The Devil's Excrement

(Este post en español aquí)

It was typical Hugo Chavez, caught red handed providing Swedish rocket launchers to the FARC guerrillas, he reacts by attempting to distract locally, throwing a temper tantrum, faking being mad at Colombia for “making up” the story and decides to “freeze” for the nth. time relations between the two countries. I really have not counted, but how many times has Chavez thrown these type of tantrums, acting like an unruly little kid (or a madman, you choose) and threatening to upset relations with the country’s second most important trading partner.

The amazing thing is that it should really be the other way around, it was the Venezuelan President who was caught threatening Colombians, because so far there has been no explanations as to how the rocket launchers happened to appear at the FARC camp. It is Venezuela that has some explaining to do in this matter, Sweden’s Government does not allow in its contracts for Venezuela to sell or export the weapons and they were after all under the care of the Venezuelan military (No smirks allowed!). Thus, it is Colombia that has the right to be outraged as the Venezuelan Government through negligence or on purpose, allowed weapons to fall in the hands of the FARC that could be used against the citizens of that country.

But one does not manage diplomatic relations a la Chavez, throwing temper tantrums, otherwise most of the the civilized world would have ended relations with most of its neighbors over petty bickering and jealousies. Instead Chavez freezes relations and in his immense ignorance on economic matters, threatens to substitute Colombian imports and irresponsibly threatens to nationalize Colombian companies in Venezuela. Just because you don’t mess with Hugo Chavez, even if it was him that actually messed with you.

And his threat to “substitute” Colombian imports just shows the Hugocentric view of the economy as well as his ignorance on economic matters. It is not Hugo that imports products from Colombia. It its hundreds of Colombian companies that have taken advantage of Chavez’ destruction of Venezuela’s manufacturing sector in the last ten years, filling the void by setting up local subsidiaries and plants. This has been accompanied by national and multinationals moving to the more friendly business environment of Colombia and exporting form there. Thus, Chavez, facing the possibility of shortages already, is between a rock and a hard place, in that it will not be so easy to substitute Colombian imports and nationalizing Colombian companies in Venezuela is as harebrained as you can get, as most of them have a very strong dependence to the home office in Colombia, without which they could not produce much.

But “Yo no fui” (It wasn’t me) Chavez does not fool anyone anymore. Everyone, both here and abroad, knows what he is about. He wants to be the tough guy, but always backs down when push comes to shove or Fidel tells him to do it. By tonight, Fidel will be advising his parody to cool it off, as the world still remembers his threats to go to Honduras with Zelaya (which Fidel stopped) as well as the sordid images of Maduro reliving his days as a driver, taking Zelaya to the border.

And once again, Hugo’s temper tantrums distracts him him from the real problem at hand of solving the problems for the average Venezuelan. Neither poverty, nor crime nor the well being of the poor Venezuelan has improved in ten years of sordid and verbose rule by Hugo Chavez, despite the largest windfall in the country’s history. As the economy runs into trouble, all Hugo can think is how to reign in Honduras, fight Colombia and pick a fight with Obama, now that old GW is no longer in the picture.

The problem is his credibility both home and abroad is going down and he does not seem to have the mind or will to deal with either. He still wants to to be the enfant terrible of Latin America, but most people are realizing that he is becoming the short-fused temper baby of the region.

Interestingly, in the upcoming days we should see more and more of the evidence from Colombia and Sweden, which once again will show what a spoiled brat Chavez has become, forcing him to either back down from his threats today or to really deliver on them, in which case it will be his Government and the people that he claims to love that would be hurt. Given his rush to be the top dog in this fight, expect him to back down, sooner rather later, and change course, as his has done so many times in the last ten  years.

(Este post en español aquí)

So, yesterday Colombia says that they have found rocket launchers sold by Europeans countries in the hands of the FARC. In fact, this had been around for a while before yesterdays announcement.

Colombia said in its press release that it had notified the countries selling the weapons and today Sweden, requested information from Venezuela as to how the SAAB racket launchers that General Rangel inspects in the picture above, could have ended up in the hands of the terrorist group.

