Giordani's Yerkciv Auction - (Vickrey, but backwards)
One of the privileges of blogging is that when you write something that’s just plain wrong, somebody will come along and set you straight quite quickly. So I’m...
Economy
Spoiled greens
SICAD has just been rolled out as a panacea for foreign currency scarcity in Venezuela. But if descriptions of the bureaucratic mess involved in obtaining dollars at auction are...
Ecce Vickrey
Setting aside the insane, Kafka-on-Burundanga administrative side of the new SICAD system, there’s a second set of questions that are more macroeconomic in nature – i.e., what’s the...
SICAD: Birth of a Red Tape Behemoth
There was huge confusion yesterday following the launch of SICAD (the newfangled “Sistema Complementario de Administración de Divisas”), meant to supply additional dollars to importers shut out of the...
When cement becomes a privilege
A friend of the family who works in construction tells me about the ordeal he has to go through lately to get a few bags of cement. “Sometimes,...
The Genius of Devaluation
So did you see all the insanity in Cyprus over the last few days? Man! For reasons too complicated to go into here – but which will surely...
Herd mentality
“I’m telling you man, we Venezuelans are the best managers in the world.” My buddy Diógenes is sitting across a miniature sized table from me. We are sipping...
David Frum thinks our book is essential, so go buy it!
An exceedingly generous review of our book, by The Daily Beast’s David Frum. The money quote: If [the authors’] telling is correct, whatever else Chavismo is, it’s not sustainable...
Lukoil learns the hard way
Andrei Kuzyayev, an executive of Russian oil giant Lukoil, told Reuters last week that Venezuela could boost its oil production in the next few years, but to do so...
G.M.V.V. Chronicles, cont.
For the residents of a couple of recently-opened housing development in Caracas, their brand new homes are no longer bringing them joy, but really big headaches. One, in...
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