There’s a new cynical perception among international investors that Brazil is becoming Argentina, and Argentina is becoming Venezuela. But these investors are starting to boycott all the so-called emerging markets, since nearly all of them are moving to the left, abandoning free-market principles, reverting to the bad old days of higher spending and taxing, inflating the money supply, accumulating large trade deficits and letting their currencies go to hell in a hand basket.

In other words, the emerging-market investment paradigm, or the BRIC model, may be over.