The Devil's Excrement

.
A picture is worth 10,000 words: The graph above shows the growth of the monetary liquidity (M2) in pink during 2006 (up 48%) and compares it with international reserves. (up 14.8%). This is good old fashioned irresponsible money printing at its best, unless oil shoots up, this means a devaluation is coming and could be bad.

Once in while there are good news:

–Venezuelan baseball pitcher Johan Santana, who plays for the Minnesota twins, won the Cy Young award in the AL unanimously for the second time (award and unanimously) in his short career. Santana is only 27 and comes from humble origins in the Andes region of Venezuela. Rags to riches success story, the best of the best. Great story! Let’s hope the autocrat’s plan to eliminate private sports does not destroy these type of feats in the future.Hopefully he will not even have a chance to try.

–Albero Barrera, whom I know and have translated in this blog, won the Herralde award for novels.Barrera’s book “La Enfermedad” (The Illness) will be published by the end of the month. He is part of a new generations of novelists from Venezuela who has thrived under the autocracy, as financing for writers has disappeared in the last few years. It is somewhat of a puzzle that a Government with no intellectuals that has promoted “popular” culture, is at the same time seeing novelists like Barrera, and Federico Vegas in “Faulke” and many others, thrive.

–I had never understood why the “new” PDVSA completely eliminated the vehicle Natural Gas plan in Venezuela. Given the size of the gasoline subsidy (More than US$ 12 billion a year), which mostly goes to the middle class and higher, natural gas made perfect sense for Venezuela. Despite this, in 2000 the Chavez administration did away with it, without explaining the reasons. Today it is being revived as 2,500 Kms. of cars were added this year to Venezuelan roads, thanks to the gasoline and car subsidy (via official US$ for the importation of cars). This makes sense, I am glad somebody in Government thought of bringing it back. As I have said before, if the Government paid for the conversion kit, it would save money within a year by freeing gasoline prices to the FOB price.It used to take me eight minutes to drive to work, it takes me at east half an hour and sometime san hour to get to work these days. (Presidential candidate Claudio Fermin had this in his Government plan in 1993, he wanted to have the Government pay for everyone’s kit conversion and float gasoline prices.)

I certainly hope Chavez, Lucas Rincon and those in charge on April 11 2002, are monitoring the news from Mexico that links the highest levels of power to the massacres of protestors in 1968 as well as other crimes and human rights violations in that country..

If not next year, even in 2021, we can convict those guilty of these crimes.

Mexico certainly has shown to be light years ahead of Venezuela.There are no untouchables there, will there be here?

I am
absolutely confounded by the numbers coming out of the pollsters. Over the
years I had developed a list of the “good” and the “bad”
pollsters and results tended to bunch up for those that had passed the test of
time.

Not this time. Without delving too much on the specific numbers, there is a 21%
difference between what I consider the good pollsters, which is truly
unexplainable on the basis of techniques, no matter whether you want to argue
fear, sloppy sampling and the like. To top it all of, we find ourselves in the
midst of a poll war where obscure, unknown and non-existent pollsters are now
supposed to be experts on Venezuela.

Add to this that in the past the one variable that even the good pollsters
could not get right was abstention and I do not believe anyone has handle on
who is ahead and by how much. I do try to remind myself of what pollster
Segundo Cazalis, now deceased, used to tell me: Watch the slopes and the
trends, not the levels.

Finally, I also have to wonder where Chavez’ favorite pollster Seijas is? Why
his silence” Where is he? Why no numbers from him this time around, if
everyone knows he is working hard looking at this election?

All of this comes to mind because while Rosales seems to want to emphasize that
he will win, the Government seems to be the one launching the largest number of
obscure numbers, while being very aggressive about not allowing protests on
Dec. 3d.I mean, if you want a fake number, how about Diosdado Cabello saying
tonight that the floor for Chavez in this election will be the 70% level
reached in the 2004 recall referendum.

Hello? It’s OK to lie about the polls, but why does he have to come and lie
about the past, faking a number that did not reach
60%, let alone 70%? Is this simple an attempt at manipulation? Driving away
voters? Discouraging the opposition? Or is it simply trying to create an aura
of invincibility so that no matter what happens on Dec. 3d., they can
convincingly argue that Chavez won?