Of course, the Venezuelan Government, caught red handed once again, helping the guerrilla group just refuses to acknowledge that this is the truth and Foreign Minister Maduro denounces it as a “brutal” campaign against Venezuela by Colombia. As usual, Maduro does not go to the crux of the matter, which is how the FARC got its hands on the rocket launchers. Because the Venezuelan Government has never reported that the weapons were missing.

But the Emperor has no clothes and there is too much evidence of Chavez’ support for the FARC, no matter what the Government and its cheer leading PSF’s may say. This is the typical Chavista behavior, first, deny everything, the “Yo no fui” (It was not me) attitude that we have seen so many times. Second, the “we are the victim” position and we are being attacked just because we are not liked for our political stance, and finally, even if there is serious evidence, never, ever address the evidence. The rocket launchers just “disappeared” and who says they were not stolen on purpose to make us look bad.

Maybe Insulza will look into it…yeah, yeah!!!

(Este post en español aquí)

I started fantasizing with the idea of what would happen to us if, all of a sudden, we were involved in two war conflicts at the same time: An invasion of Honduras and a war with our Colombian brothers. The first thing we would have to negotiate with the latter is that they do not interrupt the commercial exchange which benefits both of us.

We would have schedules for battles and hours for trading things at the border. During cease fires, logically, Venezuela soliders would visit Cúcuta to buy leather jackets for their girlfriends, mothers and sisters.

Fuel demand for Colombian tanks would promote a black market in which our National Guard, for sure, would have active participation to sell gasoline to the Colombian military  with a surcharge.

Of course, when we start selling our gasoline to Colombia, it will start creating shortages, as it has ussually happened, on our side, so that our tanks will be stuck, we will lose the war, the Gulf and Zulia State, which will become Colombian and Carmona will be its Governor.

Meanwhile, our Air Force would begin an intense bombing over Tegucigalpa and the Government palace of Micheletti. Our troops would invade Honduras via Nicaragua and our ships would block the coasts.

Probably due to the confusion, our Armed Forces would take over Belize, because nobody knows it is there and would anex it to Honduras. Once this initial confusion is overcome we go in Honduras and restore Zelaya, hat and all. We would have to dissolve immediately the Honduran Congress and its Supreme Court.

The OAS would intervene. but Chaderton would say that the coup is justified this time around, he takes all of the arguments of the previous sessions and turns them around…Insulza becomes convinced that there are good coups and bad coups.

Because surely all Government officials, leaders of PSUV and Deputies of the National Assembly will be setting an example in the first line of fire, they neglect Caracas and the fascist and coupster opposition takes advantage of the situation and stages a coup against Chávez. He looks for help in Honduras and spends in a single day eighty thousand dollars in red shirts in devastated Tegucigalpa. Zelaya gets pissed becaus of the expenses and because he wants to be above him and boss him around. He decides to expell him from the country, but because Venezuelan troops are in Honduras, Chavez stages a coup against Zelaya, has him shot and stays as President of Honduras, he calls Micheletti as Vice Presidente, breaks relations with venezuela and expells all of its diplomatic personnel from that country, while he says he will not tolerate the intrevention of any foreign power  in that country, least of all Venezuela with its petro-checkbook.

Chaderton returns to the OAS and convinces Insulza that Zelaya had to be removed from power with the argumenst that Micheletti had before.

This story will continue…

(Este post está en español aquí)

You know something is wrong in the Venezuelan economy, when the arrival of the ships carrying sugar is not only part of the news, but the Minister of Food feels like he has to make a big deal of it. Such are things under revolutionary Venezuela.

Because the shortages of sugar are essentially the Government’s fault. Recall that sugar was the first area where the revolution found the need to declare a priority. The Government first began bringing to Venezuela the same Cuban technicians who were responsible for the demise of the Cuban sugar industry. As if that was not enough, the Cuban Government sold us, like trinkets to the indians, their outdated sugar processing plants. For Hugo Chavez thsi was one of his first economic fixations, as Fidel took the money for the trinkets, child-Hugo told the world how self-sufficient we would become on sugar production.

