StJacques--no real good place to post this so I stuck it here and hopefully it will be read.
Friday, October 27, 2006
POLL NUMBERS!!! October 27, 2006
Back with polls from the four final races of the year in Latin America. The numbers from two weeks ago are here.
In Nicaragua, Cid Gallup says it's Ortega 33, Montealegre 22, Rizo 17, Jarquin 13.
Borge has it Ortega 34, Montealegre 29.
U Central America did a huge sample ballot and came up with Ortega 38, Rizo 20, Montealegre 17.
Zogby has the race Ortega 35, Montealegre 20, Rizo 16.
In Venezuela, Zogby has the race Chavez 59, Rosales 24.
Consultores21 has the race Chavez 50, Rosales 33.
Cifras has the race Chavez 59, Rosales 22.
CECA claims the race is nearly tied and Datanalysis says Rosales is closing in.
The head of Hinterlaces agrees with me, saying that Rosales is slowly gaining and although Chavez is still likely to win, his popularity has taken a hit during the election.
In Ecuador, Informe has the race Noboa 47, Correa 34.
Cedatos has it Noboa 49, Correa 34.
Consultar has it Noboa 53, Correa 26.
In Brazil, Sensus says it's Lula 57.5, Alckmin 33.5.
Ibope has it Lula 62, Alckmin 38.
Datafolha has it Lula 61, Alckmin 39.
I feel fairly confident in saying Lula is going to win this one.
http://bloggingsbyboz.blogspot.com/ditto my last ping
"...nobody owns that [Venezuela's central bank] money"
Miguel, Daniel, and F. Toro have typically kept us blog readers very well informed about the ever so transparent debt bond purchases from Argentina. For those interested here is an article from the Economist that is worth a read, plus who might be getting rich?:
Oct 26th 2006 | BUENOS AIRES
From The Economist print edition
Venezuela's president tries his hand at financial arbitrage
JUST as Venezuela is known for its exports of crude, Argentina is famous for its exports of IOUs. Less than two years after it handed its creditors a world-record loss in a sovereign debt-exchange, Argentina's government has found an eager new patron in its oil-rich ally. Over the last year, the government in Caracas has bought some $3.1 billion in Argentine bonds. Is this a case of Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's tub-thumping president, putting political solidarity ahead of fiscal prudence? Look closer.
The roots of the deal lie in the currency controls Mr Chávez imposed on his country during the economic meltdown of 2003. To halt capital flight, he pegged the bolívar, Venezuela's currency, to the dollar (the official rate is now 2,150 to 1), and sharply curtailed opportunities to buy dollars at that price. As a result, a black market in foreign exchange soon opened up. The bolívar could not hold its value at the kerbside—a dollar has traded for anything from 2,400 to 2,900 bolívars in the past year—adding to inflationary pressures.
However, unlike most of his countrymen, Mr Chávez can help himself to dollars from the state oil company, PDVSA, or from his own central bank at the official rate. This he did to acquire the $3.1 billion he needed to buy the dollar bonds from Argentina's government, which started issuing debt with indecent haste after completing its huge bond restructuring in mid-2005. Argentina's president, Néstor Kirchner, was more than pleased to borrow directly from Venezuela. Doing business with a fellow Latin American leftist is more palatable than asking for money from the private international lenders he repeatedly bashes. Moreover, Mr Chávez was, in effect, offering to underwrite his debt issue. Venezuela's big purchases meant that Mr Kirchner did not need to test the market's appetite for his government's bonds too deeply.
But almost as soon as he got the Argentine paper, Mr Chávez began to sell it to local Venezuelan banks, at the rate of 2,400 bolívars to the dollar. All told, his government off-loaded $2.4 billion-worth of bonds, pocketing a tidy profit. How tidy? His finance team eagerly announced a gain of $309m to the press last month; though the true figure may be a bit different.
The banks too were happy. They were free to sell the bonds abroad for dollars, which they promptly did for a handsome profit. Some of them converted the greenbacks back into bolívars at black-market rates, others hung on to them. Either way, this new source of foreign exchange has relieved pressure on the black market; the bolívar has stabilised and one source of inflationary pressure has eased.
Within Venezuela, critics have complained not about the deal itself, but about who was in on it, and who wasn't. The government has still not revealed its method of choosing which banks would be eligible for a chunk of the massive return Mr Chávez was offering. “Any operation that hands out $300m discretionally, regardless of the mechanism, is a clear incentive for corruption,” says Alejandro Grisanti of the Caracas consultancy Ecoanalítica. In the absence of an open bidding process, government officials were free to route the Argentine bonds to banks already supportive of Mr Chávez, to tie the sale to future support, or to receive payments or favours in exchange for offering them.But despite this carping, can the two presidents not congratulate themselves on a clever financial manoeuvre that had something for everybody who was party to it? Argentina's government found a reliable customer for its debt; Mr Chávez achieved lower inflation and a $309m profit for the Venezuelan exchequer; and the local banks divvied up a further gain of $250m-300m.
Unfortunately, there are no free lunches, and there is one big, hidden loser in this transaction: the Venezuelan central bank. Mr Chávez, in effect, plundered its reserves for about $580m, both by forcing it to sell him dollars at the official exchange rate, and by taking dollars from the state oil company that traditionally went to the central bank. That is a heavy loss to the country, which might need its reserves in a pinch. “But no one's going to complain,” says Walter Molano of BCP Securities, “because nobody owns that money.”
So who could be getting rich? Well Juan C. Escotet the owner of Banesco seems to be doing quite well by expanding into the US market. Throw in deposits form the military and Banesco I'm sure is swimming in money. I also wonder if the Makarem and Valbuena family have expanded into the banking system. One would think they would since they already hold business dealings in the oil industry (Petrotulsa), fake polling agencies (North American Opinion Research) , and legal and consulting offices (click here to read more in depth on the topic), among a few other business ventures. So why not expand into the lucrative banking systems too?
http://venezuela-usa.blogspot.com/