I just don’t know, but I do have to take offense at Chavez’ words He.
Both Chavez and his VP Jose Vicente Rangel, keep talking about conspiracies and
destabilizations, while the only ones that are calling for institutions to back
only one side are precisely Chavez and his cohorts. All I have heard Rosales
say is that if he wins he will make sure he collects his victory by making sure
the audit is preformed, all votes are counted and no tricks are made. And he
has asked the military to be neutral and institutional, making sure the will of
the people and democracy are respected.

Chavez does not seem to be saying the same thing, forgetting about his brief
love posture and once again being divisive and intolerant. Chavez threatens to
shut down TV stations that allow messages of hate to be broadcast. Then the
first thing all TV stations should do is to stop broadcasting his speeches full
of hate, vile and disrespect for the citizens of Venezuela
that do not agree with him. And when he says that the “Bolivarian
democracy” is to be defended I have to wonder if that is some special
class of democracy, different that the one in which I live in. Because, if on
Dec. 3d. there is an attempt not to audit the 54% of votes promised, or to
connect the voting machines before the tally sheet has been printed, I will be
the first one to go out and defend democracy and the rights of those that voted
that day.

And Chavez broadcasts his hate when he says the Armed Forces are “roja,
rojita” and that anyone that is not is not a patriot, as if he had the
monopoly on patriotism, while all he has done since 1992 is destroy people,
lives and the democratic structure of this country only to satisfy his own
personal ambitions.

And he goes as far as defending the repressive military plans he wanted to
activate on April 11th. 2002 and which the military high command refused to
obey. The infamous Plan Avila, which has been cataloged by human right groups
as in violation of basic human rights principles. That is what Chavez defends today.
Had Plan Avila been activated, we would be talking about hundreds of dead
people that day, rather than the 22 that Chavez is directly responsible for and
should one day be tried for his role in those deaths. And much like that April,
Chavez seems ready to try again.

And while Chavez calls on his people to be vigilant, to fight for their
revolution, Rosales’ campaign coordinator Omar Barboza asks his supporters not
be provoked, to be respectful and friendly to the Armed Forces and to act in a
democratic and peaceful way. Contrast this with the statements by a General talking
about “violent change” or Chavez supporter Lina Ron, calling for
people to be ready and armed, which as far as I know has never been confr9onted
by Chavez, Rangel or any other Government figure.

As I said at the beginning, I can’t rationally say Rosales is ahead today, the
evidence is murky, simply messed up, but Chavez renewed intolerance and
aggressiveness indicates to me he is concerned that his mandate will be over on
Dec. 4th. or that he may have to pull another dirty trick to keep it.

One thing is clear, no one that believes in democracy and what it implies in
terms of respect for others and the peace and dialogue that Chavez asked for
the other day, would even consider saying what the obscene autocrat said today.

His performance is enough to justify getting rid of him on Dec. 3d.

Sad when local cartoons portray President Lula this way, such is the image of the progressive left in L.A., when they are willing to back a militaristic autocrat who cares little for his people.

“And what do you want me to say? He is leaving? He is leaving? He is leaving?”

No, we Venezuelans expected you to shut up on our internal matters, no matter how much money yoru country may get from the robolution

There are
so many ignorant fools in this Government; sometimes I just don’t have the time to write
about all of their stupidity. They are not only foolish, but they seem to want
to proclaim it and do it very, very loudly.

Two of
them have really said stupid things today about economics and finance. That
would be all right in a country where financial culture is so low, but these
guys are supposed to be among the best Chavista “experts” on such matters.

The first
one was Deputy Elvis Amoroso, whose name literally translates as Elvis Loving. You
see, Mr., Amoroso was criticizing
today that banks purchased bonds in the Bono del Sur offering at the
official exchange rate and were selling them in the parallel market at a much
higher exchange rate, making them a lot of money. He thought this should be
penalized. Maybe he did not get as much of the bond as he wanted, like everyone  else.

You see
this is ironic because Mr. Amoroso has in his short list of revolutionary credits,
being the father, author and promoter of the “Illicit Exchange Law” which
penalized foreign exchange transactions. The problem is that either Mr. Amoroso
does not remember what he put in it, or he simply never understood it well. The
Bill prohibited all foreign exchange transactions, BUT it also exempted securities transactions from it. And all
the Government is doing is selling securities, which can be purchased in local
currency and traded, sold, swapped or exchanged for other securities or in
foreign currency. It’s perfectly legal. It was Mr. Amoroso that put it in his
now infamous Bill, allowing the swap market and the CANTV ADR market.

