The Devil's Excrement

While it is hard to know whether the No or the Si is ahead, reading the Government’s reactions may be telling us quite a bit.

At this point, we have had a very strange reversal of polls which went from NO way ahead, to SI slightly ahead back to No somewhat ahead, in less than a month, a rather unusual path, more so given the fact that some of these dramatic changes took place in the absence of any rea significant news.

What was clear was the aggressive attitude of the Government, including Chavez’ threat to gas the students with his “best gas”, the violent actions of the La Piedrita group against Marcel Granier as well as its statements that they were declaring a number of opposition figures as targets and the raid on the Mariperez synagogue.

And then all of a sudden, Chavez and his Government backtrack. First, they accuse the opposition of attacking the Mariperez synagogue, but today they order the capture a number of members of the Metropolitan police, investigative police and PoliCaracs, saying they are responsible for the raid on the synanogue. Funny, not only are none of these people related to the opposition, but they represent organizations in the hands of the Chavez Government for quite a few years.

Then Chavez calls into a meeting between the organizers of Saturday’s march and the Government and actually says that he will tie up his violent people and hopes the opposition will do the same. Of course, the march went on without a hitch for the first time since the students started marching against the amendment.

And then, the Head of La Piedrita, an armed and aggressive pro-Chavez group, gives a threatening interview after he and his group have been creating violence at will around Caracas and against opposition figures for months. (Reportedly the cops went to capture the Head of la Piedrita and were not even allowed to go in the area where La Piedrita operates).

La Piedrita goes around the city armed and without anybody stopping them. But something funny happens, Chavez actually calls for the jailing of Valentin Satana, the leader of la Piedrita, calling him a criminal and calls on long-time violent leader (and buddy) Lina Ron to separate herself from that group.

Strange, no?

Well, to me this simply suggests that the number are not looking pretty and the three weeks of aggressive behavior by Chavez have backfired and he is backtracking in the hope that he can change the results.

But can he?

Seems difficult by now. There is only five or six days left for the referendum and if Chavez’ image has been damaged, it would seem as if these last minute efforts will make little difference.

But to make matters worse, the La Piedrita group, now with even a webiste, responds to Chavez, asking him to jail Ravel, Manuel Rosales and a bunch of leading opposition figures and challenges Chavez to jail:

“The red, very red revolutionaries, the looting red shirts of our Mercales (markets), the red saboteours of our revolutionary missions, of our almost non-existent Barrio Adentro, the Directors of most of the State Institutions, the landowners who have killed  200 peasants who embraced the Land Bill, the assassins of Puente El LLaguno, the Generals, the corrupt officials within the Coche market, the officials that constantly block the people’s project, the Ministers that lie raising the flag of non-existent projects”

And then to close, La Piedrita declares that it is not pro-Chavez but always critical of the Government.

Thus, La Piedrita is claiming to be the true revolutionary, the true Chavez in all this, splitting with the President because of his about face and in some sense, not helping with Chavez’ strategy. Calling Chavez’ revolution “conservative”

So Chavez can no longer control the monster (s) that he created and this will likely affect the outcome of the vote next Sunday, as the public debate between La Piedrita and Chavez will likely dominate the news for the next few days and neutralize the effects Chavze was looking for in distancing himself with violent groups that support him.

This is going to be a long post. Understanding Central Banks in general is going to be important in the next couple of years and understanding what is going on with Venezuela’s Central Bank shows why unless oil prices rebound, really rebound, we are in trouble because of the irresponsibility of our current Government. Simply put expect devaluation and inflation like we have never seen before.

At the same time, the recent credit crisis does imply that the money supply in the US has also increased because of its aid packages and it will have its consequences when the recovery of the economy arrives in the form on inflation. Devaluation in the US? Well, the difficulty there is that Central Banks in both Europe and the US have been printing money to get out of the crisis, the guessing game will be who will print more and therefore, who will devalue more and have more inflation.(Which benefits Asia which avoided much of the credit crisis, even if it is feeling it)

But let’s start at the beginning.

1. Your personal balance sheet

Your personal balance sheet has two parts: Your assets, that is what you own, have, have saved, etc. and your Liabilities, as an example:

In this example you are quite solvent, you have more assets than Liabilities: you have equity. There is no problem, your net worth is 58,000 units. If you had to pay your debts, liquidate everything ad you will have 58,000 whatevers in your bank account.

