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I just assumed these protections are a shiny object to distract from gov't corruption, and to dissuade the working class from revolting. Clearly the next step is to pay everyone in Petros. 
Preen Dog fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Feb 20, 2018 |
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Feb 20, 2018 22:02
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On that note the government did something moderately sane a couple weeks ago: it pushed the official exchange rate of $1USD = 10 BsF to $1USD = 25,000 BsF. That's still 1/10 of the black market rate, but at least it seems to have temporarily staunched the bleeding. But yeah, that's right: a 99.6% devaluation of the currency was still off by an order of magnitude from where it should have gone. So now corrupt officials selling dollars can only make 10x profits, instead of 10000x profits. Which I guess means they need to steal more to keep their lifestyle up.
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Feb 20, 2018 22:10
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Thanks for the response Saladman. I'm curious though, why is Bolivia doing relatively well being that they followed the same type of left wing populism as Venezuela?
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Feb 20, 2018 22:20
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punk rebel ecks posted:Thanks for the response Saladman. Left-wing populism isn't what's gone wrong with Venezuela.
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Feb 20, 2018 22:25
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punk rebel ecks posted:Thanks for the response Saladman. Bolivia has a budget surplus, has kept inflation and interest low and has moved spending towards education, healthcare and infrastructure.
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Feb 20, 2018 23:08
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The problem wasn’t left wing populism it was Chavez empowering a cadre of goons who stole everything that wasn’t nailed down
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Feb 21, 2018 00:13
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DAD LOST MY IPOD posted:The problem wasn’t left wing populism it was Chavez empowering a cadre of goons who stole everything that wasn’t nailed down And they are stealing the nails as well.
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Feb 21, 2018 00:24
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DAD LOST MY IPOD posted:The problem wasn’t left wing populism it was Chavez empowering a cadre of goons who stole everything that wasn’t nailed down And their only reinvestment in the economy was stocking up on hammers to pry up the nails so they could sell what WAS nailed down. And the nails. efb
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Feb 21, 2018 00:25
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I guess if you agree with the whole "worker must seize the means of production" you may have an idea of how to proceed from there. In Venezuela the government managed to destroy any and all means of production, so there's really nothing to seize at all I'd think populism in any form is a slippery slope but hell I'm not a politician so who cares
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Feb 21, 2018 00:57
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Yesterday morning, PSUV vice president Diosdado Cabello said in a television interview that he was going to ask the Constituent Assembly to move the date of the presidential election forward, and to hold parliamentary elections that same day. This is big news because the presidential election is already being held way ahead of schedule (April 22 instead of December), and because the legislative term doesn't end until 2021, meaning that the next legislative election should not take place until December 2019. Remember that the National Assembly has been controlled by the opposition since it won the 2015 parliamentary election, which is why the PSUV believes that it cannot be allowed to exist (as an aside, this is also why Maduro created the Constituent Assembly: so he could stuff it with PSUV members and circumvent the National Assembly). The motive behind Cabello's measure is clear. Now that the the major opposition parties (VP, PJ, and AD) have announced that they will not participate in the presidential election, he wants to move it forward to strike while the iron is hot. Holding the parliamentary elections on the same day would give the PSUV a number of advantages, including the ability to profit from opposition abstention. Here is Cabello in his own words explaining why he thinks that it's a good idea to dissolve the National Assembly and hold the presidential election and the parliamentary election on the same day with just a few week's notice: quote:The proposal will be for joint elections, because one of the things happening here that some of us do not understand is that sometimes you elect a president, and [that] has a term, and a [National] Assembly which has another term. So there is a time when they overlap, but they do not coincide. Cabello said that he would introduce the motion before the Constituent Assembly in the coming days. If he does, it's a near guarantee that the Constituent Assembly will order the National Electoral Council (CNE) to make the changes, and then it's a near guarantee that the CNE will comply. In a press conference held shortly after Cabello's announcement, the head of the CNE said that she had yet to hear official word on the request to amend the election schedule and to also include a parliamentary election. The CNE head also said that she had formally requested that the United Nations send an international observer team to oversee the April 22 vote. The UN replied not soon after through a spokesperson who said that it had "not yet received a formal request" from the Venezuelan government to participate in the electoral process. Vincent Van Goatse posted:This is an apparently for real thing that's happening in Venezuela: I don't know enough about cryptocurrencies, but this thread on Twitter from someone who seems to know about the technical side of the matter is making the rounds: https://twitter.com/alemacgo/status/966072887319973891 If you ignore the "Communism!!!!  " bits, does what that guy is saying make sense?
