Posted on 03/18/2013 12:11:06 PM PDT by Starman417
At first glance it seems like a reasonably decent airport. Then after a while you notice the dilapidation, the inoperative urinal, the broken floor tiles. A surprisingly pretty Immigration Agent waves me over, inspects my documents, asks a few questions in passable English and allows me into the country. I retrieve my bag and then pass both the bag and the carry-on through the x-ray machine just before the the exit.
This is my first trip to Caracas and I was not without anxiety given the tumultuous events of the last few weeks. I had been invited to come and lecture at a meeting. A giant screen in the airport lobby displays unending scenes of tribute to the departed leader. The termperature is comfortable but the exposed air conditioning vents are not controlling the humidity well.
It turned out that the person who I expected to pick me up never made the trip to Venezuela. I called him and he told me that a driver was indeed on the way and should be there already. Within ten minutes I located him holding a hand-made sign that read "Jhon..."
The twenty minutes or so ride to the Eurobuilding hotel downtown wound its way up the side of the mountain over roads much in need of repair. Chavez' image is ubiquitous. The Eurobuilding Hotel is attractive but not world class. The staff is very polite and helpful. The bath/shower has dark marks on its floor and if you grab the towel rack a little too tightly one of the cross bars will fall out. There is free wireless internet and there are more than 100 channels on the TV and there are even American shows with Spanish subtitles. A complete lack of English speaking television is one of the best ways to create the feeling of cultural isolation, something I'd experienced in South Korea. The pool and the palm trees cannot hide a basic truth.
Venezuela is a mess.
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela's government announced Friday that it is devaluing the country's currency, a long-anticipated change expected to push up prices in the heavily import-reliant economy.Officials said the fixed exchange rate is changing from 4.30 bolivars to the dollar to 6.30 bolivars to the dollar.
The devaluation had been widely expected by analysts in recent months, though experts had been unsure about whether the government would act while President Hugo Chavez remained out of sight in Cuba recovering from cancer surgery.
It was the first devaluation to be announced by Chavez's government since 2010, and it pushed up the price of the dollar against the bolivar by 46.5 percent.
By boosting the bolivar value of Venezuela's dollar-denominated oil sales, the change is expected to help ease a difficult budget outlook for the government, which has turned increasingly to borrowing to meet its spending obligations.
But analysts said the move would not be sufficient to end the government's budget woes or balance the exchange rate with an overvalued currency. Economists predicted higher inflation and a likely continuation of shortages of some staple foods, such as cornmeal, chicken and sugar.
Sean Penn idolized Hugo Chavez and there's a more of that over at Salon.
Likewise, in a United States whose poverty rate is skyrocketing, are there any lessons to be learned from Venezuela’s policies that so rapidly reduced poverty?And in a United States that has become more unequal than many Latin American nations, are there any constructive lessons to be learned from Chavez’s grand experiment with more aggressive redistribution?
Aggressive redistribution indeed- at a very high cost.
The concentration of power under President Hugo Chávez has taken a heavy toll on human rights in Venezuela, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.The 133-page report, “Tightening the Grip: Concentration and Abuse of Power in Chávez's Venezuela”, documents how the accumulation of power in the executive and the erosion of human rights protections have allowed the Chávez government to intimidate, censor, and prosecute critics and perceived opponents in a wide range of cases involving the judiciary, the media, and civil society.
“For years, President Chávez and his followers have been building a system in which the government has free rein to threaten and punish Venezuelans who interfere with their political agenda,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “Today that system is firmly entrenched, and the risks for judges, journalists, and rights defenders are greater than they’ve ever been under Chávez.”
Redistribution may have elevated some out of poverty but it will be a short-lived gain:
A spending spree that almost tripled the fiscal deficit last year helped Chavez, 58, win a third six-year term. The devaluation can help narrow the budget deficit by increasing the amount of bolivars the government receives from oil exports. Yet the move also threatens to accelerate annual inflation that reached 22 percent in January.“There is surely going to be a political cost, which may weigh against the Chavistas and hence be viewed favorably from the markets if it shifts protest votes to the opposition,” Siobhan Morden, the head of Latin America fixed income strategy at Jefferies Group Inc. in New York, said in a note to clients.
And all that redistribution was leading to a collapse of the nation:
Heavy government spending has fueled rampant inflation, which averaged an annual 22% during Mr. Chávez’s tenure. Its anticapitalist rhetoric and broad state intervention into the economy have led to a dearth of investment. Gross fixed capital formation declined to 18% of gross domestic product in 2011, from 24% in 1999, according to the World Bank. Net inflows of foreign direct investment stood at 2.9% of GDP during that same year, his first in office, nearly double the 1.7% in 2011. Capital flight from Venezuela intensified as Mr. Chávez pursued more interventionist policies, including capital controls and a fixed official exchange rate that — if you can get it — offers dollars at a quarter of the exchange rate that the greenback fetches in the black market. Stock market capitalization of companies listed on the Caracas Stock Exchange has gone from a paltry 7.6% of GDP in 1999 to a minuscule 1.6%.
Chavez's answer to rampant inflation was the institution of price caps.
Rather than pursue policies that might stimulate investment, the government’s response to shrinking productive capacity and high inflation has been price caps. The result? Shortages of food and other basic necessities, periodic electric brown- and blackouts, and far fewer jobs: the labor force participation rate has dropped from 52% to 46% in the Chávez era.
Chavez was clogging Venezuela's arteries
In countries less blessed with natural resources, Mr. Chávez might have been forced to be more welcoming of private-sector investment. But Venezuela’s oil bounty permitted his pursuit of highly unorthodox policies and inefficient use of resources. Yet not without cost to its oil industry.Venezuela’s oil production has fallen to around 2.5 million barrels a day from about 3.2 million, according to most industry estimates. Downstream refinery accidents have increased sharply amid a lack of investment and upkeep, with one last year at the Amuay complex proving among the most deadly the energy industry has seen. Energy-rich Venezuela has since been importing more fuels. Still, prices for the country’s crude have risen about 10-fold during Mr. Chávez’s time in office, enabling him to borrow and spend aggressively.
Crime is rampant:
(excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net...
Blogpimp.
It’s hard to get one passed you. lol
“A surprisingly pretty Immigration Agent” what is so “surprising” about it. Venezuala consistantly WINS beauty pagents.
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