he, for example, renamed the country, he changed the flag. He did all this to basically remake the country to his own will. He called it the Bolivarian Republic as opposed to just the Republic of Venezuela. And so he played class or identity politics to the limit. And there was a lot of division. And he carried that out. He showed it by going through private property confiscations, by setting up all sorts of freebies or socialist programs for his targeted demographics that were on his side versus the oligarchs or the ones who were against him. And he’s created through that a whole new generation of beneficiaries and oligarchs under Chavismo. So there’s really just been a change of power. There’s not been an improvement or a liberalization. There was just a change of power and a much worse one after his time.
Bob Zadek: Now, here’s an observation in what you just said. You said something really interesting, I think, when you talked about the embedded identity politics that Chávez exploited. And I wonder if there isn’t a lesson there that once you identify yourself as a member of a group rather than as the citizen of a country, it starts to weaken the country so that the group becomes your entire universe and not the country. And I wonder, just—we don’t have to talk about this, just an observation—that seems to be happening in the United States as well, not nearly with any extremes as you describe in Venezuela, but that is a warning sign. That once you become a member of a very small defined group at the expense of the country, the country itself becomes the loser. And Venezuela may be proof positive of that proposition.
Fergus Hodgson: Yes, Bob, actually they make it very explicit because the Chavistas, or those who support the regime, they wear the red of communism, of course. So at all their marches and on the job, they will be wearing red as a sort of display of solidarity. And the opponents wear white. So there’s this very clear distinction between the people who are backing the socialist regime, which is the United Socialist Party of Venezuela that rules the country, and those who are opponents who wear white in all their marches.
Bob Zadek: When I was growing up, that reminds me—a slight, a tiny diversion—when I was growing up and went to summer camp as a cherubic teenager, we had at the end of the season, we had Color War, when the entire camp population of young kids was divided into the Green Team and the White Team. And it was all random. And you ended up for four days, if you were on the Green Team, you despised the White Team. They were like the scum of the earth as you competed athletically. And then it was ended and we had a big dinner and we took away our green and our white and we were campers again. It sounds like what’s going on. So, sorry for the diversion.
The Destruction of the Free Market [17:49]
Bob Zadek: Now, in Venezuela, the economy—is it a socialist, is it a communist economy? And how does it work? Is there any—what’s happened to important principles such as, of course, private property, freedom of contract, rule of law? Has that key fabric which holds society together—is that gone, on the way out? Where is it?
Fergus Hodgson: Right. Yes. As another man I admire of the Future of Freedom Foundation, Jacob Hornberger, used to say, the real free market is the black market. And that’s the case with Venezuela. In the formal or open market, there really is no free market anymore, no real capitalism. At most, you could say there’s some cronyism. And if you are anyone who believes in free-market economics, going to a place like Venezuela will make your head explode.
Because we could go through all the aspects. There’s no stable currency. There are no property rights; you can have your property confiscated arbitrarily. There are price controls on basically everything, in particular the exchange rates with foreign countries. So really, there’s no stability. And I think the element of socialism was always there in Venezuela. There was always provision of government healthcare, education, housing—all these welfare programs which I oppose, of course, or I think they should be done on a private manner.
But what happened under the Chávez regime is that he expanded these to favored groups and he broke down the rule of law. So he basically violated property rights at will. He would literally go and just select places personally to be confiscated. And he would do it even on TV. He would make a show of it as some kind of attack against the rulers of the past. And of course, what has happened is that more and more companies have just said, “Forget it.” And more and more people have said “Forget it” as well. Over a million Venezuelans have left the country since 1999. So you’ve got Venezuelan exiles all over the place. Many of my best friends are in Florida, of course, in Doral near Miami; there’s a big community. But all over. Even here in Ireland, I’ve met Venezuelan exiles. There was a protest recently to show support for the protests back in Venezuela this past week. So yes, in terms of free-market economics, I think every principle you can think of is being violated and that’s why there’s no economic growth, there’s no investment.
The Flight of the Middle Class [22:42]
Bob Zadek: Fergus, I was curious about the role of the middle class. As I understand it, Venezuela did have, does have, a middle class—educated, professional. There’s a professional class in Venezuela. I presume that the middle class as a class have been the economic losers—or have they? You will help us understand that. And if so, do they lack the political power? Are they fearful? Why have they been—since in when you start moving money around from the haves to the have-nots, the haves don’t take it lying down, and they have been, I suppose, financing this socialist regime. Are they passive? Have they been passive, and if so, why?