But suppose you were a subprime credit risk in the US and your balance sheet looked like this:

Here you would be bankrupt if you were for some reason forced to liquidate, as in the end you would have more debt (303,000 units) than assets (278,000 units): your equity is negative. But, as long as you have your job and the money to make payments every month on your mortgage, credit cards and loans you will be alright: You can service your debt, you have cash flow. As long as you can pay your debts every month, nobody wil bother you.

As an aside, part of the recent credit crisis arose because people’s homes dropped in price and payments increased, but people realized that they owed more on their homes than the value of the home, so why bother? Better take the loss, give up the house and pay rent.

2. The Balance Sheet of a Central Bank

The Balance Sheet of a Central Bank is not too different from yours, except that the Central bank does a lot of different things, including issuing money. But it may look something like this (simplified):

Note the equity is included on the liability side, because if it is a company or bank the equity is “owed” to the shareholders. If the company is dissolved, the equity will be distributed to the owners. If the Central Bank is dissolved, in Venezuela the Government wil get the equity (if it exists)

Now let’s look at the simplified Balance Sheet of the Venezuelan Central Bank in Bs. x 10^6 Times (one million), as of December 31st. before US$ 12 billion in reserves were taken out:

It looks ok at first sight, Liabilities equals Assets, nothing funny at first sight. However, if we “open” the “Assets in Bs.” line, it is composed as follows:

As you can see mot of these assets are in the last two lines which add up to Bs. 32.2 billion or US$ 14.98. The “notes” refers to the notes attached to the Financial Statements which were published in El Universal on January 28th. When you go to these notes it turns out that Note 9 is just the US$ 6 billion transferred to Fonden in 2005-06 and Note 10 contains US$ 8.3 billion also transferred to Fonden in 2007, for a total of US$ 14.3 billion.

Notice the problem?

This money no longer exists!

US$ 14.3 billion the assets of the Venezuelan Central Bank, which has Equity of US$ 6.3 billion (see above) has vanished into Fonden and has been spent. Thus, the Venezuelan Central Bank has negative equity, this is like the second case in 1). In fact, since this was the picture on Dec. 31st., by now, with the transfer of US$ 12 billion in mid-January to the Fonden, a full US$ 26.3 billion in assets are listed in the balance sheet which will soon no longer exist.

Truly revolutionary indeed! But, what does it mean?

If it were you, it would mean, you kept the mortgage, but the house was sold, you have nothing to back the loan.

As in the second case above, the question is whether the Central Bank is insolvent because its balance sheet is insolvent, or whether it is insolvent because it can not pay its obligations, its debt.

A Central Bank has costs, not only those related to running the bank, but also it can issue money, but issuing money, increases liabilities and increases inflation. So, this is limited in scope. To function, the Central Bank has to pay interest on commercial banks reserves,as well as offering instruments when it needs to control monetary liquidity.

Currently the Venezuelan Central Bank has some US$ 25.4 billion in deposits from commercial banks, not all of it bearing interest and has issued US$ 10.7 billion in CD’s that it has used in operations to absorb monetary liquidity.

Where does the Central Bank get money to pay for the interest on this?

Easy, from interest it receives on investing international reserves and, of course, once again it can print money. It becomes a vicious circle.The more money that is printed, the higher inflation and the more difficult it becomes to control inflation. Zimbabwe is an example.

This whole thing can be written as an equation, which I will not do, but basically, there is a condition such that the Central Bank needs to have a net worth that will not be wiped out in the future in order to keep its operations. (I don’t want to go into more detail on this)

What happens now, as oil prices fall, is that the Central Bank will have lower income, but the monetary mass will be larger, there will be more money going after the same goods. More Inflation. In the last few years, as Chavez has taken money out of international reserves, oil prices have gone up, allowing international reserves to increase and give the Central Bank enough money to pay its costs. If no devaluation takes place, this will no longer be possible soon.

That is why devaluing is such a convenient tool. You devalue and the Bolivars you need to keep the Central Bank functioning become less in terms of the US$ dollars it holds in international reserves. Reserves can once again pay the way of the Central Bank. But you get hit by inflation.

However, even if you devalue, the Treasury of the country needs to at some point to recapitalize the Central Bank. Until that is done, the problem is not over, it will repeat. That is why taking the Fonden reserves is such an irresponsible act: At some point, at whatever rate of exchange it may be, the Treasury will have to put the money back to replace the lost equity of the Central Bank.

