The Devil's Excrement

One of the reasons Venezuela has to pay high interest rates to issue bonds is the lack of transparency in the country’s numbers. When so many of the numbers are iffy and manipulated, investors demand higher interest rates. This is costing Venezuela a lot of money, between Minister Giordani and Ramirez not talking to the markets and even deceiving them and gray numbers, Venezuela is likely paying between two and three percentage points unnecessarily. By now, the Chavez Government has been fudging, kneading and faking numbers so much, that it is hard to even guess what the real ones are.

This week we saw a couple of funny ones. The first one is the most significant on: the manipulation of Venezuela’s international reserves. This number is very important, because if reserves are drawn down, investors could become worried about Venezuela’s ability to pay its debt. Since Chavez has been transferring funds from reserves to the development fund Fonden, reserves have not increased as oil jumped up and as the number of Bolivars in circulation has increased dramatically.

But the Government cares little about this. Despite very high oil prices during the first few months of the year, international reserves dropped to worrisome levels, because actual “liquid” reserves were about US$ 1 billion a week ago. Total reserves during the year are shown here:

As you can see, despite record values for Venezuela’s oil basket the first few months of the year, reserves simply dropped from US$ 30 billion at the beginning of the year to between US$ 25-26 billion as oil prices began to drop. Clearly the Government was spending it all as it came in. And some more.

But then oil prices began to drop and liquid reserves were dangerously low and then magically, without explanation, they actually jumped up last week by a little over US$ 3 billion dollars in two days. That is a 12.5% jump. Crazy.

The Government has said nothing about it. Most likely, Fonden transferred the money to the Central Bank. The same Fund that most of the time we have had no clue as to how much money it has. No financials, no audits for Fonden most years. Thus, it helps investors in the country’s debt very little to have the money moved around like that, but Giordani and his combo seem to care very little about a few hundred million dollars in additional payments because of their manipulation of the international reserves and the like.

If reserves drop again, nobody knows if there is more money somewhere to prop up reserves, so it becomes a guessing game, which is completely unnecessary. It costs us Venezuelans a lot of money to manage things this way.

While less significant, there has always been strong evidence that the Government fudges inflation numbers too. What goes in the various groups is modified at will to try to lower inflation levels and few people beelive the official numbers. Despite this, Venezuela has had the highest inflation in the region for years and it has definitely been higher than what the Government says.

Last month, this document was leaked from the Government’s “Inflation” Committee in the middle of the month (Shouldn’t it be called the anti-inflation committee?)

As you can see, half way through the month, the National Institute for Statistics and the Central Bank had projections for the month for various inflationary groups. While not all the groups are the standard ones used by the Central Bank, what is interesting is that in the final numbers published last week, they all came below the projections in the leaked document.

The most blatant case is Transportation. In the “projection” in mid-June, the estimate was that this group would go up 6.7%. This was due to the fact that the Government approved increases in parking fees,a s well as in public transport. But the funny thing is that these increases, which were projected at 6.7%, suddenly dropped to only 4% in the second half of the month. If the rates and the fees had been increased, how did they magically go down in the next two weeks?

Clearly, there is manipulation to boast that inflation is going down ahead of the election, but people feel inflation directly, no matter what the Government says. And once again, the Government claims inflation will be in single digits in a couple of years.

Sure, I recall Rodrigo Cabezas saying that in 2006 and he never managed to lower it below 20%.

But these guys are good, convincing people of their lies and manipulations. It is just a pity we have to pay for all of it.

The Devil is taking a few days off, posting will be lighter than usual for a while. Tonight, the Devil will feel like he is sleeping in a museum, as he sleeps here:

Dear Friendly visitor from abroad, PSF or not:

This is Venezuela:

a somewhat dysfunctional country in South America led by a religious like leader known as Hugo Chavez, who leads a cult called Bolivarianism. His tribe is called PSUV. Now, Hugo likes to make people believe that Venezuela has a fair Government and is a democracy. Many locals, as well as some foreigners who obviously would not be caught dead living in Venezuela defend the cult and its “fairness”

Now, the picture below shows the southern part of the US, including Miami, Florida and New Orleans, Lousiana. There are a lot of Venezuelans living in the southern part of Florida. In fact, 26,000 of them are registered to vote in the Venezuelan Consulate in Miami. Some come form Georgia, but the large majority are near Miami. The right to vote for President, even if you live abroad, is supposed to be a Constitutional guarantee. Over 90% of them do not vote for President Hugo.

The Venezuelan Consul in Miami, was caught in a video conspiring on how to start a cyber attack on US Government computers. This led the US Government to kick her out. The cult leader, Hugo Chavez, decided then to shut down the Consulate in Miami:

This week, the Electoral Board decided that these 26,000 people would have to go and vote in New Orleans, Louisiana, which is an 867 mile drive from Miami (as shown in the map) or 651 miles away as the crow flies.

Let’s try to put this in proper perspective: A coach bus fits 53 people. Thus, it would require 490 buses to take them to New Orleans to vote. The line of buses would be about three miles long. The cheapest one way fare I could find costs $107 per person and takes one day, one hour and fifteen minutes to get there. Double that to return.

But there is a better perspective. Suppose that you picked a voter in Maracaibo, Zulia State, a large Western city of Venezuela and moved him to vote to a center 651 miles away. The result would be this:

The red circle shown above has an approximately 650 mile radius and is approximately centered in Maracaibo. The conclusion is that it would be unlikely that you could find an Electoral Center outside of this circle, for the simple reason that I doubt that there are any centers in the roughly 4% of Venezuela that is left outside this circle.

The whole thing is yet another dirty trick by this fake democratic Government. The whole point of shutting down this voting center was to eliminate 20,000 opposition votes with one single decision. After all, would it be so hard to rent an office somewhere in Miami to have the vote held? Would it be so expensive? In fact, you could even have it a the office of Banco Industrial de Venezuela in Miami, if you wanted to save money. Or ask any of the neighboring countries in Latin America to give you a hand and create one, two or even three separate locations at their Miami consulates, to allow people to exercise their right to vote.

But the cult leader, Hugo Chavez, did not shut down the consulate, as an “administrative measure” or to get back at the US Government for kicking the Venezuelan Consulate out. After all, it was only Venezuelans that are affected by the measure. No, this whim by the religious leader of Bolivarianism was another perverse dirty trick, which was consummated this week by the Electoral Board when it forced these 26,000 voters to go so far to vote.

Many will try to go and vote. But clearly, this is expensive and wholly unreasonable. This is just a maneuver to wipe out 20,000 votes which may or not be important in deciding the upcoming Presidential election. But with a few tricks like this, like the previous post, it all adds up and makes the objective of preserving the cult more feasible.

So, please don’t pay attention to the BS. There is no Electoral Justice in Venezuela. Democracy is not relevant to Hugo Chavez. There is an autocracy and a judicial system corrupted and dominated by the cult leader to project an image of democracy and fairness. The whole point, as his Presidential program shows, is to block the possibility of Bolivarianism ever being removed from power. That is not what democracy is about.

Making Miami voters, 95% of whom support the opposition candidate, has no logic or justification. The maps above clearly prove it.