The tomatindex revisited: the Chavista-Madurista drama in Venezuela

Back in 2014 I published a post trying to explain how Venezuelans were worse off than when the military coupster Chavez was elected president in 1998 even though oil prices back in 2014 were still way higher than in 1998.

I went back to that post today. Newspaper Notitarde, which I used as one of the sources for prices, was taken over by the regime and it stopped showing historical data, so the links in the post are no longer valid. Still, here you have the index showing how many kilogrammes of tomatoes, onions and chicken you can buy with the minimum wage (actually min. wage plus food tickets). 

On the left, how many kilos you can buy with the minimum wage plus food tickets

I got the latest prices from a small village in the province. In reality things are more expensive in where the median Venezuelan lives: in a city of 100,000 or more inhabitants.

In 1998 the minimum wage would allow you to buy 125 kilos of tomatoes, 250 of onions or 83 of chicken.

In 2014 you could buy 85 kilos of tomatoes, 53 of onions or 75 of chicken. Now, in mid February of 2018, you can buy 28 kilos of tomatoes (28000 bs/kg), 8 of onions (100000 bs/kg) or about 3 of chicken (300000 bs per kilo).

How come there is no revolution? The military are more corrupt than ever. They are supported by security forces that profit from the economic system in place. They have the support of Russian and Cuban intelligence services. They do not care and are actually happy millions of Venezuelans are leaving the country.

Venezuelans can put an end to the dictatorship but the task will required more effort than what Eastern Europeans had to go through back in 1989.

Ref: min. wage (actually wage plus food tickets)

Banana republic indeed: inflation in Venezuela

Prices in a village in August 2016

These pictures from a village in the province, a place where food situation is much better - or less horrible - than in Caracas.

Prices in real life do not follow a linear function. Prices for perishable products that are seasonal tend to fluctuate a lot. Still, these pictures show you how dramatic things are getting. This is as good as it gets in Venezuela: you could get there a kilogramme of tomatoes in August 2016 for 450 Bs. Last month you had to pay 4000. Back then you could get one kilogramme of onions  for 800 and now you need to pay 3500. Back then a broccoli would set you back 700 bs. Last month you needed 6000 Bs. I do not have a picture from this month but the situation is much worse. Still, the overall for fruits and vegetables in the countryside seems to be less than 500% but this is one of the cheapest places in the whole region. As economics outside Stalin's imagination dictates it, chances are prices there will escalate as soon as more people find out about it.

If you are a taxi driver in a secondary city far away from Caracas, you get about 25000 to 30000 Bs a week. You can buy a kilogramme of meat with that.

Discussing this with government officials is pointless. They are beyond anyone, isolated in their mafia system, some still thinking they are some kind of revolutionaries.

Prices in the same place in July 2017, a few weeks before the farce election 

Prices for several vegetables and fruit in August 2016 and July 2017

For journalists who hate economics

OPEC barrel price evolution. In red: dollars. In blue: 1998 dollars

If you read in English and you want to learn how to do some real investigative journalism on Venezuela, you should read people such as Alexandra Ulmer, Keyal Vyas or Girish Gupta.

If you want something very superficial, you should read something like BBC news in English, particularly if the journalist is a native English speaker. It is really amazing how the British organisation can make news about Venezuela sound so trite.

We constantly hear and read sinking oil prices are the major cause of Venezuela's collapse. 

We can read about that on BBC here and here.

But this is highly inaccurate. Yes, prices do have a role to play on the hardships Venezuela is going through now. Still, a much more important reason for the misery is the sheer corruption and incompetence of Chavismo. This is something BBC journalists do not seem to grasp because they do not seem to take their time to learn about the long term evolution of Venezuela's economy and society. For them, it seems, there is not much time to try to understand what exactly were the conditions in Venezuela in 2007, in 1998, in 1992 and much less before that.

The BBC work in Venezuela resembles more or less like this: they interview a state employee, they interview some opposition economist or politician, they quote one, they quote the other and they do not care or are not given the time to do proper research, listen to more nuanced, more complex reports, try to understand at least the basics of how economies function. The way BBC reports on Venezuela I simply cannot imagine their journalists ever have taken a look of more than 1 second to a chart showing the evolution of life expectancies in several Latin American countries across decades or GDP growth in Venezuela since 1962 or even less trying to analyse what kind of things Venezuela was exporting in 1998 apart from oil and what it does now or what kind of education programmes there were in the sixties, eighties or now.

