This article was first published in June 2005
 
Telesur’s creators have promised an alternative source of news and culture for Latin American viewers, made entirely in the region. But with Chavez’s government financing over half of the project, and basing its operation in Venezuela, many are asking if it will be a continental-wide platform for the Chavista agenda
 
Telesur, a new multi-state television channel, is expected to hit Latin American airwaves on July 24. The station does not aim to be just another number on Latin Americans’ television dials. The channel says it will provide an alternative to the image of the region currently presented by commercial media outlets, which its web site says “is not representative of reality.” Such a mission has provoked some concerns.

CNN en Español, Latin America’s number one cable news channel, begs to differ with Telesur’s claim that commercial media has kept Latin Americans out of touch with their own cultures and histories. The channel’s vice president argues that CNN en Español goes the extra mile to portray the diversity of the region.

Secondly, President Hugo Chávez’ overt support for Telesur has led critics to wonder if the channel will be a platform for his government’s agenda. In response, Telesur insists its only agenda is to assist Latin American integration.
 
An image problem?

Telesur broadcast a twenty-four hour test signal in late May that reached Venezuela and parts of Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia. The transmission gave viewers a hint of its programming, will which range from news, to films to cultural and educational shows. Venezuela is funding 51 percent of the project, while the governments of Argentina, Cuba and Uruguay are picking up the rest of the tab. One segment of the test broadcast, titled “A trip through Latin America,” reinforced the channel’s multi-state identity by showing a local Caracas bus heading off to destinations around the continent.

Another clip showed protesters holding an American flag branded with a swastika and torn apart by a bloody eagle. Later in the broadcast, pro-Chávez demonstrators hoisted a sign showing a caricature of Uncle Sam that read “Let’s crush imperialism.” Viewers are not likely to see such images featured on CNN.
Telesur vice president Aram Aharonian, a Uruguayan journalist, says he wants his channel to portray Latin America in a distinct light because he believes that the region’s viewers currently watch themselves through foreign eyes when they turn on the television. “The productions we get from abroad are a black and white vision of Latin America, usually in black when there is a disaster and nothing else,” he said in an interview.

Not mentioning any specific news agency, Aharonian also said coverage of Latin America by U.S.-based media shows “one only image” and has more to do with “Latin American idiosyncrasies” than the “diversity and plurality” of the region. “We are tired of them showing us images of Quito…and then afterwards analyses are done from Washington without broadcasting what the Ecuadorians think,” he said, referring to coverage of the recent ousting of Ecuadorian president Lucio Gutierrez. By portraying the news in this way, around-the-clock news organizations have left traditional journalistic principles behind, he claimed.

But, CNN en Español’s vice president Chris Crommett calls those charges a “red herring” and an “unfair characterization.” Crommett believes it is inaccurate to assume that his channel reflects an American point of view just because it is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. “Anyone that watches our air and says we’re not reflecting the voice of Latin America—not just institutional and presidential, but really all sectors of society—isn’t really watching much,” Crommett said in an interview.

All but one of the channel’s 15 on-air presenters in its Atlanta studios are native Latin Americans. CNN en Español also has correspondents in every Latin American country, the majority of whom are natives of those countries. Cromett called CNN’s work in the region “pioneering,” referring to the channel’s recent exclusive interview with Colombian president Alvaro Uribe and another with five Central American presidents.

Aharaonian did praise CNN’s work and said he was pleased when a CNN representative welcomed Telesur to the news market during its test broadcast. Yet the left-leaning journalist also alleged that media outlets worldwide were pressured by groups with economic power. “(In the United States) what ever doesn’t follow the perspective given by the Pentagon doesn’t get coverage,” said Aharonian.

Telesur will not broadcast commercial advertising, unlike CNN and large Spanish-language channels such as Telemundo and Univision. As far as films and documentaries go, Telesur is more concerned with giving Latin American productions air time than giving preference to money-makers. According to Aharonian, only 21 of over 600 documentaries made in Latin America last year got public exposure. He said Telesur strives to alleviate the “frustrations" of many Latin American artists who make productions “of great quality.”

