As Rafael Correa took office yesterday as the new president of Ecuador – with the likes of Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad looking on with glee – he vowed to move the country towards socialism and away from free-market policies that he argued have “devastated” his country. Correa came to his economic views in the traditional manner of Third World revolutionaries, through (mis)education at a Western university (in his case, receiving his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Illinois). Thus he lacks a sound grasp of economic principles, and even of definitions.

He is taking over a country that is hardly a bastion of free enterprise. Ecuador ranks 108th out of 157 countries in the just-released Index of Economic Freedom, by the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal. That’s far below the ranking of Latin American countries such as Uruguay (33), Panama (47), Mexico (49), Costa Rica (51), Peru (63), Guatemala (68), and Brazil (70). Apparently Correa aspires to be more like Venezuela (144) and Iran (150), oil-producing states that are earning (and squandering) lots of petro-cash at the moment but building little of economic value for the long run.

For his part, Ortega just regained power in a country that had risen to a 61st ranking in the index during years of leadership by centrist politicians. Nicaragua is about to see worse days.

By the way, among the most distressing news found in the otherwise-promising 2007 index data is that the bottom quarter of countries in economic freedom is dominated by African states. The highest-ranked country on the continent is Botswana at 38th. South Africa (52), Namibia (55), and Uganda (59) aren’t too bad off. But after that, it gets depressing.