November 30 - What is Behind the Plunge in Oil Prices; Turkey's Powerful Leader and its Foreign Policy at Odds with the U.S.; Venezuela's Shaky Economy Takes a Hit as Oil Prices Fall

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the plunge in oil prices following the recent OPEC meeting at which Russia, Iran, Nigeria and Venezuela were unable to get the Saudis and the Gulf States to agree on a cut in production to raise the price of oil. A leading expert and analyst on energy issues, Fadel Gheit, Senior Vice President for Oil and Gas Research with Oppenheimer and Company joins us to discuss the role of shale oil from “fracking” in creating the current glut of oil on the market and the coincidence that the governments the U.S. has problems with in, Russia, Iran and Venezuela, are all oil-dependent economies whose budgets are severely impacted by falling oil prices.

Part 2

Then we look into the Pope’s recent visit to Turkey as the first foreign head of state to visit the grandiose billion-dollar 1,000 room White Palace build by Turkey’s president, some suggest, to house Erdogan’s giant ego.Graham Fuller, the former Vice Chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA and the author of “Turkey and the Arab Spring: Leadership in the Middle East”, joins us to discuss Erdogan’s polarizing and authoritarian leadership of the “New Turkey”, an increasingly Islamist and nationalistic state which has refused to allow the U.S. access to a key airbase, calling into question Turkey’s membership of NATO, and is increasingly at odds with the U.S. over its strategy in Syria.

Part 3

Then finally we hear from Antonio Gonzales, the President of the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project, the largest and oldest non-partisan Latino voter participation organization with more than 14 million registrants in 2012. The president of the William C. Valasquez Institute, a leading thinktank that studies U.S.-Latin American Relations, he has just returned from Cuba and Venezuela and we let an update on the increasing factionalism within the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela as the government struggles to deal with rising crime and inflation and a shortage of foreign exchange due to falling oil prices which have dropped from $99 to $69 a barrel since June and are the source of 96% of Venezuela’s foreign exchange.