But
Amoroso, the reincarnate, goes even further, and questions the officials of the
Ministry of Finance who “cowardly or as accomplices” lend themselves to these
deals.

Maybe he
means, they lend themselves to these deals, the same way he promoted a Bill he
never understood just to be in the limelight? Maybe these “officials” are as
ignorant as he is in these matters. But are they?

You
have to wonder where this revolutionary fool was in the last 14 months while
the Ministry of Finance purchased US$ 3.8 billion in Argentinean bonds, which
it quickly turned around and sold to the banks at Bs. 2300-2400 per US$, well
below the parallel exchange rate, sans
commission, in a very non-transparent, discretionary and private way, which the
banks then turned around and sold in the same parallel market during the last
year and since the Bill he promoted was approved by the “Roja, Rojita…”
National Assembly. Did he not know what was happening? Was he aware of the
numerous public charges about the multimillion (hundred million at that!)
corruption surrounding the distribution and allocation of these bonds? He
should read Tal Cual once in a while, the Financial Times or this blog, where
all the details have been exposed in all their glory. Many people have actually become millionaires
from this, dear Elvis!

If he is
not stupid, then it had to be out of ignorance, which simply shows this country
is being run by a bunch of fools, even
if they have a Bachelor’s degree in Economics.

But even
Mr. Amoroso’s statements demonstrate ignorance or maybe he did not go to class
the day securities were defined, the
statements by the Head of the Finance Committee of the National Assembly Rodrigo
Cabeza are worse. Much worse, because he is not simply an Economist, he is a Professor of Economics at the University of Zulia,
where the laws of Economics are as valid as they are in Austria or let’s say Washington D.C.
Even if the revolution wants to suspend them.

And what
Cabeza, who should have his last name examined, said
today was equally preposterous: “The increase in the price of the dollar
should not generate fear; it will not hurt the economy in the rest of this year
or in 2007”. I guess he means, unless it keeps going up. Which you can be sure
it will.

Well,
given that total imports will be US$ 30 billion in 2006 and that the exchange
control office only approved US$ 24 billion, I think there is certainly something
to worry about if the parallel market jumps up by 20-30%. Cabeza also said that
the Government was issuing debt to reduce debt. Hello? The recent issuing of
US$ 1 billion was not used to reduce debt at all and it was the failure of that
issue that drove the parallel rate up sharply last week, settling around US$
3200 per US$ today. For now… to use a very well known and revolutionary phrase.

Cabeza is
not worried, maybe because he does not know (or care?) that the Government
spent, only in the first three weeks of November, the incredible amount of US$ 6.8 billion. That
is mostly new money that will continue flooding the financial system and
pressuring the “artificial exchange rate” that Cabeza thinks is not a problem.

But as I explained
the other night, this is simply a time bomb, a crisis waiting to happen and if
those in charge are such fools, the big bang will certainly occur sooner rather
than later.

The
only one that seems to “get it” is Central Bank Director Domingo Maza
Zabala, considered to be the “father of
modern Venezuelan economics” thanks to a book he wrote in the 50’s and
educating a number of generations of the country’s economists. Maza said the
Bono del Sur created frustration from people trying to get a higher return in
this inflationary environment and that there is a significant increase in
monetary liquidity due to end of the year factors.

I guess he
has had little competition from other economists since the 50’s, at least among
those that support President Chavez, and his “modern” economics of that era,
seem to be more up to date than the ignorant and foolish statements by those in
charge of the economy in the stupid and certainly very foolish revolution.

Act I.-Two
days ago former Presidential candidate Roberto Smith, not exactly my favorite
person in the world, gave a press
conference to denounce a racket at the country’s customs by which private
companies would pay “intermediaries”, some of them former workers of the tax
office Seniat, so that they would be “exonerated” from paying custom duties. Smith
presented e-mails, documents and bank statements showing that at least three
people, all former workers of Seniat had managed to gain about US$ 1 million (at
the latest parallel rate) in commissions, by bilking the country some US$ 3
million.

Act II. – Yesterday,
the Superintendent of Taxes Vielma Mora, gave an improvised press conference in
the morning, standing in front of a huge painting of Hugo Chavez, in which he
was clearly furious at Smith, saying he did not believe the “charges”,
explicitly saying “we do not give credit to the charges”, “this is just a
campaign to damage the Government, the revolution and the private sector”, “emails
prove nothing”. Vielma Mora was arrogant, saying it was not his fault if he had
qualified among the top 100 most efficient managers in the country and saying
that he had a “collection of false charges” and then he called Rosales “the
losing candidate in the upcoming election” something that had no place at the
press conference.

