tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5181936002477690850.post4304221679761568076..comments2023-11-07T04:53:01.453-08:00Comments on Dispatches from the United States of Mordor: Dishonesty, Omissions and Lies in Reporting on the Venezuelan Economic CrisisGerthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07752117708821629614noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5181936002477690850.post-15023296001644598112019-02-12T11:21:24.115-08:002019-02-12T11:21:24.115-08:00...and "currency manipulation." How doe......and "currency manipulation." How does one achieve a 1,000,000% + inflation rate?-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16745768408538827278noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5181936002477690850.post-13412149102435029652019-02-12T08:57:03.169-08:002019-02-12T08:57:03.169-08:00Funny how an article in Foreign Policy manages to ...Funny how an article in <i>Foreign Policy</i> manages to studiously avoid the word 'sanctions'...Gerthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07752117708821629614noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5181936002477690850.post-25064326201606463672019-02-12T05:27:06.101-08:002019-02-12T05:27:06.101-08:00As for oil production... why don't you show wh...As for oil production... why don't you show what it was <a href="https://www.valuewalk.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Venezuela-1.jpg" rel="nofollow">when Chavez took over</a>...Inspector AIPachttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16041712590226137962noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5181936002477690850.post-40086669902843871962019-02-12T05:16:54.772-08:002019-02-12T05:16:54.772-08:00By the mid-1990s, international firms, including C...<i>By the mid-1990s, international firms, including Chevron and ConocoPhillips, had moved back into the country and were hard at work unlocking Venezuela’s massive heavy oil deposits. But in 1998, the price of oil collapsed again, dipping to $10 a barrel. The impact on Venezuela — which, like many oil-rich countries, had never managed to diversify its economy despite a bout of reform efforts in the 1970s — was severe, given that petroleum exports then represented about one-third of the state’s revenues. Then along came Chávez, a former army lieutenant colonel who’d served time in prison for an abortive coup attempt in 1992. He won the 1998 presidential election on the promise to reshape and restore Venezuela’s reeling economy.<br /><br /> Among his first targets: the technocrats at PDVSA, especially the company’s deeply knowledgeable then-chairman and CEO, Luis Giusti, who’d led the drive to reopen the country’s oil sector. “Chávez saw Giusti as a potential rival. In fact, Chávez used the slogan ‘PDVSA is part of a state within a state,’” said Juan Fernández, a former PDVSA manager who would also fall afoul of the strongman. Giusti, alarmed by Chávez’s plans for the oil company, resigned just as he took office in early 1999; he was then replaced by a revolving cast of political appointees. The departure of Giusti, who’d spent three decades in the Venezuelan oil business and had won international plaudits for overhauling and modernizing the state-run firm since taking over in 1994, would prove to be bad news for PDVSA’s fortunes.<br /><br /> Chávez’s goal was to exert control of PDVSA and maximize its revenue, which he needed to fund his socialist agenda. But achieving the latter required cooperating with the rest of OPEC, which, as in the 1980s, wanted to cut production in order to raise prices. The problem for Chávez was that many of the PDVSA’s then-managers wanted to increaseproduction, by continuing the development of Venezuela’s technically challenging heavy oil fields. To do so, they needed to reinvest more of the company’s earnings rather than hand them all over to the government. So the managers had to go.<br /><br /> Unfortunately for Venezuela, Chávez — like many of the people he appointed to run PDVSA — knew nothing about the business that was so central to the country’s prosperity. “He was ignorant about everything to do with oil, everything to do with geology, engineering, the economics of oil,” said Pedro Burelli, a former PDVSA board member who left the company when Chávez took power. “His was a completely encyclopedic ignorance."<br /><br /> But Chávez wasn’t the type to let that stop him. In 2001, the former paratrooper pushed through a new energy law that jacked up the royalties foreign oil firms would have to pay the government. It also mandated that PDVSA would lead all new oil exploration and production; foreign firms could only hold minority stakes in whatever partnerships they struck with the national company.<br /><br /> In 2002, Chávez took two more steps to turn the once-proud PDVSA into his private preserve. First, he installed a new president, Gastón Parra Luzardo, a leftist economics professor who was a fierce opponent of opening the industry to more private investment. Then, in April, he went on live television to humiliate and fire a handful of PDVSA managers, replacing them with political hacks. Together, the moves sparked violent public protests, which turned into a coup attempt against Chávez.<br /><br /></i><br /><br />More <a href="http://speedyggggs.blogspot.com/2019/02/how-venezuela-struck-it-poor.html" rel="nofollow">here</a>.Inspector AIPachttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16041712590226137962noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5181936002477690850.post-8980027902847489512019-02-12T05:05:49.178-08:002019-02-12T05:05:49.178-08:00Notice any "trends" here?
In 2001, ther...Notice any "trends" here?<br /><br /><i>In 2001, there were 500 independent radio stations in Venezuela and only 1 state-sanctioned station.[19] <br /><br />On August 1 of 2009, Diosdado Cabello, then director of CONATEL, ordered the intervention of 32 radio and 2 television stations, decision that received the name of Radiocide. <br /><br />In 2017, the Maduro government removed 46 radio stations from the air according to the National Union of Workers of the Press.</i><br /><br />You can't build a business when the government expropriates your profits and shuts you down unless your costs exceed your expenses.Inspector AIPachttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16041712590226137962noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5181936002477690850.post-58107984545257002782019-02-12T05:00:47.899-08:002019-02-12T05:00:47.899-08:00Nice try. The so-called attempted coup in 2001 wa...Nice try. The so-called attempted coup in 2001 was caused by the Chavez government's complete economic destruction of the middle class, nationalization of industries, and attempts to regulate prices and ownership of factories and farms. It never recovered. The "talented tenth" simply emigrated.Inspector AIPachttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16041712590226137962noreply@blogger.com