Fergus Hodgson: Great question. Oh man, Bob, so much to say. And I know many of these middle-class people personally. And most of them are abandoning the country at this point, I hate to say, because they foresee a Cuba outcome: another half-century of tyranny. And there is no easy way out, right? Because there does not appear to be a democratic escape process at this point because the elections are so violated, or the elections are not transparent or open.
And even when the opposition did get a majority in the Congress, the Supreme Court of Justice ruled that some of the candidates on the opposition, their outcomes were null, and so now they do not have a majority. And then the Supreme Court of Justice recently—this is what sparked the recent protest—just declared that the National Assembly was basically void or in contempt and could not pass any legislation.
So yes, of course, people have been fighting against this for the last 17, 18 years since 1999 when Chávez got into power and people soon realized that he was working very quickly and effectively to consolidate power to the United Socialist Party of Venezuela and he was building a long-term ruling apparatus that would be almost impenetrable, which is what has come to be, unfortunately.
And in 2002, members of the business community and members of the military, they staged a coup against the regime or against Chávez. However, they were not successful and many of them fled the country, were exiled at that point; they had no choice, of course, they could not stay in the country. And Fidel Castro negotiated with the military to get Chávez back into power, and he remained.
These marches recently that you’ve seen on TV with millions of people in Caracas and throughout the country, these marches have been going on for years. In 2014, there was an enormous set of marches, maybe larger than right now. And the problem is that people will march, the regime comes up and censors the media, it kills a bunch of people—11 protesters have died this past week—and then everything continues as it was before. This is a real problem. And the problem gets harder and harder to fix as time goes by because the corruption, the nepotism, the favoritism towards those within the party against those outside the party, the cronyism gets deeper and deeper. And it becomes a way of life. And so no one is clean after a certain period of time. And so people find it harder and harder to kind of fight against what is all around them. The socialist virus gets deeper and deeper in the country and it’s harder to just pull that out, right? So if someone had either voted out or removed Chávez back in the early 2000s, maybe the country could have continued on developing. But 15 years have passed now and the corruption is embedded.
The Role of Foreign Debt and Unions [26:11]
Bob Zadek: Is there an expectation, a hope, or is it hopelessly naive to expect that sooner or later Venezuela will have to default on its foreign debt? I’m sure it has a lot of foreign debt, growing, because it has to import everything; it can’t manufacture anything anymore. And will the pressure come the way it kind of did in Argentina, but not that much, from other countries holding their sovereign debt and will force, if they can, reforms? Or is that absurdly naive?
Fergus Hodgson: It’s not naive. No, you’re right that the pressure—I mean, first they have inflated away any debt that was denominated in the bolívar, the local currency. So that’s not a problem; they just print more currency to pay for it. But debt that’s denominated externally, to the Chinese for example, they’re going to have to work out a way to deal with that.
And you might be surprised—there have been some fascinating or just bizarre developments where in this “workers’ socialist paradise” that these socialists have created, many of the strongest opponents to the regime have been unions, because they realize, “Wait, our salaries aren’t worth anything anymore,” and they’ve been actually opposing the regime, ironically. And so sometimes the Chavistas, those in power—just Diosdado Cabello, the former president of the National Assembly, he got into confrontations with unions because they thought—so basically, there is pressure right now to liberalize the market in some ways.
And it may happen. That is apart from democratic reform or transparent elections. What could and probably will happen is that there will be some very limited liberalization akin to what is happening in Cuba. But it will not be in a way that would threaten the power of those in control right now. So they may, for example, open up—they already have loosened the restrictions on the currency, the exchange rate, because it became so crazy, the disparity between the official exchange rate and the black-market exchange rate. But I don’t see any kind of broader or deeper reform that would be necessary to really turn things around.
Bob Zadek: And you mentioned Cuba quite a bit in our discussion. What I have a hard time understanding is Cuba is a small island nation without much by way of natural resources, an economy that also is a basket case. What is the source of Cuba’s unusually strong influence in the region if Cuba itself is a failure?
Fergus Hodgson: Well, it’s a paradox. Cuba’s failure means that they have to go around looking for benefactors. And for the last 17-odd years, Venezuela has been bankrolling or bailing out Cuba. So they’ve been receiving—I can’t remember the number, but billions of dollars in foreign aid from Venezuela in the form of oil support.
But people forget that Cuba is an extremely important, perhaps pivotal, part of the picture of Venezuela. And they have exported their system of socialism or communism, this sort of authoritarian interventionism, to Venezuela and they’ve done that for many years, decades. And when I was in Caracas on my last visit, I met with a former general of the Venezuelan military who has been vocally denouncing this, the presence of the Cubans who have infiltrated the military. There are estimated to be about 7,000 Cuban military agents in Venezuela.