But this was not enough, Chavez also had to go and start taking over the land where sugar cane is grown and divide it up and allow families to work small plots. Add to that the corruption surrounding the sugar processing plants (You may be wondering: Whatever happened to the US$ 500 million spent on CAEEZ,? Maybe by the end of the year it will be functional, only 5 years behind schedule) and you get the picture: Venezuela, despite the Chaves-cum-revolution in sugar, still produces only 60% of what we consume. Since by now the Government regulates and corners the importation of sugar, shortages are the norm, not the exception and they have been around since 2007. The reason is simple and it has become a vicious circle: With sugar under price controls, it is not interesting for everyone to compete with the Government in importing it. The Government and PDVSA buy and import it and then there is an over supply for a few months and then, the Government forgets it has to keep the flow coming, or forgets to pay for the last shipment. In a couple of months there are shortages, the Minsiter learns about them and the whole process begins again…

In fact, we are on the “high” on the milk cycle right now. PDVSA imported so much milk over a year ago, that the Government has reneged on contracts with Uruguayan producers and even has forgotten to pay them. The result is that right now nobody is worrying too much about importing milk. Wait a few months…

But the Minister of Food (or Feeding?) hails the arrival of 14,000 Tons of sugar last Wednesday  and says two more ships are coming, which he says proudly “will allow us to take care of possible shortages”

But, of course, it is not the Government’s fault. It’s your fault, or mine, or “the people” who have been hoarding it due to the “strong media campaign”. At least he admits at the end that there was that small matter of the Government not approving the foreign currency for importing sugar and you get the picture. There are shortages because we have all these stupid policies in place that delay and slow down everything. But don’t expect the revolution to admit that it is the bad policies that are to blame for the shoratges.

In the end, as absurd as it may seem, it is better for the Government to buy the stuff outright, than to start another grandiose and corrupt project which will cost the same but take years to generate the first Kilogram of sugar. I am sure somebody is pocketing some money bringing the sugar, but at least it gets here.

Of course, the problem is that this gets replicated in every sector that the Chavez administration wants to put its finger in and the way things are going, this will soon mean everything related to food in Venezuela.

And as the money gets short: Watch out, the arrival of every ship will be hailed not only by the Ministers but by the whole population, which will see each shortage at last over, a la Cuba, for at least a while, when the first sign of the ship is seeing over the horizon.

(Este post está en español aquí)

According to a formerly influential Chavista theorist Heinz Dieterich, Washington is planning to “checkmate” Chavez and his revolution in 2010. Dieterich who has been critical lately of the revolution, but is no longer heard as much, has been saying this for over a year and continues to expand his theory as events develop.

According to Dieterich, the checkmate plan includes:

-Military coup against Chavez in Honduras (Jeez…)

-Lula and Mercosur are now on the side of the US

-Use Colombia to militarily weaken and attack Venezuela

Dieterich now says that what happened in Honduras is the second “military coup” against Chavez, the difference being that this one will weaken Chavez and lead him to an electoral defeat in 2010.

According to Dieterich, even Chavez’ “intellectuals” are telling the Venezuelan President that his model is incapable of stopping the advance of this “imperialist and oligarchic” project.

Dieterich says that the worsening of the President’s international position, the Uribe military advance, the incontrolable inflation and dysfunctional economic policy, the opposition electoral block which has 40% of the population and the media power of the “right” present the needed framework so that all conditions are there for the 2010 defeat.

Well, it would seem to me that just with the dysfunctional economy and 40% of the population, the stage would be set for a Chavez defeat, but somehow these guys always see a conspiracy somewhere (or want to blame it on something else) The problem is that this type of criticism is not taken well by Chavismo. Chavez already criticized the “intellectuals” that Dieterich refers to in his article and looking through the pages of aporrea to see if the original article was there, I only found an article in which the author wonders why Dieterich decided to start attacking Chavez and the revolution.

Dieterich closes by saying that just like in 2002 the Captain of the ship no longer wants to see the tip of the iceberg…

(Este post está en español aquí)

This is not a joke, a parody or is the Devil pulling your leg. This is a serious contest about trulu real stuff. I want you to vote on which of the following things is sillier:

1) The Government will regulate how new and used cars are sold. The whole thing is ludicrous, but Art. 7 takes the cake, it says:

Any person, individual or company, who sells or buys a car with up to two years of use, will have to pay the National Treasury a tax equivalent to three times the Manufacturers suggested price of the acar when it was acquired as a new vehicle.