If you take a not too short sighted view of the matter you will soon realise oil prices now are still higher than they were in the late nineties, shortly before the military coup monger Chavez got elected...and yet living conditions now are considerable worse than back in 1998. The average price for a barrel of OPEC oil in 2017 is around 49.77 dollars. That is about 33.75 dollars of 1998. Back then Venezuela was getting less than 13 dollars for a barrel. Even if we accounted for population growth: Maduro's government should be getting more money than the government of Caldera II. What a lot of foreign journalists still fail to see is the sheer amount of corruption and utter incompetence that have thrived in the Chavismo years. Chavismo will probably make Mobutu's regime look like "nearly Swedish standards" on accountability.

Yes, for many decades the popularity of Venezuelan presidents has gone up and down according to oil prices. Oil prices enabled Chavez to have available more social programmes than what presidents had in the decade that immediately preceded him, when we had the longest oil recession. Still, the loss of popularity has more to do with the level of plundering that has taken place in Venezuela.

Über Bohnengenerale und Entlassung aller Andersdenkenden

In diesen Tagen kündigen sowohl Nicolás Maduro wie mehrere seiner engsten Mitarbeiter - wie der Panerai-Uhr liebende Kommunist Rodríguez und der Putschist Diosdado Cabello -, dass Regierungsmitarbeiter, die Petition für das Referendum unterschrieben haben, entlassen werden sollen.

Jetzt werden wir einen Bohnengeneral haben, nicht aber einen Bananengeneral, denn Banannengeneral ist jeder General in Venezuela

Ja. Das ist die Regierung, die Wagenknecht so sehr verteidigt, macht das. Das ist die Wagenknecht, die uns ständig sagt, sie sei nicht Kommunistin im Sinne der SED und der Mauer - böse, böse, böse-, sondern im Sinne diese äußerst schwammige, nie richtig erklärte Utopie von einem Marx im roten Himmel.

Der Verteidigungsminister Vladimir Padrino, der seit einigen Monaten schon mit Maduro ein Duumvirat bildet, erklärt, dass es einen General für jedes der "18 wichtigten Lebensmittelsprodukte" geben wird, die zur Zeit kaum zu finden sind. 

"Ich habe befohlen, einen General mit einem militär-zivilen Team für jedes Lebensmittel zu bestimmen. Das heisst: ein General oder Admiral wird Leiter [der Verwaltung von] Reis und wird auf einer Karte (sic) alles zeigen, von der Produktion oder Einfuhr bis zur Kommerzialisierung".

Meine Familie, wie fast alle Venezolaner, die nicht Teil des Regiimes sind, muss jede Woche viele Stunden Schlange stehen, um zumindest ein Teil der Produkte zu kaufen...oft gehen sie nach Hause mit leeren Händen. Das soll Teil eines Wirtschaftskrieges sein. Ich will, dass Frau Wagenknecht bei der ZDF oder ARD und zwar vor einem Volkswirt erklärt, wie genau das in Venezuela passiert.

Das bescheuerte Land - Kapitel MCCCVIII

Venezuela hat einen Minister für Fischerei und Landwirtschaft und dieser Minister heißt zur Zeit Ángel Belisario Martínez. Er ist da, weil er Militär ist und ein Freund vom Caudillo Chávez war.

Er sagt uns jetzt, dass 900 Tonnen Thunfisch importiert worden und sich im Hafen von Sucre, im Osten Venezuelas, befinden. Als Referenz: Kolumbianische Firmen fangen etwa 43000 Tonnen Thunfisch pro Jahr. Eins muss aber gesagt werden: die Karibik verfügt über weniger Fischressourcen als die Pazifik.

Die Militärs Venezuelas sind Parasiten und sie wollen für immer an der Macht bleiben. Dass sie damit das Land zerstören, ist ihnen völlig egal. Manche von ihnen werden wahrscheinlich wirklich glauben, dass sie die Lösung sind.

Venezuela auf Russisch, Spanisch usw

Ich bin sehr beschäftigt gewesen und konnte dadurch nicht bloggen. Jetzt habe ich etwas kurzes in meinem spanisch-sprachigen Blog geschrieben.

Vor kurzem war ich in Deutschland und ich war baff, als ich feststellte, wie viele Leute endlich etwas über die Elend in meinem Land gehört bzw gelesen haben.

