The Devil's Excrement

(The bad thing about this Government is that one always expects the worst and one is always right)

While Venezuela’s economy continues to show distortions in basically every parameter of the economy, I never ceases to amaze me how little urgency the Government feels about fixing those problems. The last example of this is the foreign exchange system set up by the Venezuelan Central Bank. It has now been three months since the swap market was banned and about two since the Sitme was created and everyone agrees it is a dysfunctional system. Then El Nacional says that the Government will tweak this and that, create a New Market for public paper, allow the sale of other dollar denominated bonds and blah, blah, blah. But what impressed me the most was the ending: In two months.

So, you ste up a system, it does not work well and you are going to improve it in two months. What if what you do does not help either? Will they wait until January to fix it?

Absolutely nobody runs a business or a Government this way. If you detect a significant problem (shortages, lower economic activity, stupid policies, are important problems) you fix it today, or as soon as it can be implemented. Nothing that is being proposed can not be done by Monday.

But this represents a style. Almost a year ago, the first week in September 2009, The Government announced that it would announce 64 economic measures to get the economy growing. Well, I stopped counting at seven measures, because no more were announced, since then we have had four quarters if shrinking GDP and tye Government feels no urgency to change he slope, other than announce that next quarter GDP will actually go up YoY. Except it has been saying that for six quarters and nothing doing…

Some believe this simply reflects disagreements among Government officials. After all, Armando Leon, one of the few trained economists at the Venezuelan Central Bank said the other day Sitme is working fine, while the President of the Central Bank, a Mathematician, understands it does not work. Never thought I would agree with Merentes so much.

And this slowness at decision making is killing Venezuela and its economy. The Government has known for two years how putrid Pudreval was and but did not even want to do anything about it. Next week Venezuela will have to pay 1.5 billion dollars if a maturing bond and apparently two weeks ago the Government had not even thought about how it would go about paying it.

Running a country like this is simply unsafe. For a Government that switches political tactics at the speed of light and in unison according to what polls are saying, it is remarkable the tortoise speed they have at economic decision making.

Running the Venezuelan economy at this speed is certainly very unsafe.

A blog is only as good as its readers as demonstrated by the pictures below sent by JG, who took the trouble to go visit Playa Los Angeles and took pictures with his cell phone from approximate the same angles as those of FARC guerrilla member Carlos Marin Guarin, also known as “Pablito” and his girlfriend. The pictures speak for themselves. Thanks JG!

and the other side:

(En español aqui)

When Bruni noted in her blog Cuentos Intrascendentes, that to her the beach in which the FARC guerrilla “couple” was photographed, as presented by the Colombian Government at the OAS meeting,  enjoying a beer, was Playa Los Angeles in Vargas, I took a 10 second glance at the pictures and knew that it certainly was.

Contrast that with Venezuela’s Ambassador to the OAS Roy Chaderton, he of the oligarchic look, the polite manners, the educated style, even if he looked a little bit drunk or high, Chaderton, who is more traveled than me, having sucked off Venezuela’s diplomatic tit for some forty years, suggested that the FARC guerrillero was not in Venezuela, but in Santa Marta, Colombia, where I have never been. In classic liar attitude, which Chavismo has accustomed us to, he even dared and very daringly suggested that the beer was not even Polar, but some Colombian brew or another.

Well Roy, it is clear that you don’t even know where Playa Pantaleta (Panty Beach) or Playa Los Angeles is. Maybe you have been next door to both, at Club Camuri Grande, an oligarchic enclave,, but it is likely you never bothered to look to the right (Pantaleta) or to the left (Los Angeles). You are an oligarch for all times, the IVth. the Vth. and if we don’t stop you, you are likely to try to sneak yourself into the VIth.. But I will try to be there reminding everyone of the Esbirros and collaborators of the Vth.

But take a look Roy at the pictures of the guerrillero, Carlos Marin Guarin, as presented by Hoyos, we will look at his girlfriend later:

anyone that has ever been close to Playa Los Angeles knows that this is looking West from it. In fact, you can see the building right outside Puerto Azul whose name is Aguja Azul. Take a look at the map Roy:

See Roy, that square on the bottom right? That is where the guerrillero, Carlos Marin Guarin, is standing, that is Playa Los Angeles. The building you can see in the distance is the one called Aguja Azul, next to Puerto Azul, which I have encircled on the left. Aguja Azul is the one right north of the circle, which is hard to see in the google map. (Yes Roy, encircled in a circle, that is the way it works!)