Vielma
added that the tax office was investigating the opposition candidate, to see
where all his funds were coming from, but he failed to say whether he was investigating
Hugo Chavez, who is outspending Rosales 12 to 1, all with public funds. I guess
that is why he does not need to investigate him, he knows where the money is
coming from. Such is life in the cynical revolution.

At various
times during his very political press conference, Vielma Mora called Chavez “my
only boss”, defended the revolution and tried to paint the whole thing as an
attack on the private sector, even inviting some of the leaders of the
companies accused of corruption to be present at the press conference

Act III. A
much different Vielma Mora showed up at a different press conference in the
afternoon, when Smith showed up at Seniat headquarters, to present Vielma Mora
with folders and folders with all of the evidence he had found. In one e-mail,
one of those accused by Smith actually said to one of his partners that the
commission was not “great”(using a popular saying “No es lapa pero se come”)
at only US$ 100,000.

But it was
at this point that Vielma Mora did something that absolutely made my blood
boil: Someone handed him three pieces of paper and Vielma Mora with a staright
face proceeded to say on National TV,
that someone at his office had the Chavez/Tascon/Maisanta
list checked and all three people being accused by Smith “are not
Bolivarian, as they all signed the petition to recall President Chavez in 2004”.

Thus, this
fascist Superintendent of Taxes had no other bright idea but to go and have the
corrupt checked to determine their revolutionary purity! He is so accustomed to
discriminating, to use what Ana
Julia Jatar has called the XXIst Century Apartheid in her recent book, to
differentiate Venezuelans into two new classes corrupt Bolivarians and the rest
of the corrupt! How sick can you get.

Thus, we
see a new use for this abominable list, which I have described extensively in detail
here,
and Daniel ahas reviewed the details of the movie “The List” here,
with private testimonies of those fired and abused by this cynical Government. All
of this demonstrates how the use of this list, which we imagine is being
updated constantly, has become a formal policy of the Venezuelan State: Anyone
that dared to sign against allmighty Hugo Chavez is to be excluded from getting jobs,
from getting aid, from even getting a passport (My case) and if he holds a
Government position, he is to be fired, excluded and treated as a second, if
not third, class citizen. You can be corrupt and Bolivarian, but in this new interpretation,
it is much worse to be corrupt and to have signed against Chavez.

The frame
of mind of these people is simply scary and unbelievable. They think nothing of
saying they are using the list and discriminating on National TV. They think
nothing of pledging allegiance to the Supreme Being Hugo Chavez. To Hell with
corruption, if it was done by an enemy of the Government, what else could you
expect? That was not the point and Vielma never seemed to realize that all of
the corruption was taking place under his “efficient” and “Bolivarian” management,
but he appeared not to notice that it is his responsibility to stop corruption
at Seniat, whether Bolivarian or not.

Thus, the
corrupt join the ranks of the PDVSA workers (those that did not strike, but
were fired for signing the recall petition), FOGADE, Border Institute and the
42 Government institutions which Jatar has documented in her book used the
Chavez/Tascon/Maisanta list, even after the day Chavez said on National TV that
it was time to “bury” it. Some burial! Only today Veneconomy had a very good Editorial on the use of apartheid as official Government policy.

And some
people are naive enough to claim in the blogosphere that the Tascon list has
never been used against anyone! Fools!

Act IV.- The
Comptroller, that shadowy and almost invisible figure who gave a press
conference to deny that Venezuela was among the most corrupt countries in Latin
America (What else can you do when you are in charge of stopping corruption?) comes
out (can’t find link) and recriminates that Smith rather than holding a press
conference should have presented his charges to him…Oh! I see, like in Bolivar
2000, I guess that was never investigated, how about the agreement with Cuba, I
guess nothing there either, how about the cheap CD’s sold to a local broker in
a private transaction by the Ministry of Finance, not investigated either, US$
3 billion missing from FIEM, he probably does not recall that, how about the
CAEES sugar factory where US$ 200 million is missing, Argentinean bond…well,
you get the picture.

Act V. And
finally the day of cynical statements was crowned by the man in charge, Chavez himself,
the intolerant one, the promoter of the Tascon/Maisanta list, the man that
ordered a repressive military Plan on April 11^th. 2002 against those
that opposed him, the man that staged or helped stage two bloody coups in 1992,
the man that allows the hate and discrimination to take place day after day in
his Government, the one that loves to threaten us with his weapons and
soldiers, comes
out and calls on Venezuelans “to go out and build a country in peace,
without political distinctions!