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Feb 21, 2018 16:31
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One thing I don't get; why are people buying the Petros if the price is fixed to a barrel of oil? Don't people usually buy currencies they presume will increase in value? Oil prices do change, but you can just speculate on that directly without needing to buy a blockcoin. If there's any doubt that exchanges will redeem the coins, they could be worth nothing in a week.
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Feb 21, 2018 21:12
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Preen Dog posted:One thing I don't get; why are people buying the Petros if the price is fixed to a barrel of oil? I would guess that either (a) the 'petro' is a random effort by an utterly incapable nincompoop, or (b) that it is a way for officials-in-the-know to launder money and/or somehow steal money from Venezuelans. I'd lean maybe 89.999/10/0.001 odds between those two and (c) that there is any legitimate practical use that somehow no one except Maduro and co has figured out yet.
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Feb 21, 2018 23:41
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quote:VIBE recommended Venezuela sell 38.4 million petros with a face value of around $2.3 billion in private placements starting on Feb. 15 at a discount of up to 60 percent. People chosen to get discounted coins in the first wave could just liquidate them right away, leaving later investors and the state with the loss. You gotta admit that's some innovative klepto-currency.
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Feb 22, 2018 00:07
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Preen Dog posted:Don't people usually buy currencies they presume will increase in value? In real world economics, they tend to buy currencies for purposes of trade with a foreign nation, with the next biggest use being people in places with unstable local economies/currency getting money in more stable ones for security. "I'm going to get rich by buying Nigerian Naira and waiting for them go up" is not really a meaningful proportion of foreign exchange markets. As to what weirdos buying a failing country's weird second currency, that's simply the domain of the insane and the insider traders trying to capitalize on them.
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Feb 22, 2018 00:14
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You generally dont want to participate in any currency thats increasing in value because once ot starts increasing in value it will cease being a currency
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Feb 22, 2018 01:12
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GlyphGryph posted:You generally dont want to participate in any currency thats increasing in value because once ot starts increasing in value it will cease being a currency Yeah, because you don't want to actually to transactions with it and just keep it as the value increases. But everyone else will also try to do this, and suddenly businesses can't make any money to pay employees because no one is spending money to buy stuff. Now the Currency has merely turned into an Asset kept long term. A certain level of inflation is absolutely necessary to motivate everyone to buy and sell with a currency and to use it daily for necessities. Just look at Bitcoin. It tried to be a deflationary currency, but now it is a speculative asset valued in dollars.
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Feb 22, 2018 01:52
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Preen Dog posted:Other goodies include: 1 month of severance pay for each year worked, mandatory pay for overtime, sick pay, vacation time, and pay for upholding a non-compete agreement. If only the money could buy stuff. This is the same in Uruguay except the severance pay is topped at six years and you have to have been working there for longer than three months.