In fact, if we look at the “guerrillera” or at the Guerrillero’s girlfriend, that I don’t know the precise details. This picture was taken by having Carlos turn around, face East, rather than West:

you can see the wall that separates you, Roy, at Camuri, from the people, at Playa Los Angeles. In fact, if you look on the left upper side of the picture:

That Roy, you should recognize, that is the structure under which boats are kept at Club Camuri Grande which I have indicated with a triangle in the map, where I am sure you have been, but those “palitos” to calm your nerves before the OAS meeting did not help.

By the way, Roy, if you are wondering where Playa Pantaleta is, (That name should intrigue any man worth his salt!), it’s on the other side behind the boats, past Camuri. On the right of the map, beyond the river.

Take a look next time you come to Venezuela, something you seldom do these days, you don’t like to mix with the “parvenu“.

But in any case, it took me a minute (or less) to figure all this out Roy, so much for “intelligence”, Cuban or otherwise. The robolution seems to have very little of it.

As for you Roy, well, you certainly look rather silly, just being benign…

(Note and picture added:

Many people have noted that I circled the wrong building and they are correct, I changed the text to reflect that, but here is the correct building:

The correct building es Aguja Azul the one above to the rght, which is almost vertical and leaves a shadow)

I have not written about the World Cup, but I could not resist.

Uruguayan authorities expressed their concern that President Chavez would back their country´s team before Wednesday¨. ¨Given his track record so far, we can´t help but be concerned that he will decide to back our team and say it publicly like he did with Brazil and Argentina¨.  After Brazil was eliminated Chavez said that Argentina would socre all of the goals that Brazil did not. Argeintina failed to score against Germany.

Meanwhile, Mick Jagger said that Chavez can not beat his unquestionable record of backing losers at each stage of the Cup. ¨His record is not as unquestionable like mine. He was wishy washy at the beginning, it was not clear if he was backing Brazil or Maradona, pardon me, Argentina, in the first few stages of the Cup. We will see, I am not backing Uruguay, thus, we will know who is really bad luck after this stage of the Cup¨

Orders of magnitude continue to get this Government into trouble. I could not believe it when I heard Minister of Energy and Oil Rafael Ramirez say today that the oil spill in Lake Maracaibo is far from the environmental disaster of the one caused by BP in the Gulf of Mexico. I could not find the link, so I went into Bloomberg and copied it, just  so you make sure I am not BSing you:

So, Ramirez says that the 8,000 barrels being leaked or spilled are not a disaster like the Gulf and , as usual, they are the fault of the private oil companies that came before his time. Something the Prosecutor fully agrees with. Amazing!

Go figure!

But let’s put this into perspective. The US Government estimates that from 35,000 to 60,000 barrels of oil are spilling from the Macondo well disaster into the Gulf of Mexico which looks like this in Google Earth:

but on the same scale, Lake Maracaibo looks like this:

Now, spilling 8,000 barrels a day of oil into the bottom picture of Lake Maracaibo would seem to be as much of a disaster as spilling 60,000 barrels a day into the top picture, no?

In fact, according to Wikianswers, the Gulf of Mexico has an area of 615,000 square miles, so that in the worst case scenario the BP spill corresponds to 0.097 barrels spilled per square mile every single day.

In contrast, Lake Maracaibo, according to the same Wikianswers is 5,130 square miles in size, which corresponds to the spill that ramirez thins is irrelevant to 1.56 barrels of oil per square mile being dumped, spilled or leaked per day. Even worse, Lake Maracaibo is an enclosure, while the Gulf is open to the seas, which should dilute the effects of the spill.

Thus, the statement about this spill not being a disaster is another irresponsible statement by Ramirez, who has oil spills, rotten food and suitcases bounce off his cynical and Teflonic face almost daily.

But orders of magnitude don’t lie, per unit of area, the spill into Lake Maracaibo is 16 (sixteen times) denser than the one in the Gulf of Mexico.

But hey, maybe they can take advantage of it and dump some rotten food into Lake Maracaibo and mix it with the oil. Who would notice?

Or who would report anyway?