Need I say anything more?

2) The new hot dog vendor regulation of th Libertador District of Caracas, led by former VP, Head of the Electoral Board Jorge Rodriguez will force hot dog vendors to move daily so that hot dog selling becomes (I guess) an equal opportunity system by which each vendor will be exposed to the same flow of clients as the other.

I wonder if the hot dog vendors that are very popular will begin Twitting tehir daily position so that their regular costumers can find them.

Tell me? Which do you find to be sillier, crazier, stupider. Use your own language to categorize both of these revolutionary imbecilities.

(Este post está en español aquí)

Two or three weeks ago, PDVSA came out with a zero coupon bond the so called Petrobono 2011. It sold it to locals who, eager for foreign currency, bid low for the bonds. The process was full of missteps and errors, PDVSA only placed US$ 1,4 billion out of the planned US$ 3 billion and had to go through a second round selling the bond mostly to local banks as a hedge against the devaluation of the swap exchange market. Even today, two weeks afterwards, the Petrobono 2011 trades in the grey market (The company has failed to register yet in the international markets) at 66% of its face value, an equivalent yield of 25.8% for the two year bond and way above the 18.75% of the PDVSA 2017 issue.

This week,  Ecopetrol, Colombia’s state oil company, a much smaller company than PDVSA, issued US$ 1.5 billion in a new 10 year bond at 99.6%, which gives a yield to maturity of 7.625% and by today that bond was at 103% of its value for a yield to maturity of 7.25%.

Two completely different paths for mighty PDVSA and much smaller Colombian counterpart, a reflection of the disparate ways the two companies are being run. It cost PDVSA, a company with higher oil reserves, revenues and earnings than Ecopetrol, a full 10% more to finance itself, expensive, even for the oil business.

The difference? While Ecopetrol has been given more independence and opened itself to private investment, PDVSA has done exactly the opposite. Ecopetrol placed 10% of its shares in the Colombian Stock Market as a way of forcing management to pay attention to the shareholders. At the same time, the company has opened fields to private investments and oil production is up. PDVSA on the other hand is being run as part of the Government, oil production is down and the company is being run inefficiently for the benefit of the Government and not the shareholders. (The people of Venezuela)

And while many think PDVSA does not deserve the large spread between its yield and that Ecopetrol (I think it’s exaggerated) it is the result of the lack of transparency and incompetent way in which the company is being run. Because while Ecopetrol issued the bond to have more money for growth, PDVSA just needed local currency to pay overdue bills, as it now produces oil, makes homes, owns supermarkets and imports food.

Even more ironic is the fact that while former PDVSA employees are banned and blacklisted by the Chavez Government, from working in the oil sector in Venezuela, at least three companies formed by these employees are actively participating in the expansion of the Colombian oil sector, servicing fields, exploring and producing oil.

It is in short, a very graphic glimpse of the difference in the two directions the two countries have been going in the last ten years. Ecopetrol chose the Petrobras model, PDVSA has been pushed into an impossible path of self-destruction. While hundreds of projects brought to market by Ecopetrol in the last ten years have found partners and investors, we await once again for PDVSA to close the first new project in the ten years of the Chavez era, but we suspect it will be delayed once again.

And any day that goes buy without PDVSA adding new production will eventually mean additional misery to the people of Venezuela, who could benefit from the additional investment, the lower financing costs and the closer supervision of their main asset: PDVSA.

But PDVSA belongs to Ramirez and Chavez and has become Roja, Rojita and at the service of politics rather than at the promotion of the prosperity of all Venezuelans. Because while at times PDVSA has disbursed lots of funds for social programs, it is no longer doing that as it has become the source of petty cash for Chavez’ pet international projects, promoter extraordinaire of businesses that have nothing to do with its core oil business and which only benefit of the deep pockets and infrastructure of the company.

It is indeed the tale of two oil companies, the tale of two countries, the tale of two different strategies, only one of which will bring prosperity to its owners. But even more foolishly, the path taken by Ecopetrol is the only path of success ever taken by oil companies anywhere in the world. Meanwhile, PDVSA has been taken in an unproven path, led by inexperienced managers and technicians who improvise and invent at every step of the way, leading the company into its own self-destruction.