Hier habt Ihr einen Artikel von der NZZ. Leider ist die Analyse da eher oberflächlich. Die Senkung der Erdölpreise hat der Zusammenbruch der venezolanischen Wirtschaft zwar beschleunigt. Die Leute, die sich aber mit den technischen Daten Venezuelas beschäftigen, die, die die Strukturen des Landes  richtig kennen wissen aber schon: der Verfall hatte schon viel früher, selbst während des Gipfels des längsten Erdölbooms unserer Geschichte, begonnen.

Es gibt mehrere Posts anderer Bloggers, die darüber erzählen. Hier nur ein Beispiel.

Wenn wir eine gewisse Distanz zu diesen Zeiten erreicht haben, werden die Wirtschaftshistoriker die Chávez-Zeit als die zerstörischste unserer ganzen Geschichte erkennen.

More on food and sustainability

As you probably know if you follow Venezuelan news, people can't even find maize flour - cornmeal-, which is staple food. The government forces companies to sell one kilogram for 20 Bs, which is way under production costs.

Shortages in Caracas are bad, but other cities fare worse. Most Venezuelans live in those cities. The situation is a little bit better in semi-rural or rural areas...but even there it is bad and it is getting worse as urban people go to those areas to get some of the  food.

The picture below shows a stand where a street vendor in a village close to Valencia sells maize dough, which is the way maize was prepared in the times of my grandparents, before industrialized cornmeal appeared. You can make up to 7 arepas with one of those 1 kg dough bags. For comparison you can produce about 16 arepas out of a kilogram of industrial cornmeal. The price for those dough bags is right now about Bs 400. That means: one arepa costs you around Bs 57.1. If you could get a cornmeal package at the official price - those Bs 20 I mentioned earlier - you could cook 1 arepa for Bs 1.25. As I said, there is a huge shortage of industrial cornmeal. Right now you have to pay 1000 bs or more for one kilogram at the black market. That means if you want to cook arepas and have only access to the blac market, you have to pay Bs 62.5 in cornmeal per arepa. That is how the maize dough market came to be.

Of course, this alternative is not very scalable: firstly, the method is work intensive. Then there is the land: Venezuelans have transformed in the last few decades most of the most productive agricultural areas around the major cities into badly designed urbanizations or slums. Most of the agricultural areas in the highly fertile Tuy and the Victoria-Valencia Valleys and in a lot of areas around the coast is gone. Most of this production is coming from the  little gardens of people who have no property rights for their pieces of land close to the more mountainous areas of Guacara or places like Miranda.

That is why people in many poor urban areas like La Isabelica, in Valencia, are looting.

My poor Venezuelan people under Chavismo

Venezuelans used to eat maize flour. Production is collapsing because of the whole price controls, the currency control with several exchange rates favoring more corruption, the massive stealing from military and state functionaries and general mismanagement of the economy.

Now Venezuelans are eating cassava. That is a plant that can be easily planted. There are several problems with its use, though. Firstly, people need to cook it very well because otherwise cassava can be highly poisonous. There is the issue of scalability: there is only so much land, cassava has never been produced on an industrial scale in Venezuela and anyway, trying to make cassava production scalable is pointless if we haven't addressed the collapse of maize production in the first pace...but then you would need to change the essence of corrupt Chavismo.

This is what my relatives in poor areas of Venezuela are telling me right now: A kilo of fresh cassava costs Bs. 600. With a minimum wage you can buy 19 kilos every month...and nothing else.

A full minimum wage would give you otherwise 13.5 kg of beans, 11.57 kg of carrots or 3 kg of chicken. Yes: your minimum wage salary gives you three kilograms of chicken.

My relatives and friends are spending more and more time queuing up. It would be interesting - although a full challenge - if someone could come up with a way to gauge the increase in hours spent on those queues.

The government as well as some deluded people from the extreme left claim it's all because of some economic war. Shortages were not just part of the end of socialist or pseudo-socialist regimes with price controls and no independent powers. Shortages were present throughout the existence of those regimes - since Lenin times through Stalin - and later on.

Repression will scale up. Venezuelans need more support from the outside world.