The more the currency is devalued, the cheaper it will be for the Treasury…and so on…

Perverse, no?

And that is a key difference between what is happening in Venezuela and in the US. So, let’s look at that case briefly.

3) The Balance Sheet of the US Federal Reserve

I will look first at the balance sheet of the US Federal Reserve last year before the collapse of any financial institution. It sort of looked like this:

So, with the aid to JPMorgan to take over Bear Stearns and TARP I and Tarp II, what has happened is that the US Federal Reserve created more money, but it exchanged it for assets, mostly preferred stock in these banking institutions.

This is a huge difference, because these are assets in the balance sheet and they produce income for the Fed. The Balance Sheet of the Fed after the first TARP round may look like this (Assuming 800 billion dollars in new money and assets):

This is of course, terribly inflationary, as there will be a lot more money out there. However, the difference is that if the plan works and banks become healthy again, they can buy back those preferred shares that were added on the left side and the Fed can then eliminate that money from the money supply. It may not work, but that is the theory behind it.  Additionally, before this happens, banks will pay the  Fed interest on those preferreds and that money will be useful for the Fed to maintain its ability to pay its debt.

But there is another difference: Venezuela has dollar liabilities, dollar debt. The US does not. The US can print and print and as long as it can pay the debt it issues, it will do it all in US$. But Venezuela has lots of debt in US$ and while it ca print Bolivars to pay that, it needs to have the dollar to purchase them and pay debt.

Once again, devaluation can fix that problem easily.

Of course, I have oversimplified the whole thing, but I hope you get the idea. There are problems in Venezuela and the US, but ours are much worse because of the invention of the “excess reserve” concept and the existence of dollar liabilities.

And this will lead to more inflation and devaluation…

Today was the march in favor of the NO vote in the upcoming amendment referendum. It was huge, I have been to quite a few marches and never felt it so congested as today, many times I thought I could not move forward and when I finally managed to get to the front, the speakers were done. Here is a picture of the march:

This was taken from the top of the Avenida Libertador bridge, you can see the stand way at the end on the right.

The students make a huge different on these marches, they sing, shout and dance with joy and keep it up the whole way. The distance was long from Petare to the end of Avenida Libertador (Is it the first one to leave from Petare?).

I took this video of the students, there were more exciting moments for them, but this is the best one I managed to capture. I will help you feel the nature and excitement of the students:

Of course, a huge march does not determine the outcome, but one has to be encouraged by this.

This is a terrifying story of the consequences of the crumbling institutionality in Venezuela. Last Wednesday, in the Matanzas barrio of El Valle, a group of people grabbed a man, accused of two rapes in their neighborhood, started clobbering him, shooting guns at him and once he was dead, burned his body beyond recognition.

This was not a small group of people, this included men, women and children and reportedly, even cops. Soe participated, others watched and even scarier, they recorded the lynching in their cell phones. The body was burned four times, each time a new reporter showed up, it was burned anew. The people are not even sure that they got the right guy. In denouncing the rapes to the police the two men do not appear to coincide with the dead man. But one of the women raped said the guy with the cut in his face was the man that raped her. Except the police claim that the man that escaped was the one with the cut in his face.

Here is a picture of the people as the body was burned, look at all the people taking pictures:

This was not done in obscure corner of El Valle. This was done in one of its main streets. Lots of people saw it, lots of people celebrated it. There is even joy at the lynching.

This is what happens when institutionality crumbles and people begin losing their values. Violence becomes an everyday affair. The frustration of suffering daily from threats, whether real or not, and not having someone to go to, ends in these equivalent violent expressions of hate and collective outrage. When groups of people get together to perpetrate such a barbaric act, there is something terribly inhuman that surfaces. When they calmly record it and cover each other up, there is a sense that something very important has been lost in Venezuela. Violence begets violence and nobody does much about it. Vigilantes surface everywhere. Violence becomes part of all of us.

According to El Nacional and the Observatorio Venezolano de Violencia, 66.5% of Venezuelans backs acts of executions by those affected by crime and 32% favor lynchings.

Sad, very sad, that this is what we are becoming as a country. I will not even blame anyone, why waste my time? This is what too many of the citizens of this country have become. The question is not whose fault it is, the question is whether we will do anything to stop it from deteriorating any further. And if we do, how long will it take to erase these beliefs from two thirds of the Venezuelan people.

