Surprisingly, it's NYT that gives us a more balanced angle on the ongoing bruhaha over nationalisation of Bolivia's gas and petroleum production.

All Smoke, No Fire in Bolivia – NYT

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Latin America's newest populist leader, President Evo Morales, had just issued a decree nationalizing Bolivia's petroleum.

In reaction to the news, the European Union warned that the move could tighten global energy supplies and increase prices at the pump. Other international analysts have expressed concern about a resurgence of dangerous "energy nationalism." However alarming Bolivia's move might appear on the surface, though, there is surprisingly little in it to worry the United States and the West.

This is simply the way democracy sometimes works. Oil and gas nationalization has been the main political issue in Bolivia for the last several years. Mr. Morales, an Aymara Indian farmer, won a landslide victory in December on a promise to nationalize the gas industry. Now he's delivering on that promise he made to the country's nine million citizens.

And when viewed from a Bolivian perspective, this is less of a nationalization than a return to constitutionality. Mr. Morales has a strong legal argument that the privatization that took place in the mid-1990's was unconstitutional. Under the Bolivian Constitution, the contracts that gave control to private companies were supposed to be approved by Congress, and they were not.

Add this to resentment on the street over Bolivia's Transparency International corruption ranking last year (placing its leaders among the world's most dishonest) and a long history of swindles where natural resources like gold, silver, timber and petroleum have been "privatized" into the global economy to the sole benefit of a few very wealthy Bolivians.

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Bolivia was one of the first Latin American countries to adopt this approach back in the mid-1980's. State-owned companies were sold off. Government spending and regulation was scaled back. Foreign capital was courted. All on the promise of a new dawn of well-being.

Twenty years later the average Bolivian is worse off than before. Exports have declined. Bolivian incomes are stagnant, and half of the population lives on less than $2 a day. The rest of Latin America has experienced similar results from neoliberalism, leading to a general disillusionment that has given rise to leftist-populist governments.

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