Is Chavez
being cynical or does he simply have a plan to get rid of those that oppose
him, all of us, if he wins on Dec 3d.? After all the abuses and fascism, it may
well be the only way…

The Government is abusing its power and resources so much, that I ahve basically stopped posting them, but I thought I had to post this, the largest and thus most evident sign of such abuses I ahve found so far, a huge sign in front of the headquarters of the country’s petrochemical company Pequiven, saying that the company is also “Roja, Rojita…” (large sign on building at the right) like the autocrat has mandated. Shame on them!

This post is a translation of today’s
Editorial by Teodoro Petkoff in Tal Cual which I dedicate to all the fools that
still believe the Venezuelan Government is democratic or believes in fair play.
The fingerprint machines are in a very wide sense symbolic of all of the
perversions this Government stands for: They are used to violate people’s
rights, they are used to prey on people’s fears, they are used to intimidate
and abuse the people and stop their opinions and the existence of the
fingerprint machines in itself indicates that their purchase had to involve
some shady dealings, since over US$ 117 million were spent for a system that
can not and does not do what is supposed to do. I had always suspected that the
evil and perverse use of these machines was thought up after the fact, after someone
paid someone off to have the country purchase them. It all started with money
corruption and ended with the perverse violation of the people’s rights to
express themselves freely. This is what those that I dedicate this post to are
defending. Let it be their shame.

Dummy
Capturing Machines by Teodoro Petkoff in Tal Cual

If there was anything left to convince skeptics
that the affable fingerprint capturing machines do not fulfill any role other
than that of intimidation, it is the decision to suppress their use in 16 out
of 24 states of the country. Only in 8 states will they be put in use. If the
purpose that is attributed to them is that of guaranteeing that a voter can not
cast a ballot more than once, because the registration of his fingerprint would
stop him from voting again in one or more additional places to that one in
which he is registered, the suppression of the machines in two thirds of the
country negates their supposed intention. Thus, it is obvious that the only
real function of such devices is much different than what is being said.

Let’s suppose that there is an electoral
criminal, with triple ID cards, that manages to register in centers in Caracas, Vargas and
Aragua. He votes in Caracas,
very early, goes down to La Guaira, votes there and then he goes to Tejerias
(Aragua) and votes again. In fact, if he has four ID’s, he still has time to go
to Barquisimeto
and vote there. Neither in la Guaira, nor in Tejerias, nor in Barquisimeto there will be fingerprint
machines, thus it will be impossible to verify if this citizen already voted in
different places. All of this, of course, if our criminal managed to elude or
erase the stain left by the indelible ink in his index finger. The conclusion
is obvious: if those machines really have as a purpose to insure the principle
of “one voter, one vote”, it is not possible to achieve it without those toys
being present in each and ALL of the 12 thousand existing voting centers. Since
it was not set up that way, one is forced to conclude that its goal is not that
one.

What is the sense then, in leaving fingerprint
machines in 8 out of the 24 states? The most elementary common sense indicates
that if it is possible to eliminate them in 16 federal entities, it is because
they are also not needed in the remaining eight.

Why do they then keep them? Just by “coincidence” the eight
states that won the lottery of the fingerprint machines concentrate 48% of the
total voters and, by the way, almost all are the same ones where the vote of
the opposition has traditionally been, the highest. The conclusion falls out under
its own weight. Because there are still citizens that still believe the story that
the fingerprint capturing machines allow for the identification of the vote,
thus they need to scare them so that they don’t vote. Citizens that oppose the
Government and citizens that supposedly back it, but whose fidelity the bullies
of the regime are not sure of, and they need to make sure that the
beneficiaries of the misiones, public employees, members of cooperatives vote
“as they should” because, if they don’t, they are threatened with the fact that
they will be caught by the machines and will pay dearly for daring to do vote
that way.

The fingerprint
capturing machines are truly made only to capture dummies.

Dummy capturing tricks. Intimidating devices that play with the credibility and
the fear of people. If the CNE wants, truly, be, as its President said, “three
color, three little colors (those of the flag)”, it has to eliminate ALL the
fingerprint capturing machines and thus get rid of that factor of distortion of
the popular will which is the fear (unfounded, by the way) that the vote may
not be secret.