I did not want the day to go by before congratulating all of the supporters and lovers of Hugo Chavez on the 16th. anniversary of the bloody, gutless coup staged by Chavez and his buddies on February 4th. 1992. On that day, Chavez led a contingent of soldiers to Caracas under false pretenses to the Miraflores Presidential Palace. Another contingent went to the Presidential home of La Casona in the East of Caracas, where Carlos Andres Perez’ family and wife were and where a bloody fight ensued. It was indeed a bloody and violent day, with an estimated 80 innocent civilians killed (including one girl), as well as 17 police officers.

Despite the large force they brought to Caracas, including using tanks to take over the Presidential Palace, as shown in the picture below:

the coup attempt failed because none other than Hugo Chavez failed to attain his military target, hiding out in the Military Musuem.

This was a bloody military coup attempt, against a democratically elected Government, a fact is always selectively forgotten in the literature and discussions by the cheerleaders of the revolution. Chavez was later pardoned by the silly octogenarian Venezuelans elected in 1993 and he refused to follow the democratic path until 1997, another fact selectively forgotten by PSF’s and the racist supporters of the Bolivarian revolution, who tolerate human rights violations and non-democratic ways that they would be outraged at, if they happened in their own countries.

The truth is that Chavez was never a democrat and his ten years in power (not allowed by the Constitution under which he was first elected) and continued legal contortions and abuse of power to be allowed to continue to run Venezuela forever in autocratic fashion demonstrate it.

So, my friends, continue hiding in the non-rational part of your brains, you indirect support of the deadly and bloody acts and non-democratic ways of Hugo Chavez. One day it all may come to haunt you. In the mean time: Congratulations on your bloody anniversary!

And here is Chavez in military garb celebrating today this non-democratic anniversary, just in case you are not sure what it is I am talking about…

The Government and its apologists have dared suggest that it was actually the opposition that organized the attack on the synagogue in order to make the Government look bad. This goes in line with the message the Government likes  to convey that it is the opposition which is violent and uses force, but we all know otherwise.

But the case of the Venezuelan Government’s anti-Semitism can not be disguised in any form. It was Chávez and his Government that introduced hate against Israel and the Jewish population of Venezuela. While it took a while for Chávez to begin preaching his hate, what he learned from his mentor Ceresole began surfacing and have led to:

—Public statements by Hugo Chávez blaming Jews for killing Christ, Simón Bolivar and taking possession of the wealth in the world:

The world is for all of us, then, but it so happens that a minority, the descendents of the same ones that crucified Christ, the descendents of the same ones that kicked Bolivar out of here and also crucified him in their own way over there in Santa Marta, in Colombia. A minority has taken possesion all of the wealth of the world, a minority has taken ownership of all of the gold of the planet, of the silver, of the minerals, the waters, the good lands, oil, of the wealth then and have concentrated the wealth in a few hands

–Two separate raids on Hebraica, a Jewish educational and cultural center in the East of Caracas. In one of them, it was led by the intelligence police, using rifles and terrorizing the 1,500 kids at the school.

-Twice the Venezuelan government has broken relations with Israel either by withdrawing its Ambassador or expelling Israel’s Ambassador to Venezuela, the last one over the recent Gaza incidents, the only country in the world to do so over Israel’s exaggerated attacks.

-The official TV station VTV continuously promotes hate against Israel, but including the Jewish people in its propaganda.

-Material in Pro-Chávez website aporrea.org is certainly offensive and discriminatory as noted by Daniel recently. While this particular article was pulled (because Daniel wrote about it?), this is the first such incident in which an Editorial comment is made and an article removed.

-Former Vice-President Jose Vicente Rangel in his regular column under his “Marciano” byline wrote this week an article accusing Yon Goicochea, Antonio Ledezma and Henrique Capriles, The “Satanic Trio” of having the backing of Mossad and setting up an intelligence network to destabilize the Government with Mossad’s help.

-Government media, including VTV and radio Nacional de Venezuela began blaming the attack first on the opposition and have now shifted to blame Mossad.

Of course, throughout all this, the Government has failed to condemn the constant attacks on the Venezuelan Jewish population. This is part of the revolution by now, the promotion of hate against groups of citizens. By now, it has become institutionalized in the Government’s rhetoric. Once you start a campaign like that, it is extreemly difficult to go back on it.