Carlos Correa, director of the Venezuelan human rights group Provea, emphasized the struggles Latin Americans undergo to promote their cultural products. “For example, it’s very difficult to circulate Argentina rock (music) in Venezuela and to circulate Venezuelan productions (in Argentina), he said. He also said that CNN “dominates” in Latin America, but that this was “old problem” that had been studied at length. So if the presence of foreign media is a problem, does Telesur have the solution?
 
TeleChávez?
The Venezuelan government’s heavy presence at Telesur has critics suspicious about the intent of the channel. Communications minister Andrés Izarra is Telesur’s president. He gave an inaugural speech at the test broadcast, where he denied accusations made by Human Rights Watch that Venezuela was curtailing press freedom. “Freedom of expression has tremendous support from the Venezuelan government,” he said. The test signal that followed was sprinkled with references to the Bolivarian revolution, including images of Simón Bolívar and Chávez’ social programs.

A May opinion piece published in the Uruguayan newspaper El Pais, titled “Telesur or TeleChávez?,” argued that it is a contradiction for Cuba and Venezuela, two countries accused of press freedom abuses, to sponsor a channel that aims to give Latin America a more plural voice. Globovisión director Alberto Federico Ravell didn’t cast a friendly eye on the project either, telling The New York Times that it was “a presidential order” from Chávez.

Telesur’s vice president offers rhetoric similar to the president’s. In an interview, he urged news outlets to question the United States’ notion of “good terrorism and bad terrorism” in its handling of suspected terrorist Luis Posada Carriles. This is a catch phrase often repeated by government officials.

Yet Aharonian called allegations against the channel politically-motivated and begged audiences to wait until the channel hits the airwaves to make assessments. He also assured that the internal politics of nations will not affect Telesur’s programming. Even though he has previously called Venezuelan media outlets anti-Chávez, he said that any bias in Venezuelan media pertains only to local and national media.

The vice president also pointed out that programming will not only be produced at Telesur’s Caracas-based studios, but also by correspondents, independent producers, social organizations and national and local channels. Telesur will draw from news bureaus across the continent: Caracas, Mexico City, Washington, Havana, Bogotá, La Paz, Buenos Aires, Brasilia and Montevideo.

CNN en Español’s Crommett said he didn’t want to prejudge Telesur, noting that critics of CNN often jump to the conclusion that his channel has political affiliations. Provea’s Correa said that he didn’t presently foresee “any negative impact” from the new channel. The human rights expert explained that media sponsored by multiple governments was less likely to menace press freedom than a channel funded by one government. “In Europe there’s a channel that is paid for by the European Union,” said Correa. “So, what is the problem?”
 
Uncontaminated Journalism?
Telesur is making a concerted effort to hit as many air waves as possible. Satellite coverage will make the channel available across the Americas and Western Europe. 

Telesur is also negotiating with cable companies across Latin America and doing the best it can to bring coverage to the over 50 million Latinos in the United States and Canada. As of late May, over 35 U.S. public and regional television stations, as well as cable stations, had requested to carry the Telesur signal, Aharonian said.

Telesur’s journalists also appear poised to present an image unlike anything on commercial television today. Aharonian said the channel was concerned with the type of education journalists are currently receiving around the globe. In response, Telesur will train its staff at its own workshops, hiring from a pool of Latin Americans who have an understanding of the Telesur project and the different image the channel wants to present. “We want to work with young people, that haven’t been contaminated—in parenthesis—by the commercial media, which has a different form than what we want to be,” Aharonian said.

With only a ten-minute trailer and a lot of conjecture, it is difficult to determine at this point what Telesur’s concept of “uncontaminated” is. CNN’s Crommett did give Telesur one piece of advice: he said the station’s decision-making would need to be in the hands of professional journalists for Telesur to be a credible source of information. “I’m much more comfortable knowing that my bosses all the way up the line are all journalists with no agenda other than to try and present the news as best we can,” said Crommett. We will have to wait and see.