Der Spiegel und Venezuela

Hier können Sie einen neuen Artikel des Spiegels über Venezuela lesen. Die meisten Texte, die dort über mein Land verfasst werden, sind in Eile aus verschiedenen Agenturen zusammengefügte Nachrichten oder Texte des Herrn Klaus Ehringfelds - auch ohne viel Kontext. Der verlinkte Text gehört zur Ehringefeld-Kategorie. Irgendwie hat der Spiegel Schwierigkeiten damit, venezolanische Oppositionspolitiker zu interviewen oder die Meinungen unterschiedlicher lateinamerikanischen Experten aus Lateinamerika, nicht aus Bielefeld, darzustellen. Das ist seltsam, denn sonst lese ich in der Zeitschrift Interviews mit allen möglichen Akteuren aus Syrien, Saudiarabien, China, Uzbekistan und so weiter. Ist Venezuela zu entfernt, so dass nur die von ehringfeldartigen Journalisten zufällig getroffenen Venezolaner zu Wort kommen, wenn überhaupt? Ich weiss es nicht. Auf jeden Fall finde ich es schade, dass Venezuela generell in den deutschen Medien vor allem von anderen, vor allem durch deutsche "Experten" erklärt wird.

Man sieht schon, dass Ehringfeld - wie Heinz Dieterich- das Scheitern des Chavismus erkennt. Man sieht aber auch, dass er über die ganze Opposition, die jetzt ganz deutlich die Mehrheit der Wähler bildet, eine sehr verallgemeinernde, negative Meinung hat. Und man sieht, dass er das Land immer noch nicht versteht.

Das von manchen Deutsche immer noch bewahrte alte-neue Bild Lateinamerikas

Und hier einige Zitage dieses Herren:

"die schlechte (Nachricht) ist, dass der  Ton vor allem bei der  Opposition schärfer wird."

Anscheinend hat Ehringfeld den Ton des Maduros und seiner Bonzen gar nicht verstanden.

Da sagt der frühere Putschist Mota und jetzige Gouverneur von Nueva Esparta, dass die Namen aller Menschen, die für das Referendum unterschrieben, bekannt gemacht werden und dass diese Leute mit Folgen zu rechnen haben. Andere Chavistas, wie der ebenso Militär Diosdado Cabello, haben klipp und klar gesagt, dass jeder Beamte, der für das Referendum unterschrieben hat, seinen Job verlieren wird. Das ist natürlich nichts Neues: wir haben das schon mit der Lista Tascón im Jahr 2004 gesehen und das war nicht schön.

"Auslöser des aktuellen Zorns der Opposition ist die angebliche Untätigkeit des Wahlrates CNE".

Nein, nein und nein. Es ist nicht angeblich. Es ist sehr tatsächlich. Wenn man im Gesetzt sagt, dass ein Schritt des Referendums in 5 Tagen durchgeführt werden muss, ein anderer in 20 und so weiter, ist das nicht angeblich. Die Liste der Gesetze, die der Wahlrat verletzt hat, ist sehr gross. Die Liste der Verfassungsabsätze, die das von der Exekutive völlig kontrollierte Obergericht, ist fast so gross wie die Zahl aller Absätze. Die Anzahl der Venezolaner, der politische Gefangene sind, wächst weiterhin. Die Mangelwirtschaft, die schon zu Zeiten des Caudillos Chávez Schwierigkeiten bereitete, verschärft sich sehr schnell.

In einem anderen Artikel spricht der Spiegel über vereinzelte Plünderungen. Was versteht man unter "vereinzelt" auf Mediendeutsch? In 3 Monaten 10? 20? 100? 200? So was und so was und so viel mehr?

OPEC-Fass: Erdölpreise

¿Qué nos dice CEPAL ahora del 2016?

Estas son las proyecciones del crecimiento del PIB que tiene la CEPAL para Suramérica en 2016. Como pueden ver, Venezuela es clase aparte una vez más. Los de la extrema izquierda en Europa hablan de una guerra económica...hay que tener morros para decir esto.

Según estos datos, el PIB de Venezuela caerá en un 6,9% en 2016.

A day in the life of a good engineer in Venezuela

Prices of most important household products are regulated in Venezuela of the "21 Century Socialism". The government does this at the same time as it keeps three currency exchange rates and currency controls that generate much more corruption and at the same time it keeps printing bank notes as if no one in the government knew anything about basic economics.

The horrible shortages product of these stupid economic policies have led the government to force citizens to buy controlled products only two days a week according to the last digit of their ID.

This is the account I got from a couple in Valencia. These friends are two formerly middle-class engineers who now can be classified simply as poor.

My time for shopping according to my ID was on Monday. I didn't find sugar, maize or wheat flour, rice, pasta, milk, butter, soap, tooth paste or shampoo in the main supermarkets. My husband went to queue up in front of the drugstore at 4 am. He got position 80. I got there at 7 am, shortly before the shop opened. When there were only 30 persons before me, the drugstore didn't have any more products with regulated prices.