(Este post está en español aquí)

One of the true innovations of the 2000 Bolivarian Constitution was the creation of the position of the People’s Ombudsman or Defensor del Pueblo. With its creation, the old office for the defense of human rights was taken out of the Prosecutor’s Office, given an independent status and the rank that human rights deserve in a modern and democratic society.

Unfortunately, it never delivered on the promise. The first person to occupy the position was German Mundarain, a mediocre and lowly character who spent his tenure at the position defending Hugo Chavez and ignoring the blatant violation of people’s  rights like the Chavez/Tascon list and even the flagrant murder of poor Venezuelans day after day.

Mundarain was thankfully not renewed in the position and nobody thought we could get someone as willing to please the Dictator and were a little (never have high expectations with the revolution!) encouraged that a younger person, Gabriela Ramirez, reputed to be a Diosdado soldier was named to the position. And while being with Diosdado should not be considered a positive recommendation, I did know that Ms. Ramirez was actually royally screwed when she was a candidate for Chavez, when the  PSUV gave her little funds for her campaign, just because of her closeness with “Pretty Eyes” Cabello.

But it was not to be. Ramirez has turned out to be a female version of Mundarain, at times more radical, but always coming out to defend the indefensible regime of Hugo Chavez and its antics and seldom expressing a word in the defense of the meek and weak.

But I must say I was astonished, with a regime that has lost its ability to amaze and surprise me anymore, when Ms. Ramirez came out with her rather novel, daring and silly theory about crime and homicides in Venezuela.

According to Ms. Ramirez, the person that is supposed to be defending the people and their rights, the problem is not that there is insecurity in Venezuela. Rather, this high level of improvised theorist of what is happening in Venezuela says, it is more of a “sensation” of insecurity, created by, you guessed it, the media, who hammers on the subject thus creating this generalized feeling that there is a problem that does not exist. Then, in the greater mind of this neo-fascist of human right defense, the solution is to attack the problem at its roots, forcing the media to stop promoting this “sensation” or “feeling” that murders have increased during the incredibly positive regime of Hugo Chavez, neo-Dictator.

I guess this lady may have been too young (or care?) to know that in 1998 when Hugo Chavez became President there were around 8,000 murders a year in Venezuela and that number is currently at around 14,000, after topping 16,000 in 2004. (Some believe the lowering of the number is simply fudging). Thus, she should worry about reality, because 8,000 were unacceptable then as much as 14,000 are today, particularly because the deaths occur largely among the poor, the ones that have the least capability to defend themselves.

But homicides and kidnappings have become the rule of the day and gone beyond anything imaginable and much more than a simple “sensation” created by the media. In the last six months a client of mine was kidnapped while driving his 1990 Malibu (The kidnappers were not fooled, they knew exactly who he was) and a person I know and respect quite a bit, was kidnapped and remains in the hands of the kidnappers almost three months after he was taken away.

But these are the ways of the revolution, they improvise and invent concepts right and left even if they have no clue about what they are talking about, which leads to people like Ramirez defending human rights, the other Ramirez as head of PDVSA  or Merentes in the Central Bank or, yes,  Chavez in the Presidency.

And the whole thing is so depressing that I have to end by translating Laureano Marquez’ take on the subject which he entitled “Sensational” , quoting Kant in that “Patience is the strength of the weak, while impatience is the weakness of the strong”. The article was not as difficult to translate but for the last sentence, which refers to the TV show Sabado Sensacional which used to fill six to eight hours of entertainment every Saturday in Venezuela.

Sensational by Laureano Marquez in Tal Cual

It has been said this week in Venezuela that this is not a country without security, but it is a country in which we live a “sensation” of insecurity. Everyone has attacked the author of the phrase, without realizing that the postulate is a transcendental concept that even is philosophically impeccable. To me, this stuff takes us back to Kant, the German philosopher, who understood the concept of sensation as “the effect over the representative faculty, as far as we are affected by it”

Who can assure the more than 59 people that died last week in Caracas that they are truly dead? Do we have the capacity of involve ourselves in spiritual inights? Probably, Kant and his Ombudsman would say that “the object”, the lead bullet, produced over “the representative faculty” of the victim the “sensation” of dying. The only difference with other vitals sensations is that this will be a lasting and definitive sensation, but that takes nothing away from it.