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Feb 22, 2018 02:24
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The MUD finally announced yesterday that it will not participate in the presidential election, because it considers it to be nothing but a show put on to give legitimacy to the dictatorship. This means that Maduro is running virtually unopposed. Shortly after the MUD's announcement, Maduro went on television and backed Diosdado Cabello's proposal to have a "mega-election" on or before April 22, which would have Venezuelans vote not only for president, but also for the National Assembly as well as state and municipal councils. In other words, virtually every elected position in the country (with the exception of the 23 governorships) would be at play. Maduro made the announcement by saying: quote:[With the mega-election], we would have full control over the governorships, mayors, the new legitimate National Assembly, [state and municipal] legislators and the President of the Republic, made legitimate by the people. It is a wonderful idea. The president of Maduro's Constituent Assembly, Delcy Rodriguez, reacted to Maduro's call for the mega-election yesterday by saying that he could count on the Constituent Assembly to back the proposal. This means that it's only a matter of time before the regime's electoral body, the CNE, approves the measure. As I mentioned yesterday, the National Assembly term doesn't end until 2021. The only reason why the PSUV wants to hold National Assembly elections now is because it doesn't want the legislature to be controlled by the opposition anymore. Now that the MUD has said that it will not participate in the April 22 election, the PSUV has decided to hold all of these votes to take advantage of opposition abstention to sweep all of these positions. The upcoming election is so obviously fraudulent that Transparencia Electoral, an Argentinian NGO that monitors electoral processes and provides electoral observers, has officially refused the regime's invitation to observe the April 22 vote. This is what the NGO had to say: quote:Transparencia Electoral has rejected the invitation to observe the presidential elections that the illegal National Constituent Assembly ordered to take place before April 31, and that the National Electoral Council--obeying that order--called for the 22nd day of that month. In another bit of news, the results of the Living Conditions Survey for 2017 (ENCOVI) were released yesterday. The results of the survey paint a horrific picture of the suffering that millions of people are being subjected to by the Maduro regime. Here are some of the survey results:
Preen Dog posted:You gotta admit that's some innovative klepto-currency. Ha! "Klepto-currency"! That's a great term!
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Feb 22, 2018 16:17
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Serious question, why don't all the citizens just storm the Presidential Palace at this point?
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Feb 22, 2018 18:35
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punk rebel ecks posted:Serious question, why don't all the citizens just storm the Presidential Palace at this point? Too hungry. 
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Feb 22, 2018 18:39
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punk rebel ecks posted:Serious question, why don't all the citizens just storm the Presidential Palace at this point? Venezuela is broken but still has an army an a police force. Also those pro-maduro militias
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Feb 22, 2018 18:48
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Because Maduro will just have them killed
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Feb 22, 2018 18:49
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What I don't understand is how most people are still alive.
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Feb 22, 2018 18:51
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punk rebel ecks posted:Serious question, why don't all the citizens just storm the Presidential Palace at this point? Because the people who should have led the revolution kept trying to negotiate long enough for everyone to accept the new normal. That doesn't mean another catalyst won't spark a revolution down the line though; they've certainly happened in less likely places than a starving Latin American country with democratic elections and prosperity in living memory.
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Feb 22, 2018 18:53
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What seems to have happened in Venezuela is the slow descent from a genuinely popular regime to a clearly despotic one under the same banner and same systems. It seems like this slow slide has effectively missed having the spark or tipping point to ignite a revolution. The opposition are still clinging to clearly corrupted national institutions which makes them appear ineffectual and uninspiring. If the government is still running when 81% of the population is now in poverty its hard to see how anything spectacularly worse could happen to inspire a revolt.
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Feb 22, 2018 19:11
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wdarkk posted:What I don't understand is how most people are still alive. Farming is dysfunctional in Venezuela, but it exists. The desperate can steal or eat garbage to get by. People can also buy subsidized food parcels. Naturally, the parcel distribution system favors loyal supporters, and the program is rife with corruption. 
