In November 2013, The Guardian, a British
newspaper, published an article titled “Sorry, Venezuela haters: this economy
is not the Greece of Latin America” by Mark Weisbrot, a well known American
economist who writes propaganda for the
Venezuelan regime.
In this world an American economist can write in a British newspaper that a large fraction of the Venezuelan people are “Venezuela
haters”, and get away with it.
On the other hand, we can remind communists
like Mark, who back that regime, that Maduro and the gang who surround him
aren´t “Venezuela”. They are a bunch of corrupt parasites, communist
psychopaths, narcogenerals, and other a55h0les.
The Venezuelan people go hungry and lack decent medical
care because Mark´s communist friends ruined the economy.
So let´s go over the Guardian article...here´s Mark´s opening paragraph:
“For more than a decade people opposed to the
government of Venezuela have argued that its economy would implode. ..... How frustrating it has been for them
to witness only two recessions: one directly caused by the opposition's oil
strike (December 2002-May 2003) and one brought on by the world recession (2009
and the first half of 2010).”
And now the clincher
“But how can a government with more than $90bn
in oil revenue end up with a balance-of-payments crisis? Well, the answer is:
it can't, and won't. ….. This government is not going to run out of dollars.”
The Guardian article
How? Maybe by being socialist, corrupt, and
imbeciles at the same time? Maybe because they don´t really have $90 billion in
oil revenue, because they fake their production figures, because oil prices
were bound to drop, and because they
destroyed national productive capacity? Where did you say you got your
economics degree? A bullshit university somewhere in Michigan?
The Guardian is quite famous for publishing
sick puppy material defending all sorts of dictatorships, idiots, human right
abusers, criminals, what have you. But the serial publishing of articles trying
to defend what has been going on in Venezuela is sickening.
There´s plenty being written about Venezuela´s
economy being in free fall. Maduro has
managed to give the country 70 % inflation and a recession at the same time.
His communist style interventions have caused food and medicine shortages, and today,
right now, store shelves are empty, and adult Venezuelans spend an enormous
amount of time standing in huge lines to buy what little is available. Below
I´ll leave you some links so you can see what goes on with your own eyes.
The horrible conditions in Venezuela aren´t
giving our dear Mr Weisbrot any pause. The
guy is now trying to defend Venezuela bonds, and managed to publish an article
in Fortune in late December 2014:
“Despite reports that Venezuela and Argentina
could default on their debts, the countries’ dollar-denominated bonds are
underpriced and unlikely to default, says Mark Weisbrot, co-founder of the
Center for Economic and Policy Research.”
I don´t have a crystal ball, I don´t know what
the oil price will do. But if I take the information Mark shows in his article,
I get the following:
Venezuela´s Exports in 2015: 584 million
barrels of oil
Oil Price (Venezuela´s oil fetches a lower
price due to its poor quality): $45 per barrel.
Oil Income: $26 billion (that´s 26 thousand
million US dollars).
Debt Payments: $10 billion (ditto)
Net Income: $16 billion
($44 per month per Venezuelan)
So there you are. Mark´s $90 billion is around $26 billion in 2015. The regime has $10 billion in bonds it´s supposed to pay off in 2015. So what is it going to be? Force 30 million Venezuelans to live on less than $1.50 a day? Venezuela has no economy left. There´s oil, and that´s about it. Hell, Venezuelan even imports natural gas and gasoline components! What are they going to do? Shoot half the people so the regime can survive?
That net
income, by the way, is before PDVSA pays foreign oil service companies like
Halliburton and Schlumberger, which provide a large portion of the muscle for
the Venezuelan oil industry and are known to be owed over $1 billion USD (did
you notice how capitalists help communist regimes survive?).
So I´m also starting to wonder...what about those foreign multinationals who are quietly working in Venezuela? The ones who didn´t really get nationalized and have been loaning money to the regime to keep their pyramid schemes alive a little longer? What is Chevron going to do? Total? Repsol? Will they keep on sitting, waiting patiently as their books gather imaginary payments and dividends they won´t ever get?
Venezuela doesn´t
produce much of anything
anymore. That country can´t even grow potatoes
they
can use to make decent chips!
Chavismo
has destroyed national agriculture and industry. Oil makes up about 96 % of national exports. And Venezuela
imports most of the food, medicine, and other products it consumes.
“Socialism
of the 21st Century” has
managed to destroy the Venezuelan economy, just like Castro destroyed the Cuban
economy. The difference is that Venezuela sits on huge oil, gas and mineral reserves, has enormous
hydroelectric potential, and had the ability to take on debt Cuba lacked when
Castro took over. This is why Maduro
and friends can be considered the planet´s biggest imbeciles.
Will Venezuela pay off on those bonds? Who
knows? What I do know is that investors who bought those bonds saw their price
crash in recent months. And the ones who hold those bonds are what I call very high risk takers.
So now I got a message for Mr Weisbrot:
Mark even if Maduro gets a few loans from Qatar
and other wise guys, I don´t think Venezuela is going to be safe for communism
in the long term. Those bonds may or may not default. But if Maduro doesn´t get
the cash to buy food in a hurry the people
are going to burn the Presidential palace down with Maduro inside. Seems to me
he either defaults or he faces an internal rebellion inside his own chavista
ranks. I wouldn´t be surprised if we saw Maduro take off for Cuba, to never
return, because his own generals will give him the boot.
Get the message? Whether your buddies hang on or lose power, it´s
very likely you have already been defeated.
As for the Guardian and other defenders of
human rights abuses and corruption, keep on publishing garbage if you wish.
Might as well document your lack of ethics for historians.
References
Food line videos
Economic
analysis video
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