Additionally, it is ludicrous to suggest that the opposition staged the attack and desecration of the Mariperez synagogue.

To begin with, that synagogue is located in the only municipality in Caracas controlled by a Chavista Mayor and not an opposition one and the Government controls the Metropolitan Police. It would be quite difficult, to say the least, to plan and carry out such an operation without the authorities noticing it. The raiders spent five hours at the synagogue, opened two safes and took some computers containing the database of all Jews in Venezuela. Is that scary or what?

But simply look at this picture of the signs left on a heavily trafficked avenue (even at 3 AM!), Avenida Principal de Mariperez by the attackers:

Not only is the whole gate covered with paint but note the X’s on the Star of David on both sides. (There were also swastikas in many places on the wall). Given that this is a main avenue, you have to be pretty confident the police will not go by while you are doing it. Additionally, on January 15th. there was a demonstration in front of the synagogue, the videos made with the cameras in the picture were turned over to the Government, the raiders made sure to take the videos of their raid with them.

But on top of that, the investigative police showed up at 6 AM looked around and failed to look for fingerprints and/or any other form of evidence. This is absolutely not standard procedure. It was only the day after newspapers reported this surprising behavior by the investigative police (FBI or MI6 type of police), that the police came back to get evidence.

But I think Jewish leaders have been somewhat naive with Hugo Chávez, always giving him the benefit of the doubt, despite the repeated statements and threats. In fact, as recent as August of last year, a group of Jewish leaders came to venezuela and seemed to buy Chavez’ goodwill after so many statements and incidents. They know better now…

But this will be just like the Anderson case, the Prosecutor that was assasinated and whose killer was never found. In the middle, opposition figures were jailed and exiled (to this day), but the “star” witness turned out to have been in a Colombian jail when he supposedly was present at meetings planning the assasination. All roads pointed to Anderson’ unusual life style, but that was never investigated. Nothing will happen in this case either.

Where in the world can the President of a country have a whim on Saturday night that disrupts people’s life and have it implemented within hours in violation of the law?

This is exactly what happened in Venezuela this weekend, as Hugo Chavez gave a speech after playing softball last Saturday and in the middle of it decided to pat himself on the back and declare today a National Holiday in honor of the great job he thinks he has done ver the last ten years.

Never mind that he did not have the power to do it. Never mind that he disrupted plans and schedules.  Never mind that he caused damages to produce and shipments and delayed  bank transfers and payments. Never mind that Venezuela is poorer tonight because of his stupid whim.

But despite the fact that it was illegal, as the decision to make today a National Holiday was not published in the official gazette in advance as required by law, the Government used all of its power and instilled fear on people to insure that they did not go to work today.

Because when you threaten everyone all the time, reminding people that the revolution is armed, it certainly comes in handy when you want something obeyed, even if it is illegal and stupid.

And today it worked. First, the Government immediately began saying it would fine any company that did not abide by the autocrat’s whims. This, despite the fact that there was no legality to back the fines. Second, the Government had the Banking association issue a press release that the banks would follow. Of course banks followed, for most of them the only business model is receive Government deposits in exchange for commissions they pay out. And they think they will live happily ever after.

And then today, the Government used both fear and force. Fear because even parking lots that open on holidays were closed. The same with bakeries, restaurants, stores, twenty four hour drugstores all of which are open all but one or two days of the year , but today they were closed.

And then,  just to make sure, the police and the National Guard were sent out to shut down those that dare to open. As if on a National Holiday you were supposed to shut down completely. That is not what the law says or does. If you work, you have to be paid more, as simple as that. It is up to you to evaluate the costs and decide. Factories and the like shutdown, it is just too expensive. But when perishables are involved, or deliveries, or transactions that need to be completed, you go ahead and just do it.

Instead, a Government that has total disregard for efficiency and costs, somehow stupidly associating costs and efficiency with profit, created the fear that it has been cultivating and storing for years.

And it worked…

Because as the TV showed National Guards shutting down businesses, those that are regularly open on similar days and had opened in the morning, began to shut down just in case. By evening very little was open.

So, Caracas felt almost like a State of Siege day, no cars, no people, all commerce shut down. Few, if any, restaurants to go to.