I decided then to go to the Chinese shop as I had heard a lorry with pasta had arrived. I waited there from 10 to 1pm but I couldn't get anything when black market vendors tried to jump the queue and fighting broke out.

I gave up as I had to pick up our daughter from school.

Most of the people I see in the shops are actually from Southern Valencia, from towns of Güigüe, Miranda, Puerto Cabello, etc [a region with over 2 million people] because they do not find anything where they live.

She is one of the many who lost her job last year and she does little jobs here and there. There is no jobseeker allowance in Venezuela. Still, we  have 33% of the population that is still Chavista, just like 2, 3 years ago. They even believe things are worse in Spain.

Chicken and mathematics or how Chavismo's destroying my country

A friend of mine went shopping in Caracas. He was looking for some discount in the small poultry case of the local supermarket and while sifting through things he discovered, between a few chicken legs, an improvised ad:

"Maths specialist. Home lessons. Guaranteed comprehension and success.
Any day. Any time (Name and mobile number)"

Let's go to the chicken wings, though: the price is 1070 Bs a kilo. Instead of translating that into euros or dollars - very few Venezuelans earn either of them -, I'll translate that into a university professor's salary: that is equivalent to 1/19 to 1/39 of what she or he earns in a month. A school teacher earns less, of course.

Mind: you need more than a professor's full monthly salary to be able to rent a tiny flat in a working class area in any major city of Venezuela now.

My parents were a teacher and a professor in public - i.e. free- institutions before Chávez came to power and their salaries gave them a purchasing power that was much higher than anything teachers have in Venezuela of the "XXI Century Socialism".

I forgot to mention: my friend is also a professor. He was one of the very best at university. He would easily have a top job in Europe or in the USA. In Venezuela, though, he has to give maths lessons after his normal work at university in order to buy discount chicken wings.

Im Süden nichts Neues

Ich habe schon lange nicht mehr über Venezuela geschrieben. Zum einem bin ich sehr beschäftigt. Zum anderen bleibt die Lage in Venezuela gleich: es geht den Bach weiter runter.

Die Opposition mag die Mehrheit in der Nationalversammlung haben. Damit kann sie kaum etwas bewirken: die Regierung pfeift auf ihre Beschlüsse und die Justiz ist nur ein Organ der Exekutive. Die Militärs und andere staatlichen Sicherheitsagenten sind nur eine Waffe des Chavismus.

Viele Lebensmittel, Medizinen und absolut alle Ersatzteile für Autos sind Mangelware. Das war die Lage vor einem Jahr, nun ist der Notfall akuter.

Die Chavistas wollen im Laufe der nächsten 100 Tage Gemüsen in einem Gebiet von etwa 1200 Hektar anbauen. Für die Laien: 1200 Hektar sind 12 Km2. Das ist ihre Antwort für die katastrophale Versorgungslage im 17. Jahr der "Revolution".

Luxus pur in Venezuela

Cocaine and Chavismo, a Country in Decomposition

Everyone I know across Venezuela tells me the same: they are having a lot of trouble trying to make ends meet. Chicken? Onions? Beans? Meat? Flour? Hard to find and incredibly expensive for someone who earns in Venezuela's currency. We have heard for years now about the shortages in medicine supplies but now we have reached levels unheard of. We are entering hyper-inflation mode and the regime keeps talking about "economic war". Other bloggers have written a lot about this even if Chávez initiated the destruction of Venezuela's already weak economic structure, Maduro has accelerated the process. Maduro has allowed the shameless kleptocrats to prevail over all other interest groups of Chavismo. Desperation is increasing by the day. Still, most Venezuelans in Venezuela find it hard to understand things are going to get worse. When you suffer an inflation of over 150%, you haven't got much time to grasp it will keep increasing. You just try to survive yet another week.

On Friday we read of a major detained at the Colombian-Venezuelan border trying to smuggle cocaine. He had about 503 kg of cocaine in his lorry. This is nothing new but this major, Juan José Sorja Ojeda, turns out to be a permanent assistant to Hugo Chávez's father. The Chávez Family treats Barinas, their home state, as their fiefdom and there they have their haciendas, a lot of relatives have high ranking state positions. This major was a sergeant with nurse training who suddenly became a major. That is quite a jump in the Venezuelan military system.

Here you can see a picture of him next to Walter Martínez, the "star of international news" at the national - Chavista - state channel Venezolana de Televisión.