Probably the relatives have the sensation that they buried him and the morgues the sensation that they collapsed…I will go even further; Do you, dear reader ever have a feeling that we only have a sensation of Government, that this shit can not be happening?

Have you ever thought when oil prices go up beyond one hundred dollars and you keep contemplating the same poverty, that what we have here is a sensation of wealth? When you hear the corresponding Minister saying that he is going to end with the workers and that he will lessen their working conditions imposed by the –employee-Government, that what we have here is a sensation of socialism? Don’t you have the sensation that here what they are doing is ripping off the money shamelessly? With what happened in Curiepe don’t you get the feeling that people are getting pissed and that the “people’ have the sensation that they are being screwed and that is why they are going to shut down radio stations so that people do not have the sensation that they have sensations? To me, by now, I have no doubt; Venezuela is a country, which is:

Sensational! (like the TV show)

The Miami Herald tells it like it is on the OAS

OAS turns a blind eye to violations by left by Glenn Garvin

There’s been no formal announcement yet, but I think Woody Allen must be remaking Bananas, his old comedy about Latin American politics. Really: When Argentine president Cristina Fernandez tells the Organization of American States that the miliary coup in Honduras amounted to ”kidnapping the democratic restoration in Latin America,” how could it be anything but a punch line? And the joke — a very sad and expensive one — is the OAS.

An organization that can, with a straight face, expel Honduras as a threat to democracy barely a month after inviting Cuba (50 years without elections and still counting) to join, has lost any claim to serious consideration, much less the funding of American taxpayers.

Founded in 1948, the OAS is an artifact of the Cold War, originally intended to resist Soviet mischief in Latin America. How much it really accomplished in that regard, and at what cost, are open to debate. But what isn’t arguable is that for the past 30 years, the OAS has devolved into a pack of circus clowns who perform political somersaults for the amusement of the region’s leftists — all on the nickel of U.S. taxpayers, who put up more than 60 percent of the OAS budget.

The OAS double standard on democracy dates at least to the late 1970s, when it worked to oust Nicaragua’s anti-communist Somoza dynasty while breathing not a word about Omar Torrijos, the vicious left-wing military dictator just over the hill in Panama.

But in the past decade, the organization has outdone itself. If the OAS were a sports team, its official mascot would be a pipe cleaner, its motto Capable of bending around any corner.

The rule of law? That’s very important for a centrist government in Honduras — so much so that the OAS has appointed itself the ultimate arbiter of the country’s constitution, overruling the Honduran supreme court. Not so much in Venezuela, where leftist strongman Hugo Chávez sent mobs to Caracas city hall to keep a victorious opposition candidate from taking office after he won election last year.

The sanctity of elections? Absolutely crucial in Honduras, where the OAS insists that Chávez’s sock-puppet Manuel Zelaya be returned to power to serve out the final six months of his term even though practically every political force in the country opposes him. But much less so for Nicaragua, where President Daniel Ortega’s Sandinista party was so obvious in its theft of 40 mayoral elections last fall that even the ordinarily sympathetic European Union cut off aid.

Toppling elected governments? That’s an authoritarian affront to the hemisphere if it’s done by the army in Honduras and participatory democracy when it happens at the hands of leftist mobs in Ecuador, where Jamil Mahuad was forced out in 2000. (Pssst! Don’t tell the OAS, but the Ecuadoran army helped, too!) Or in Bolivia, where two presidents in two years were driven from office by machete-wielding gangs loyal to cocaine socialist Evo Morales — who, in an amazing coincidence, was elected president right afterward.

Literally nothing — not even captured documents showing that he was supplying money, oil and weapons (including anti-aircraft missiles) to Marxist guerrillas in neighboring Colombia — can prod the OAS into breathing a word against Chávez and his left-wing cronies.

The organization’s left-eye-blindness reached terminal levels in the wake of last month’s coup, when the OAS ignored Chávez’s ranting threats to invade, then blandly cited ”the principle of nonintervention in the internal affairs of other states” as its justification for expelling Honduras and threatening the broke little country with economic sanctions. As Woody Allen said in Bananas, “It’s a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham.”