Cultural and Historical Barriers to Development [31:58]
Bob Zadek: Fergus, as I heard your narrative, often somewhat discouraging this morning, I found myself flashing back to the founding of our country. And the colonists had it pretty good. They were living in pretty much freedom, they had a large degree of self-determination, they had democracy, they weren’t taxed very much, they had a lot of freedom, a lot of opportunity. And yet it wasn’t nearly enough; it was so short of the ideal that they fought a revolution and they shed their connection with the UK. And even though the colonists had so much.
Now, in Latin America, they have so little and yet there is relative—there is a huge amount of passivity, unless it’s just the military has such tight control there’s no room for revolution. So is there something in the political traditions in Latin America, something that goes way back in their history that is so cultural that makes that part of the globe so unable to adopt free-market and democratic principles?
Fergus Hodgson: Yes. So there have been many people who have written books about this, right? It’s this ongoing question: why has Latin America not developed? And I went to a roundtable conference or discussion forum in Guatemala a few years back to examine this very question. And there are many answers, but the fact is clear that, as you make the correct point, that Latin America has not evolved economically. It has not developed in terms—it’s not liberalized in any way near the likes of Canada and the United States.
So for example, on the Economic Freedom of the World Index, only Chile has ever cracked the top 10 in the world. Aside from that, Latin American countries actually are near the bottom: Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador—all those ones are right down the bottom.
So what is it about the culture? Many things. As I said before, they have a particular history, a particular history of people who make up that part of the world: the indigenous people, the Spanish conquerors or colonists, and then the slave population. And this is different from say the Hong Kong scenario which you contrasted with at the start of the show, where basically you had the Eastern Asians, the Chinese, and the British who gave them British common law. So right from the founding, the Spanish gave the Latin American countries—I should point out there are 18 countries, each with her own distinct history, distinct details, plus there’s Puerto Rico which is hanging out there part of the United States—but the Spanish gave them a common legal history or approach to government. And they infected the area from the get-go with a mercantilist and feudalist approach.
Then, at the same time, the native people, the indigenous people, are extremely collectivist or tribalist; it’s just the way they’ve lived. They’ve lived in tribes and they remain a strong minority and even a majority of the population in many countries such as Guatemala, El Salvador, Bolivia. Basically, the tribal customs get in the way of a more liberal or open society which would bring more prosperity, more investment. And so for example, we talked about protectionism and Donald Trump in the United States being a very—using a lot of protectionist rhetoric. This rhetoric is just par for the course in Latin America, this sort of—I don’t know whether xenophobic, but anti-competition rhetoric that would say that we’ll buy from our own first, this sort of economic fallacy that buying our own is going to somehow make us all better off.
So I don’t see an easy solution to this challenge. And I remember years ago I was in El Salvador and just looking out across the city thinking that the average salary there in a month might be about $300. So I can tell you that people in the United States would earn easily five times what people in a country like that earn, because I’ve hired people from there. And it’s very unfortunate because, as you know, with a lack of economic development, that goes hand-in-hand with other problems such as crime because when people are poor, they naturally are drawn to the black market or to crime such as the drug trade. And so these—particularly Central America and Venezuela is not excluded from this either—there’s a huge tendency towards participating in the drug trade. And this is a very—as you know, it’s prohibited, so it’s very violent. And the level of violence or the number of murders in a place like El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala—these countries is just off the planet. In fact, I think seven or eight of the most murderous, or the countries in the world with the highest rates of murder, are Latin American countries. And Venezuela has just knocked Honduras and El Salvador off the top spots and is now the most murderous nation on the planet.
Immigration and the Welfare State [37:49]
Bob Zadek: One of the—I want to digress just with one question, then we’ll get back. In the US, of course, a hot topic compliments of Donald Trump has been immigration in general and specifically immigration from Latin America. My observation—so this is only anecdotal and non-scientific, but it’s an observation nevertheless that I’d like you to comment on—when immigrants arrive in the US from those countries that you have just described with their long collectivist tribal history—it’s in their DNA—the immigrants themselves seem willing and able to easily adopt to a more free-market, rule-of-law approach. Is that because it is a self-selecting group that come here, or is it that easy to un-teach those long traditions of tribalism and collectivism?
Fergus Hodgson: Oh, Bob, that’s a very sensitive topic. It really strikes to the root, or it’s a tough one for me to respond to. But yes, many people do respond and become part of the US outlook. In particular, the Cubans of the 1960s who came have become almost more pro-American than the Americans, right? They’re so adamant and believers in capitalism.
