International "Hugo" Fund

Not a bad idea. The IMF has been primarily an organ to suck the blood out of the needy countries and leaving them worst off. Chavez has got it right. The IMF and the World Bank have got to go.

Greg Palast | Hugo Chavez

Chávez, notes The Wall Street Journal, has become a "tropical IMF." And indeed, as the Venezuelan president told me, he wants to abolish the Washington-based International Monetary Fund, with its brutal free-market diktats, and replace it with an "International Humanitarian Fund," an IHF, or more accurately, an International Hugo Fund. In addition, Chávez wants OPEC to officially recognize Venezuela as the cartel's reserve leader, which neither the Saudis nor Bush will take kindly to.

Politically, Venezuela is torn in two. Chávez's "Bolivarian Revolution," a close replica of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal-a progressive income tax, public works, social security, cheap electricity-makes him wildly popular with the poor. And most Venezuelans are poor. His critics, a four-centuries' old white elite, unused to sharing oil wealth, portray him as a Castro-hugging anti-Christ.