Articles first published in The Financialist in June 2015.

​Gold for the Masses
 
For the price of lunch for two, savers can choose to invest in something much longer lasting: physical gold. Britain’s Royal Mint recently launched an online trading service called “Signature Gold,” which allows investors with limited funds to buy tiny portions of gold bars.

The purchases are based on total cost rather than a fixed weight, which is how gold is normally sold. That means that instead of buying a one-ounce gold bar from the Royal Mint, which currently costs £758 ($1,182), they can pay as little as £20 ($31.25) for a small fraction of a bar.

Buyers don’t get to store their shiny investment at home, but they still have full legal title to it and the right to sell it at any time. And they can rest assured their sliver of gold is being kept safe – police from the Ministry of Defense guard the Royal Mint at all times. (June 2015)


The Palm Oil Wild Card
 
It’s been a rough few months for palm oil prices. Cheap crude has slashed demand for biodiesel, the U.S. soybean crop (which provides an alternative to palm-derived oil) is expected to report record production this year, and Indian output of edible oils is booming. But El Niño may soon reverse the trend of falling prices.

Over the last 30 years, palm oil prices have surged after the Pacific Ocean weather pattern takes hold. That’s because El Niño can cause droughts in important palm production areas such as Indonesia, which in turn reduces output. The severe El Niño in 1997-98 reduced palm oil yields by 17 percent, and prices jumped from some 1,500 Malaysian ringgit ($400) in 1997 to 2,500 ringgit ($665) in 1998, according to Credit Suisse.

In fact, palm oil prices have increased between 7 percent and 125 percent during the last six El Niños. Stock prices for plantation companies rose between 6 and 25 percent during the last six events. And this time? It depends how severe El Niño turns out to be. Credit Suisse calls it a “wild card.” (June 2015)


Corporate Energy Independence
 
Energy independence is no longer just an ambition of sovereign nations—corporations are striving for it too. Large companies are increasingly developing and operating their own renewable energy plants, some with the goal of fully powering their operations with green electricity.

Take Wal-Mart, which developed its first on-site solar project in 2005. By the end of 2013, the company had 335 renewable energy projects in operation throughout the world, generating 2.2 billion kilowatt hours of power—24 percent of Wal-Mart’s total electricity needs. Others are even further down the road to self-sufficiency. Mexican supermarket chain Soriana said this month that it plans to spend $260 million to build two wind farms in the northern state of Tamaulipas.

The farms are expected to generate enough electricity for more than 300 Soriana stores, bringing the total number of its renewable-powered stores to 506 out of 674. And Swedish furniture maker IKEA announced this month that it was on track to reach its goal of powering 100 percent of its operations with renewable energy by 2020. (June 2015)

This article was first published in October 2007 in The Progressive. 

A U.S.-owned smelter is making people sick in a Peruvian town.
 
Mercedes Inga Mejia blames the smokestack. First, her three-year-old son died of a rare form of cancer. Then, last year, her eldest daughter passed away at seventeen. She had an abnormally high level of arsenic in her blood. So does Mercedes’s remaining child, Susan, who walks into the nearly empty living room in the family’s house in La Oroya, Peru. Susan shows me mysterious white blotches on her face. Clutching a stack of medical records, Mercedes bursts into tears.
 
The smokestack belongs to Doe Run Peru, an affiliate of the St. Louis-based Doe Run Resources Corporation. Tall, wide, and set against the backdrop of a pallid mountainside in the central sierra, the smelter sits less than a half mile from La Oroya’s Old Town, on the banks of the Mantaro River. The smelter processes lead, copper, and zinc extracted from mines in the mineral-rich mountains nearby. The smokestack pumps lead, arsenic, and sulfur dioxide-filled gases into the air. Some mornings, when cold temperatures trap its discharge in the valley, white smoke engulfs the entire town. The smoke inflames eyes and burns throats. Chronic coughs and head aches return. People try to stay inside, and those who can’t cover their mouths with scarves and sweaters.
 