I do not in general believe, and there’s lots of survey data to show this, that immigrants from Latin America do actually adopt the American way of thinking. There’s actually data from Gallup and I think Reason even recently published data that when you ask people about their views of government—whether the government should do less, the best government is the government which governs least, versus a government should do more to help people—Latin Americans, people who self-identify as Latin Americans, are almost twice as likely to call for bigger government than their native US counterparts. And I think that’s a great problem, actually.
There’s been a lot of work done to address this. Gloria Álvarez, one of my friends from Guatemala, made a video asking people to not resurrect what you fled. And one of the reasons why this is made worse by the United States is that as the US welfare state grows, or has grown enormously over the last 100 years, that has attracted a different demographic of people. Yes, because as you said, immigrants—they’re not random, they come for certain incentives. So the more capitalist and open your economy, the more you attract the people who want to be competitive, right? And so I am concerned about this. And it’s a very sensitive topic as to how to best handle this because people do not just magically change when they leave a country. And in the case of Venezuela, a lot of people have been writing about the fact that even among the opposition in Venezuela, there’s a lot of misunderstanding that basically the opposition in Venezuela have socialist values as well, so they don’t provide a very good ideological alternative.
Chile and Bright Spots in Latin America [43:24]
Bob Zadek: Fergus, we have a modest task ahead of us. We have to cover a semester’s worth of work in about four minutes, but I think you and I are up to the task. I’d like you to speak maybe for a minute or so about this outlier you mentioned very briefly, Chile. And Chile adopted some free-market principles compliments of Milton Friedman, the Chicago School of Economics. Chile was a military dictatorship. What happened very briefly in Chile that drew it to adopt such free-market principles, the privatization of Social Security and the like?
Fergus Hodgson: Yes, well, Chile is a very—as you said, it’s strongly an outlier. So we can’t read too much into it or there’s not much hope for repeating it. Basically, there was a Venezuela-style breakdown in the country in the 1970s. 1973, the National Assembly of Chile ordered the military to remove the president. They did. They installed a military ruler, and he remained in power for almost two decades. It just so happened that there were a group of Chilean economists who had trained under Milton Friedman and they advised him and told him to liberalize things like price controls, social security or the pension system—many things. And that had a wonderfully positive effect on the economy. Unfortunately, that man was a brutal ruler and a great deal of pain came with his ruling as well against opponents and there were many exiles.
In terms of trying to be positive or look for some good news, I do think there is good news. The other country that is more positive or doing better in Latin America is Costa Rica. Panama too. There are some better ones: Panama, Uruguay, Costa Rica are doing better in terms of economic development. And in particular, those countries have partnered with the United States closely. They have traded with the United States. So many Americans have bought property, they take vacations in Costa Rica. Panama is a trade hub; it’s where the canal goes. So there is a bright spark there. And also on the civil liberties side, Costa Rica gave a wonderful demonstration of free speech when the government tried to crack down on free speech and people went on Twitter and basically ignored it and mocked it. So I really enjoyed that one.
Bob Zadek: Tell us, we have only a minute to go, how can our listeners follow your work at the Antigua International and follow your writings?
Fergus Hodgson: Sure. The best place to follow me is on Twitter, just @FergHodgson. That’s F-E-R-G-H-O-D-G-S-O-N. And yes, Antigua International is my consulting group. We publish the Antigua Report; it’s just AntiguaI.com. The outlet I started but I’m no longer associated with still covers Venezuela very closely; it’s PanAmPost.com and I’m glad to recommend them. I found my replacement for myself and he does wonderful work.
Bob Zadek: Now you had mentioned to me that you had some brief experience of various think tanks. What was some of the think tanks you worked at before forming Antigua International?
Fergus Hodgson: Oh, the John Locke Foundation in North Carolina. I worked with the Future of Freedom Foundation in DC. I was with the American Institute for Economic Research in Massachusetts, the Pelican Institute in Louisiana. So I’ve really enjoyed it and learned a lot about the role that think tanks can have. And my own view too is that there’s a wonderful potential for think tanks to improve and do better work and we have the technology at our hands to greatly expand or amplify their mission. Although I fear that a lot of think tanks waste money, that does not mean I’ve rejected them outright. I really think that think tanks can and will rise to the occasion because they must compete for donations.
Bob Zadek: Fergus, you are truly a citizen of the world. I know you hold about three or four passports. I thought I was a citizen of the world because I moved from New York to California and I considered myself to be unbelievably worldly. You sort of have given me a bit of humility. So thanks very much for sharing your wisdom with us. Hope you remain a listener. This is Bob Zadek saying thanks so much to Fergus Hodgson and thank you all for listening. I’ll be back again next Sunday. Have a nice Sunday, everyone.