The Devil's Excrement

Thank you to all my readers who either wrote in the comments or an email to warn me about what a local rag had written about supposedly “US authorities investigating the violation of US laws for maintaining a campaign against the financial system in Venezuela” or something like that, which accused three blogs/webpages, including this one. This is the second time in a month that two similar publications publish such rubbish, which leads me to be believe it is either paid or planted.

While I despise the lack of ethics of these two rags and their reporters, I can not take it seriously, like some readers have suggested. Obviously, the US is not doing what the article says, but more importantly I have not done what it says. My track record is here in my blog. Everyone can see that I began writing about structured notes in 2008 and while the Chavez Government ordered banks to get rid of them, in the end it did not enforce its decision and allowed the notes to morph into a different animal. It was the Chavez Government that named the banks and those that got rid of them for real are still functioning, those that began “triangulating” with brokers and related companies to cover up their holes (some of which were new to the list) have been intervened.

Moreover, what I warned about was the panic created by shutting down banks that had been intervened. I said that was the wrong strategy. I was right, within a week the Government was announcing the reopening of the banks, even if it failed to recapitalize them. This means it is just pumping money into them.But reopening them calmed people down, even if all Venezuelans now have to pay for the incompetence and irresponsibility of the Chavez administration.

In addition I have not mentioned names at any point. In fact, the stupidity of the post in these rags is that Hugo Chavez on his program Alo Presidente was probably the person that did the most to unnerve depositors. After shutting down the first few banks, Chavez said on national TV that he “knew there were more banks in trouble” and he was “following them” going as far as practically naming the owner of one bank and mentioning a related business this person owns.

And you definitely can’t compare Chavez’ audience to mine. So, I prefer to spend my time reading in the New York Times about our now famous Bipolar Capybara, worry about the fact that 500,000 new Venezuelans are born every year and that the Government uses 48% of the country’s electricity. I can also spend more time taking pictures of my orchids for my orchid blog like the one above, which lately I have neglected. Those are certainly a better use of my time that suing these rags for defamation or asking that my reply to them be published.

As  have said before, I will continue blogging as long as I can, I am not a brave or daring person, if I ever feel truly threatened, I will see what I will do.

It just ain’t worth it!

P.S.: Coincidentally I was away this weekend without internet or computer, thus I was able to read the comments Friday morning as I left, but not write this post until tonight. Thanks to all that sent messages again!