Last year, the level of lead in La Oroya’s air was more than six times higher than international air quality standards, according to Peru’s ministry of health. Nearly all children under six years of age in La Oroya Antigua had blood lead levels above ten micrograms per deciliter of blood, the acceptable limit set by the World Health Organization. The effects of lead exposure range from headaches and learning impairment to seizures, comas, and death. Children are most susceptible. The Blacksmith Institute, a New York-based environmental advocacy group, has deemed La Oroya one of the world’s ten most-polluted places, a list that includes Chernobyl.
 
“What do I do? They’re a rich, multimillionaire company, and I’m a poor woman,” Mercedes says. “Four hundred workers wanted to burn my house. They threatened to disappear my daughter, to kill my husband. The whole town asked me why I hated the company. For going out and telling the truth about my children, they’ve threatened me with death.”
 
There is no united front of residents turning against Doe Run. The city of 35,000 is poor, and the majority of people are directly or indirectly dependent on the smelter for their paychecks. This dynamic pits staunch supporters of the company, who are afraid that they will lose their jobs if they speak out, against those willing to admit they are fed up with their contaminated lives.
 
I seek out Mercedes’s cousin who lives across town. Rocio Guadalupe Mejia, who leads the community group Mercedes says threatened her, does not invite me into her house. Instead, we sit on a concrete bench facing the Old Town’s main plaza. She calls Mercedes a “liar” and insists her daughter’s death was caused by a simple skin disease rather than by lead poisoning.
 
She says it’s unrtue that the smokestack still causes health problems. Children like her own son, she says, who once had high a blood-lead level, are lowering their levels through hygiene and nutrition programs sponsored by Doe Run. Rocio’s daughter is at the top of her third grade class, she is proud to report. “We don’t have sick children here,” she says.
 
Company employees are split on the issue. On a crisp Sunday afternoon, I spot dozens of local men who are crossing a wooden pedestrian bridge connecting Old Town with the smelter. They are wearing heavy leather and polyester jackets atop wool sweaters and collared shirts, paired with jeans or faded slacks and black leather shoes. Some sport Doe Run baseball caps. Most are rushing to punch in their timecard. Others stop to talk.
Oved Javier is an eighteen-year veteran at the plant who works in a unit that distributes water and vapor to the smelter. He has nothing but praise for Doe Run. He assures me that his three kids are healthy even though they have never had their blood-lead levels measured.
 
Soon, several union men gather around me and speak about what seems an altogether different company. Sosimo Galarza Vivanco, fifty-two, was one of over 300 workers dismissed by Doe Run in 2002. He says he was laid off for criticizing the company, but has since found his way back. Contamination is still the norm, he says. “What they are interested in is production, but without expenses, without cost.” When I ask him why other workers, like Javier, applaud Doe Run, he says, “They are afraid of complaining because if they complain they are kicked out the next day.”
 
The smelter is responsible for nearly a century of contamination in La Oroya. The now-defunct U.S. firm Cerro de Pasco Corporation opened the smelter in 1922. The state-run Centromin Peru took it over in the 1970s. Doe Run inherited its dirty legacy when it bought the complex in 1997. But Doe Run was also already well-known for pollution. At the time, it was under pressure at home for lead contamination from its smelter in Herculaneum, Missouri. Doe Run’s owner, a conglomerate called Renco Corp run by New York billionaire Ira Rennert, then saw another one of its companies sued by the U.S. Justice Department for dumping hazardous waste. Rennert himself is best known for his mansion in the Hamptons, the largest occupied residence in the U.S.
 