The people are afraid. The years of intimidation have worked. The abuse of power by the Government is a daily affair. Everyone is afraid of the autocrat and his Government. Very few protest.

Caracas was proof of this today. Fear and intimidation rule. Democracy, whatever is left of it, loses.

Saturday it was a despicable attack on the Venezuelan Jewish community and its religion and culture. Today it was a direct attack on the rights of all hard working Venezuelans, tomorrow is anybody’s guess.

Sad, very sad. But get ready for it, unless you want to fight.

The constant disregard for the law and the promotion of the revolution, whatever that may be, is beginning to take its toll in Venezuela. In many cases, while groups ask that the law be followed, the Government ignores it or forgets about it if in doing so, it will promote the revolution.

The problem is that these days, it is the Government that is in both sides of the conflict or the controversy and there is a significant breakdown in the established order which threatens to get out of hand as it did last week in Barcelona in Anzoategui State.

The conflict began when MMC, the company that assembles Mitsubishi cars in Venezuela, decided to terminate its outsourcing contract with a  company called Induservis at the end of 2008. This was a legal and valid decision by MMC and why it did it should be of no concern or importance to anyone outside the company.

Except that as the rule of law has broken down, pro-Chávez unions have learned that they are on the side of strength and they decided that they would not accept the decision by MMC and would go beyond it: they began demanding that MMC directly hire all of the 135 Induservis workers.

The company obviously refused, as it just wanted to switch which company provided the maintenance services, not add to its payroll at a time when the auto industry in Venezuela faces a sharp drop in production and sales.

When it refused to hire them, then the union of workers of MMC backed the take over of the company’s installations by the 135 Induservis workers, holding regular MMC workers hostages inside the facility and threatening not to leave until the MMC hired them all.

MMC went to Court and asked for three separate injunctions, demanding that the authorities act and remove the workers who had taken over the company and the release of the workers who were inside.

A judge granted the injunction and when the Judge went to the MMC installations with the police of Anzoategui State the workers turned violent against the police and the owners of the plant and in the ensuing scuffle with the police, two of the workers were shot dead by the police.

Now, just as a refresher, Anzoategui State has been run by Chavismo for the last ten years and its current Governor Tarek William Saab is a staunch Chavista supporter, but it was his police that killed the workers.

Nothing has been resolved. the plant remains under the control of the workers who demand to be hired, the judge’s orders have not been implemented, fifty cops have been suspended and there seems to be no way to resolve the conflict.

Now all of the auto unions are threteneing with a strike, everyone is blaming the other side and no cars are being built. And has been the case in most of similar cases, nobody dares intervene to resolve it. Maybe they are trying to figure out first on which side of the conflict Hugo chavez stands, before acting.

Of course, today they are all celebrating how we got here during the last ten years.

1. Because only Chavez guarantees that the crime problem will not be solved and Venezuela will be able to hold the record for most homicides per 100,000 inhabitants and only the poor are affected by this.
2. Because only with Chavez will Venezuela continue spending billions of dollars in military weapons which will one day allow us to invade any country we want.
3. Because only with Chavez will public services get worse and I love eating by candle light and the smell of garbage.
4. Because only Chavez insures that few people will their own house and if I don’t have one, why should anyone else?
5. Because only under Chavez will we be able to prove whether Venezuela can have 100% inflation per year.
6. Because Chavez is the only guarantee that a few Venezuelans will become multi-millionaires thanks to rampant corruption and a new wealthy Chavista oligarchy will replace (has replaced?) the old one.
7. Because only under Chavez will my whole family be able to find jobs in Government-owned companies doing little and with no discipline.
8. Because only Chavez will make the rich poor.
9. Because only Chavez will keep sending billions of dollars in gifts to other countries in Latin America, most richer than Venezuela.
10. Because only under Chavez will the public hospital system finally collapse and all Government workers will get private insurance and be able to use private clinics.

And all of it will be done with love…Vote SI

And to celebrate what a great guy he is and what a wonderful job he has done in the last ten years, Hugo Chavez decided today to make tomorrow a holiday, the anniversary of when he first assumed the Presidency. Of course, he hopes to pick up a votes along the way.

I think there is no better way to celebrate his autocracy…maybe it should be permanent, Hugo Chavez Day, or the Autocrat´s Day, or Abuse of Power Day, or Look Ma! I can do anything I want Day…