The Devil's Excrement

Act Two: Deputy Manuel Villalba of Chavez’ PSUV party and to
top it all off, President of the Media committee of the Venezuelan National
Assembly, appears in
Globovision and denies not only the content, but even the existence of such
a draft.  Using the Chavista
language that we have grown accustomed to he says that those that promote such
news items like El Universal, El Nacional and Tal Cual “are trying to destabilize
the country, playing with fear and are disrespecting the intelligence of the
Venezuelan people”

But then there is the last and conclusive act:

Act Three: Minister of Telecommunications Socorro Hernandez
on the TV channel used to promote only Chavez paid by the taxpayers VTV, comes on and says that
the Bill does indeed exist and it will be submitted to the National assembly,
but “the versions that have circulated around (in the press) are drafts, but
are not the definitive version…”

Thus, Minister Hernandez is admitting that the drafts of the
Bill have contained articles allowing the President to cut off all information
to the Venezuelan population whenever he feels like it, i.e. allowing total
censorship. 

And here comes the hilarious part, the Minister says: “ the
law will be submitted to public consultation and I don’t think there are reasons for people to be anxious”

I guess the poor Minister must have been on vacation or at
the Olympics and missed the 26 Bills approved by her almighty boss, without consultation
and allowing unconstitutional actions as well as laws that contain articles rejected by the Venezuelan people in a
democratic referendum in December 2007.

But it is sufficient to see how the matter has been handled
with the 26 Bills, the secrecy with which it has been handled, the President of
the relevant committee of the National Assembly did not know about it, to be
not anxious, but extremely anxious about the future of Venezuela’s
telecommunications as well as its democracy democracy.

Because when Governments lie, hide information and use all
forms of deceit it is because they are trying something that you know is either
illegal or violates international treaties. In the case of the Chavez Government
we have seen this over and over again.

These people should realize that one day, they will have to
pay for their crimes. Or steal a lot of money to live in exile. 

And that my friends, will be Act Four.

Clearly, someone convinced the autocrat that there would be
a few medals, more than the country had ever obtained in its Olympic history. But it
was not to be, as Venezuela obtained a single bronze medal in Taekwondo, one
medal less than in Athens, despite twice as many athletes.

Sports authorities had convinced Chavez that Venezuela would
obtain at least five medals and he made quite a show of it, meeting with the
Olympic athletes twice before their departure and talking about it in his
Sunday variety show Alo Presidente.

Today, Chavez is calling those that claim Venezuela failed in Beijing,
pro-Yankees and is suggesting the athletes had a brilliant Olympic Games.  Meanwhile, the President of the
Venezuelan Olympic Committee is saying that Venezuela did not meet its goals
because refereeing went against the country. The only success, besides the medal,
according to this person was that we sent 109 athletes to the games, more than
twice the number Venezuela had ever sent to the Games.This is a silly way to look at it as the IOC has been trying to relax requirements so that more countries participate and Venezuela had 39 delegates in team sports like volleyball and softball.

The truth is that Venezuela should have done better if only
because in exchange for oil, Cuba has been sending trainers to this country for
eight years. Given the success of the Cuban in international sports, this
should have had some minimal impact, which should have been visible in Beijing.

I suspect that the bureaucratic nature of Venezuelan sports
is what hinders its development.  In fact, one of the delegates to the Olympics told Chavez today that
sports had too many managers. This is nothing new, it was happening before
Chavez came to power. What is new, is that Chavez’ profound dislike for the
public universities, has distanced the sporting structure of the country from
its most natural place to harvest good athletes. Not only that, but these same
universities have been strapped for money ever since Chavez came to power.

Perhaps sports officials in Venezuela should look critically
at where Venezuela excels and ask why. They may not like the answer, but it is
the truth: Success these days comes wherever the private sector lends a strong
hand, but I am sure Chavez will not like that answer. Venezuela’s success in
baseball, soccer, tennis and Taekwondo all originates in the private sector.

Taekwondo is a very interesting case; the country has won
two medals in the last two Olympics and two in the Barcelona Olympics when it
was an exhibition sport. Taekwondo began as a martial arts practice, taught at
private academies around the country and when the sport became Olympic one,
Venezuelan women had world quality status in it (I have yet to find an
explanation why it was the woman who took to the sport) As simple as that.

The mystery is why the revolution ahs not been successful at
sports. They have plowed some extra money and lots of new trainers to it. Why
hasn’t it worked? You may argue inefficiency, mismanagement and the like, but
there should have been an improvement even if only qualitative. But it is not
there. In the end it may be like Chavez’ housing program, where despite the announcements,
money and projects, the Chavez Government has been unable to coordinate
building more housing.

In fact, you would think that the whole patriotic, socialist
speech should have generated more enthusiasm for sports. But maybe the money is
just being spent in the wrong places. A revolution that does not want anyone to
excel may be the wrong drive for Olympic success.

So, we get more revolutionary propaganda, than revolutionary
gold. That seems to be the hallmark of the revolution.

Today, I paid attention to
this Central Bank press release on the same subject. The first thing it
says is that the balance of payments was positive to the tune of US$ 2.93
billion in the second quarter of 2008. That sounds ok at first sight.

However, the report says that oil exports in the quarter, in
which the average price of the Venezuelan oil basket was US$ 109.9, was US$ 28
billion. Of course, such a number only makes sense if Venezuela exported 2.7
million barrels of oil a day. This does not even fit with official numbers!

The problem is that all of this data is simply fudged. They
talk about exports, but don’t mention imports of oil. Venezuela consumes at
least 800,000 barrels of gasoline a day, but Venezuela does not produce such a
large amount. Thus, the reality is that Venezuela may be “exporting” 2.7
million barrels of oil, but Venezuela is not getting paid for that many and in
the end it has to also import to satisfy the local market.

In fact, that the numbers are fudged, can be seen in the
next paragraph on the “financial account”. After telling us the country exports
US$ 28 billion, the Central Bank tells us that there was a full US$ 11.1 billion
in a financial deficit, a full 39% of the “income” from imports, which
corresponds to “the increase in the oil credits given to foreign clients which
are not related to PDVSA”

What than means in plain language is that PDVSA is not
charging for a full 39% of its exports or 1.05 million barrels of oil a day.
Which I don’t believe either, it is simply too large a number. The fudging is
simply getting too absurd. We don’t give away so much. As simple as that.

But let’s look at this from a different point of view:

The Government claims Venezuela produces 3.3 million barrels
a day

The country consumes 800,000 barrels a day.

That only leaves 2.5 barrels a day for import, so the 2.7
million number given in the BCV report and calculated on the basis of the average
price of the Venezuelan oil basket in the second quarter has to be fake.

And so has to be the 11 billion in credits, we just don’t
give away so much oil.

It is just creative accounting. I am sure that these “credits”
hide the value of a lot of the gasoline imports of the country.

But we can “redo” my calculation using the final fudged numbers
given out by the Central Bank. The final numbers should be fine, they are harder to fake:

The Central Bank says that the surplus in the current
account was US$ 2.9 billion

The total for oil imports was US$ 28 billion. Thus, the “net”
surplus, including everything is only 10% of the amount from oil imports. Since
the average price for the quarter was US$ 109.9, then ten percent of this is
US$ 11, which says that if the price of oil dropped to US$ 98.9 per barrel, the
balance of payments will be negative!

Think about it, my very approximate number was too low!