Doe Run tries to be a good corporate citizen in La Oroya. It has refurbished schools and planted trees. Cleaning crews sponsored by Doe Run and managed by the ministry of health bathe the concrete of every street in Old Town three times a week. When I catch up with a squad one morning, a dozen men donning orange fluorescent construction hats are lathering up a basketball court and a steep street flanked by vendors. Using thick-bristled brooms, they scrub the cement with chemical detergent and then rinse it off with a red hose connected to a large water truck. Used to the ritual, residents walk right past the soapy sidewalks. Women even grab brooms to sweep their own doorsteps.
 
Some residents say that since the street-cleaning campaign began, lead-filled powder no longer collects in the streets. Doe Run supporters also praise company-sponsored and government-run efforts to teach children to wash their hands—an attempt to reduce the odds of ingesting lead—as well as a day care program that busses some ninety children with high blood-lead levels away from La Oroya Antigua for eight hours a day.
 
But these are merely palliative measures. A 2005 report on La Oroya conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said programs like these wouldn’t do much good for children’s blood-lead levels unless emissions were reduced. “Public health education and hygiene efforts alone are of little benefit in reducing elevated blood levels,” the report says. Dr. Jesus Diaz, director of the ministry of health and Doe Run’s health care center in La Oroya, agrees. “The principal activity that has to be done in La Oroya is the control of emissions,” he tells me in his office.
 
Kaimer Dolmos, Doe Run’s upbeat public relations director in La Oroya, lauds the company’s efforts to clean up operations. Dolmos says Doe Run’s concern for the community is so esteemed that other Peruvian companies are imitating its social programs.
 
Even my forgetting to put on my seat belt is a chance for him to show me how safety conscious the company is. Asking me to buckle up, Dolmos tells me that a company campaign to raise awareness for seat belts has been embraced not just in La Oroya, but in all of Peru. “Why is the sacrifice made?” Dolmos asks. “Because we don’t want to harm the population. Health is first.”
 
After making the curvy four-hour trek down the mountain road that services La Oroya, I meet with Doe Run Peru’s chief spokesman, Victor Andres Belaunde, on the ninth floor of a tower in a Lima business district. I ask him in his wood-paneled office if he can acknowledge that company operations could be responsible for the health problems in La Oroya. “I cannot recognize that,” he replies. I repeat my question three more times and get the same answer. It is the previous owners’ lack of environmental concern that is the “one central issue which is the main source of contamination,” Belaunde says.
 
The government’s lack of comprehensive health studies on La Oroya makes it impossible to analyze the health effects of the smelter. The ministry of health’s commitment to the contamination problem is halfhearted, says Dr. Hugo Villa, a neurologist in La Oroya. Doe Run and the ministry of health say extensive tests conducted in Lima found no illnesses in twenty-five children from La Oroya who had high blood-lead levels. But Villa says those tests aren’t enough to prove anything. The government has not invested in qualified doctors or the epidemiological and statistical studies necessary to establish a direct link between the company’s emissions and the public health crisis.
 
But a research team from St. Louis University’s School of Public Health, which conducted a study in La Oroya in 2005, issued a damning report last year. It said that, “the evidence of elevated levels of lead, cadmium, arsenic and other toxic metals in the bodies of residents in study sites indicate that there is an extremely serious environmental heath crisis affecting La Oroya, especially vulnerable populations such as young children.”
 
As for the source of contamination itself, Doe Run claims that it has cut lead emissions by one-third since the start of this year, charting a course towards compliance with national standards. To its credit, the company says it has so far invested $116 million on environmental upgrades and appears to have completed most of the reforms stipulated in A ten-year cleanup plan required by the government—although the state has yet to release an audit on those developments. They include a new water treatment plant and the enclosing of the lead refinery to reduce emissions.
 
But, as it turns out, the upgrade that would cut dangerous emissions the most—a new sulfuric acid plant that would capture poisonous sulfur dioxide before it wafts onto the population—is the one commitment Doe Run has not lived up to. The company has upgraded one such plant, but has not yet built two new ones it has promised. It requested an extension from the ministry to do so, and got it in late 2004. That prompted Maria Chappuis, who was general director of mining at the energy and mines Ministry, to resign. Reached by phone at her home, she responds to Doe Run’s argument that it has completed most of the upgrades. “If I marry a man who said he hit his ex-wife three times a day and HE only hits me once a day—at breakfast—is it good? Doe Run knows perfectly well that they would be shut down if they were in the U.S.”
 