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Feb 22, 2018 21:11
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Chuck Boone posted:I don't know enough about cryptocurrencies https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/02/venezuela-says-its-cryptocurrency-raised-735-million-but-its-a-farce/?comments=1&start=40 Ars Technica (an apolitical tech site, populated generally by center-left readers) delivers on why the Petro and everything about it is fake. It looks like they have not presold even a single petro, because their system is not even remotely in place yet. Saladman fucked around with this message at 10:18 on Feb 23, 2018 |
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Feb 23, 2018 10:14
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Eight states just got out of a 12 hour power blackout, fun times. Parts of Maracaibo still don't have electricity. People don't storm Miraflores because it is heavily protected by the army and colectivos, plus the barrios in Caracas get their CLAP package every 15 days so they're kinda content. Blue Nation fucked around with this message at 12:44 on Feb 23, 2018 |
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Feb 23, 2018 12:30
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Council on Foreign Relations: A Venezuelan Refugee Crisis The Council on Foreign Relations released a report on a potential refugee crisis in Venezuela. It notes that there have already 1/2 a million people who have fled in the last 2 years, but in the event of a full blown crisis it could quickly become millions. Obviously this would be humanitarian catastrophe, in addition to being incredibly destabilizing to neighboring countries. It also identifies three likely triggers (collapse of the food situation, an epidemic, or an acceleration of political violence) and why all three are likely. As well as recommendations for other countries. The information is probably not new to anyone following this thread, but is still a pretty good summary of just how hosed the people living there are.
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Feb 23, 2018 22:28
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Saw a thing in the Wall Street Journal today that apparently Maduro announced a gold-backed cryptocurrency on wednesday. Normally it would sound too crazy to be true, but given how crazy the venezuelan government has acted, I will just accept it as something that happened. Pharohman777 fucked around with this message at 00:00 on Feb 24, 2018 |
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Feb 23, 2018 23:54
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Lame. Goldcoin has already been done. https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-crypto-currencies-venezuela/venezuela-aims-for-crypto-alchemy-with-new-petro-gold-token-idUSKCN1G52S2
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Feb 24, 2018 00:05
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Pharohman777 posted:Saw a thing in the Wall Street Journal today that apparently Maduro announced a gold-backed cryptocurrency on wednesday. They keep saying they're socialist, yet they keep doing right wing things, like adopting the gold standard. punk rebel ecks fucked around with this message at 04:01 on Feb 25, 2018 |
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Feb 24, 2018 20:13
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 http://business.financialpost.com/commodities/energy/too-hungry-to-pump-oil-pdvsa-crews-skip-work-to-hunt-for-food 'We are dying': Venezuela's oil workers have become so hungry they are too weak to do their jobs.
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Feb 24, 2018 21:29
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Most of the people where I live bought into the lie that the Petro will help the economy and there are investors ready to put their money in Venezuela.
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Feb 24, 2018 21:48
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Pharohman777 posted:
No, it is part of Maduro's great plan to extend Venezuelan lifespan. Don't you idiots know that caloric restriction is the ONLY proven general way to slow aging and extend lifespan in mammals?? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie_restriction Jeez you right-wing extremists won't be laughing when the average person in Venezuela lives to be 100.
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Feb 24, 2018 22:05
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punk rebel ecks posted:They keep saying they're socialist, yet they keep doing left wing things, like adopting the gold standard. Adopting the gold standard isn't a left wing thing though...
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Feb 25, 2018 03:47
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M_Gargantua posted:Adopting the gold standard isn't a left wing thing though... Meant to say"right wing". Sorry for the typo. I wrote that on my phone.
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Feb 25, 2018 04:00
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Blue Nation posted:Most of the people where I live bought into the lie that the Petro will help the economy and there are investors ready to put their money in Venezuela. Do you think any Venezuelans are going to use the Petro?
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Feb 25, 2018 04:10
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M_Gargantua posted:Adopting the gold standard isn't a left wing thing though... During the war years, the soviet Ruble was linked to the chervonets, a coin containing a set amount of gold, in order to control inflation. Other ruble coins contained silver. So the monetary system was linked to the supply of noble metals, in effect using a gold standard.
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Feb 25, 2018 12:33
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Squalid posted:Do you think any Venezuelans are going to use the Petro? It's going to be really difficult, because you cannot buy Petro with Bolivares.
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Feb 25, 2018 16:26
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