Chávez ordered his vice-president, Nicolás Maduro, to "look for a rapprochment with the private sector. As fellow blogger Daniel says, this only shows how empty the pockets are becoming. Chavismo has spent faster than it can the record oil revenues. I already mentioned it was very telling when Maduro said a few days earlier that Chávez is thinking all the time about oil. Chávez does, as he knows this is his Alpha and Omega - international oil prices, not oil -, a difference Chávez' apologists around the world don't seem to grasp.
A devaluation is in the ovens. I have said for years now that Venezuela's current currency control is only good for the rich, for the corrupted, for the powerful and that it is completely against sustainable development - the Venezuelan currency being highly overvalued and not undervalued as is the case in China. Anyone with a tiny bit of economic understanding recognises the need for a devaluation at this stage and, if possible, the end to the currency control.
Now we will probably just have a devaluation and that too late. The Chávez government will again say it is all the fault of the private sector, of capitalism and so on. This does not mean the Boligarcs will want to turn to an open economy, to transparency, to diversification of the economy. They just want to gain time, to gain time in the blind hope oil prices will keep on climbing the way they have since 1999. A devaluation will multiply the Bolivars they have to spend. It will also make inflation rise even more, though. That is one of the reasons why we have this pseudo-rapprochement.
Now we will probably just have a devaluation and that too late. The Chávez government will again say it is all the fault of the private sector, of capitalism and so on. This does not mean the Boligarcs will want to turn to an open economy, to transparency, to diversification of the economy. They just want to gain time, to gain time in the blind hope oil prices will keep on climbing the way they have since 1999. A devaluation will multiply the Bolivars they have to spend. It will also make inflation rise even more, though. That is one of the reasons why we have this pseudo-rapprochement.
4 February (on a Monday) hundreds of thousands of state employees will be coerced to march in celebration of the bloody Chávez-led coup of early 1992. That will mean a huge amount of money wasted.
In his history book Von Bolívar zu Chávez, German professor Michael Zeuske praised Chávez a lot. There he quoted long-standing "independent" economist Weissbrot, who said Chávez economic record was "not bad at all". "Ho, ho, how cool we are with understatements!" - I can hear them saying. In reality, Chávez is similar to a cocaine addict who had just won the lottery. And I remind people again: the key is not oil but international oil prices. Even a drunk and very corrupt Carlos Andrés Pérez - a politician I utterly disliked - could have done much better.
And our children and children's children will have to pay for what these people did to Venezuela in the past 14 years.
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