The government may also be letting Doe Run off the hook with lax audits, says Eliana Ames, legal advisor to congresswoman Gloria Ramos, who is urging President Alan Garcia to make the health situation in La Oroya a priority. Ames says government studies of air quality in La Oroya, designed to be a check on the company’s own numbers, are not independent because Doe Run itself pays for the tests. And she says the ministry of energy has little incentive to hold Doe Run accountable because it is also in charge of promoting private investment.
 
On my tour of the smelter, I am only shown the three areas where upgrades have occurred, even though I have asked to see more. When we near the zinc refinery’s upgraded sulfuric acid plant, I am suddenly overcome with a smell so noxious I have to strap on a company gas mask. Wilver Delgado, the engineer who is accompanying me, also grabs his mask, which has been dangling around his neck, and holds it up to his face. “There must still be a gas leak,” he says.       

In Asia-Pacific countries, the Pacific Ocean weather phenomenon El Niño is regarded with dread, which isn’t surprising, given that El Niño brings with it severe drought and heavy monsoons. The Japan Meteorological Agency’s announcement last month that El Niño emerged this spring and might last until autumn means that it’s officially time to worry again.

A precious few, too, might actually welcome its arrival. China's weather bureau expects the pattern to cause high temperatures in the north, setting companies that make air conditioners up for a boom year. Since 2004, the four best years for air conditioner sales in China coincided with El Niño.

This year, a Credit Suisse survey shows most manufacturers in China believe there is a strong chance of high temperatures this summer, and they expect a bump in sales as a result. So far in 2015, year-over-year sales have grown some 5 percent. A heat wave would clear out inventory and boost that figure toward double digits. (May 2015)


Horological History On Sale
 
This Thursday, more than two centuries of horological history will go under the hammer. The Sotheby’s Important Watches sale in New York will feature more than 250 timepieces dating back to 1780, including a rare 1951 Patek Philippe pink gold open-faced watch.

The piece depicts a map of North America and nearly two dozen musical automata created by Swiss artisans during the Industrial Revolution. Some of the items are expected to go for more than $1 million, including a “Singing Bird Scent Flask” automaton that was crafted by Swiss watchmakers Jacquet-Droz & Leschot.

The exquisite machine made for a Chinese buyer around 1785 is decorated with gold enamel and jewels and features a timepiece and articulated ivory bird whose song is played through a miniature six pipe organ.

Another highlight of the auction is a gold snuffbox from circa-1815 that is adorned with pearls and an enamel painting of a fortuneteller reading a palm. Inside there’s an automaton featuring a woman playing a harp, a man playing a lute, and a large timepiece.  (May 2015)


Spin-offs Take Off
 
Do spinoffs create value? Credit Suisse analysts looked at a series of 16 recent instances thereof in Australia and found that on average, spun-off companies – so-called “Newcos” – dramatically outperformed parent companies.

On average, two years after a spin-off, parent company returns were statistically equal to those of the market. But Newcos outperformed the market by an average 30 percent. That average jumps to almost 50 percent when excluding three companies in the study that ran into regulatory trouble. (Of course, that might be why they were spun off in the first place, so to be fair, call it 30 percent.)

The analysts hypothesize that new managers running Newcos are more motivated and able to focus more narrowly on operations than they did when part of a larger organization. The finding isn’t unique to Australia. Credit Suisse carried out a similar study in the U.S. two years ago and found that spin-offs performed more than 10 percent better than the S&P 500 beginning eight months after the separation.

But buyer, beware: Results obviously vary considerably. Two-year returns among Australian spin-offs had a standard deviation of about 53 percent, with the worst performer earning a relative return of negative 68 percent and the best beating the market by 127 percent.

First published in The Financialist