The Devil's Excrement

In another arbitrary act by the Chavez administration, the Ministry of Tourism today took over the concession of the Avila Magica cable car system, operated under concession by a local consortium. That consortium had a 30 year contract with the Government which was unilaterally rescinded by the Government in violation of the contract itself. There was no due process, no right to defense, the autocratic Government of Hugo Chavez did what it wanted without regards for the rule of law. There was no decision by a judge, no audience, no chance for the operators to defend themselves.

The cable car concession was given out nine years ago. At the time the system did not work and was completely replaced and rebuilt thanks to a credit of US$ 90 million by the company that rebuilt the system. The cable car was built in the 50’s but by the late 60’s it began having difficulties because of the lack of maintenance. One of the companies in the consortium trades in the Caracas Stock Exchange. The Minister said that the Government will not compensate the operator of the concession and that the operators actually owed money to the Government.

Another step by the robolution to guarantee no investment in the country by the private sector.

On his Sunday program Alo Presidente, attempted to manipulate the truth using his customary convoluted logic he uses for everything to try to show that Venezuela’s terrible performance at the Panamerican games in Brazil was actually a victory. His Chavezian argument suggested that Venezuela did better than arch-enemy the US because the number of medals per inhabitant was higher for Venezuelan than for the gringoes. Today Simon Bocanegra in Tal Cual takes Chavez to task with this fake news item on the issue:

International Olympic Committee adopts Chaz method by Simon Bocanegra in Tal Cual

Geneva.-The International Olympic Committe, following the recommendation made by the President of Venezuela, decided to adopt the novel method proposed by hos excellency for the calculation of sports medals. It immediately recalculated the medals from the Panamerican Games. The new standings changed radically the overall view of the games. The small islands
in the Caribbean of Antigua and Barbuda took the top place for the first time with 12.08 medals per one million inhabitants, defeating other continental sports powerhouses like Bahamas (6.19) and the Netherland Antilles (5.47). Cuba occupied the fourth place (5.24). The biggest disappointment was Venezuela which from the eight place it occupied under the old calculation method, fell to tenth place with the one proposed by its President with 0.37 medals per million inhabitants. Countries considered up to now as sports powerhouses in the Continent, such as Brazil. Mexico and Argentina, to which one should add Colombia, came in the last places overall.

The United States, that had been usurping first place in 13 out of the 15 Panamerican Games that have taken place, occupied the 12th. place, showing its mediocre standing in sports, masked up to now by an imperialistic calculation, which originates in the Greek empire and perfected later by the Roman Empire.

I was hoping last night’s silly post would be my only mention of Sean Penn’s irrelevant visit to Venezuela. But I could not pass up the opportunity to note that maybe Penn’s visit has something to do with the fact that Chavez and Penn were forever linked and joined last January when Hannity inducted Penn into his enemy of the state’s list, joining Chavez, Castro and Kim Il Sung and other practitioners or sympathizers of fascism. (Thanks D.!)

Let’s see: Sean Penn, Danny Glover and Harry Belafonte…

Are men stupid or what?

Venezuela
may be the only country where the underlying inflation goes up the highest in
one month and the Minister of Finance holds a press conference to tell the world
that economic policies are working and this can be seen in the inflation rate

As the June inflation rate dropped
to 0.5%, Minister Cabezas claimed
today that this showed that the policies implemented by his Ministry in
combination with the Central bank were having an effect. But in fact the drop in
the CPI for July is an artificial effect of the combination of one-time events:
the cut in the value added tax (VAT) rate from 11% to 9% and the drop in the
rates of telecom company CANTV, which led to a drop of 5.5% in communications
prices for the month of July. Remove these two factors and the true structural
inflation would be between 2.3% and 2.4%, the highest of any month so far this
year when these adjustments are taken into account.

Thus, it is not clear whether the
Minister is trying to lie or is simply ignorant or a combination of both.

What’s next?

Destroying the country’s yield curve?

Wait! He already did that!