Ever notice how chavismo's instinct, when facing a clear policy failure, is always to see how they can patch it up?
Take SITME - the Central Bank's baroquely controlled alternative to the just-as-baroquely-controlled CADIVI foreign exchange control system. SITME amounts a patch on the old parallel dollar market, which the government tolerated as a patch on the sclerotic CADIVI system which was itself a clumsy patch against
SITME Bond Yield Voodoo
I'll start out by admitting that I find SITME - the Central Bank's tightly controlled replacement to the old parallel Forex market - quite confusing. Briefly, SITME allows you to trade bolivars for dollars by asking your bank to take your bolivars, buy Venezuelan (or PDVSA) bonds with them, resell the bonds for dollars, and then credit the dollars to an off-shore account.
The kicker is that your bank has to document every step of that operation to the Central
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"Your child can't have that operation because we need the money to capitalize SIDOR"
It had to come to this. The renationalized SIDOR Steelmaker has started hitting up the Central Bank for emergency loans.
The BsF.2 billion bailout announced today is a throwback to the insane economic policies of the 1970s and 80s, when Venezuela dug its own macroeconomic grave by devoting more and more of its scarce oil-revenues to propping up loss-making
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Game Changer
Say you're in the middle of a fútbol game when, all of a sudden, one of the members of the other team randomly picks up the ball with both hands and starts running with it, rugby style. You instinctively turn to the ref to ask for a foul but, instead, you get a red card for dissent.
As you see the opposing team running, ball-in-hand, towards your goal, you could be forgiven for concluding that somehow, in the last few minutes, the game you were playing had changed. You may still
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The Cardinal will not be allowed to sing (Updated)
Chavismo, always whoring for a public spectacle, has decided the meeting between the National Assembly and Cardinal Urosa will be held in closed doors. The Cardinal, being the gentleman that he is, has shown up on time, with little fanfare, and without speaking to the press.
Funny how these things work. When
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For Chavismo, the Real Issue in September is the Unemployed...
Hearing chavistas rant recently, it's easy to see what their strategy is going to be ahead of September's parliamentary elections: talk incessantly about the unemployed. Not the unemployed in general, mind you...just two of them: George W. Bush and (the by-then-to-be-unemployed) Alvaro Uribe.
Chávez or Uribe-Bush? That, in the chavista playbook, is the issue...
Rohter stones Stone (Updated)
Speaking of Oliver Stone...wearing his historian's hat, Larry Rohter of the New York Times offers a devastating critique of Stone, Mark Weisbrot and Tariq Ali, and their specious arguments in defense of Venezuela's indefensible Revolution. You owe it to yourselves to read it.
It's a follow-up to a previous article in which he bashed Stone's documentary
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Oliver Stone watch #2
Quick, chavistas: what better way is there to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon?
Forget spending time with the family, the only right answer is: going to a swearing-in ceremony for the PSUV in a government-owned stadium, and have the ceremony
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My name is Francisco and I'm a blog-o-holic...
It's been brought to my attention that it's really confusing if I write under my real name in some places and under my nickname (Quico) in others. So, to avoid confusion, I've decided to re-brand my byline here as "Francisco Toro".
Just so we're all clear, I'm still me (if that makes sense.)
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It's the Racketeering Stupid (or, How the Opposition Should Play This Thing...)
Reading yesterday's scorching comments section, it seems to me a key component was missing: the creeping Venezuelanization of FARC. In crafting a response, the Venezuelan opposition should treat this, primarily, as a domestic issue.
Because, from a Venezuelan point of view, what we see on our Western border is a racketeering mob given carte blanche to do its worst.
As Juan Carlos Zapata shows vividly in his
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You come here for contrarian views, right? So here's one:
I think Colombia did a poor job today, and I think the Venezuelan opposition should come out and blast them for it.
The opposition needs to side with the people, those who live on the border, those who benefit from trade, and those who suffer at the hands of the FARC.
Venezuela Responds to Colombia's Allegations of Collussion with the Guerrillas
This is the transcript of Venezuelan ambassador to OAS Roy Chaderton's response to Colombia's detailed, extensively documented allegations of Venezuelan collusion with Colombian narco-guerrilla rebel groups:
Burning bridges
A chavista tragedy in three acts.
Act 1: 2,046 new school teachers, with a specialization in "Cultural Development" (whatever that is), graduate under a government-sponsored program. Good for them, I guess.
Act 2: Hugo Chávez goes to the graduation and forces all TV and radio stations in the country to carry his speech for several hours, live. In it, he blasts
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En la parada, por favor!
Caracas' bus drivers must be the most embattled people on the planet.
Imagine having to endure the city's traffic and crime, along with the Venezuelan government's regulations, 12 hours a day, 365 days a year ... as your job.
Nobody deserves a fate like that.
Now, they are beginning to feel the heat of the Communist Revolution. There is now a credible threat that the government
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Washington Coughs up a Thread, Evita Golinger Weaves a Sweater
It takes some doing to make Eva Golinger, doyenne of unembarassedly pro-authoritarian chavista boosterism, look good. But the U.S. State Department is doing just that. By continuing to pour money into Venezuela's beleaguered dissident press, Foggy Bottom just makes it too easy for her - and, in the process, creates many more problems for the opposition's credibility than their funding can solve.
As
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Juan Cristobal
Francisco Toro
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