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To: Ronin
but it would knock the legs out of the Venezuelan economy in very short order

No it would not.

61 posted on 11/24/2007 9:21:57 PM PST by thackney (life is fragile, handle with prayer)
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To: thackney
How do you figure?

They can't even feed themselves out of their own agriculture. They are already importing two thirds of their food. One third of that from the US. The official Dollar to Bolivar exchange rate is a total joke — the US dollar being the defacto currency in any case.

Manufacturing and heavy industry outside the oil industry is, for the most part, nonexistent and the middle class of the country is constricting back to the poverty level or fleeing the country.

The only thing that is holding that country’s economy together is the infusion of petrodollars from the US. Cut that pipeline and the ripple effect through all levels of the society would be immediate and profound.

And don’t say that they would just sell the oil somewhere else. Refinery capacity is a hard number. There are only so many refineries in the world, they are all booked with hard-contracts months, and in some cases, years in advance.

Plus, as another FReeper pointed out, the Venezuelan crude is very heavy in impurities and needs special refining to be usable. The refineries that can handle it are in the United States. If we don’t buy it, they can’t sell it.

62 posted on 11/24/2007 10:25:42 PM PST by Ronin (Bushed out!!! Another tragic victim of BDS.)
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