@cocando aquí está su foto para q lo conozcan! pic.twitter.com/t5EKCXzMwL

— OpositorRdikl RAV (@OpositorRdikl) February 13, 2016

Juan José was very active on Facebook and he was a very vocal supporter of Chavismo. The fact that he was caught while trafficking cocaine doesn't say anything about independence of powers but everything about lack of coordination among the different groups in power now. It also might show at least some of the low-key soldiers controlling our roads do mean business and want to do the right thing. The minister of defence, Vladimir Padrino, rushed to explain the guy was "no real military". The reasoning? "A coward, someone lacking dignity, honour, someone scorning his arms, cannot be a military". OK...so I suppose most Chavista militaries, once discovered by others in some crime, stopped being military.

Venezuelans are getting more and more isolated and neighbours do not seem to care. If you speak Spanish, you can read Krauze's article about that in El País.

Russian interests in Venezuela

It is funny that today, of all days, Russian newspaper Kommersant decided to publish a little article about Russian economic interests in Venezuela.

I wonder if the parents of those kids voted now for the opposition

They say Venezuela takes position 5 when it comes to Russian weapons (6% of all sales). My country spent $3.2b only in 2012-2015 (much more between 2004 and 2012 - my comment-). There are outstanding credits for around $6 billion.

Where did my underdeveloped country spend the money? It went for 30 Sukhoi, 34 helicopters Mi-17V-5, 10 helicopters Mi-35M, 3 Mi-26T, 3 Mi-172 and 2 Mi-172VIP, defence systems PVO TOr-M1 and Pechora-2M, 100000 Kalashnikovs, PZRK Igla, 92 tanks T-72 and some other similar soldiers' toys.

There is now  a company for producing AK-103 called CEMAREH. Those are the AKs you will see in the next robberies in Venezuela.

The Russians also have 40% of Petromiranda. There is a bank created in 2009. There are a few other projects as well - just go to the page and if you don't speak Russian, use machine translation or ask your nearest Russian friend- and last but definitely least, there is the Empresa Mita Ruso-Venezolana Orquídea S.A. to sell orchids in Moscow. I wonder if Miguel likes that one. Perhaps not.

Revolutions and coups are not so much about freedom but about money

This chart shows the GDP growth of five Latin American countries and Norway since 1962. Notice a couple of things:

• Costa Rica and Norway seem to be the countries that have a steadier growth and no big drops
• Venezuela has the most dramatic rises and drops
• Argentina follows with regards to variation

Now let's consider political turmoil.

Chile: Pinochet carried out his coup in 1973, when the GDP growth of Chile was of less than -4.

Argentina: there were coups in 66 and 76. The GDP growth of 66 was -0.66 and that of 76 -2.02.

Venezuela: there were two coups in 1992 and the coupster arrived to power in late 1998. There was a short-lived coup against him in 2002.

We don't have real figures about Venezuela's GDP growth for this year, only conjectures as the government stopped publishing most economic data since last year. Last year's GDP rate was -4% or worse and the one of this year is bound to be much worse than that. We don't know exactly how much but we know how desperate people are.

Will there be a coup? Unlikely. The military echelons have gone through several purges since 2002. A lot of the military personnel now, not only at the very top, are deeply involved in gangster activities. There can't be a coup as coups used to come. Still: the Chavista regime is aflutter. Tomorrow Venezuela has elections. The National Electoral Council has done and will continue doing anything it can to help the government and reduce the number of votes and, above all, of seats, the opposition can get. Still...

News from Greater Valencia: no petrol, again

El Palito Refinery seems to have technical problems. Some tankers with petrol off Puerto Cabello haven't docked because the Venezuelan government hasn't paid for the deliveries.

There are huge queues to tank from Puerto Cabello to Valencia and around.

When I was a child the refinery you see in the picture (El Palito) was one of the prides of Venezuela. Now it is falling apart...but it is "roja rojita".

How mental is Chavismo? Economics of an egg

It is hard to convey how screwed up Venezuela's economy is. Take the case of eggs...just conventional chicken eggs, not those of an ostrich.

Since 12 November the "fair price" for an egg is 14 Bolivars, which is equivalent to 2 euros at the official exchange rate. If you think that rate is not quite suitable because it does not reflect the real purchasing power, consider how many dozens of eggs the average school teacher in Venezuela can buy: 33.58 dozens or about 403 eggs. In reality, unless you spending hours every week queuing up for eggs, you are bound to find them at a much higher price. I could tell you stories of despair from my relatives and friends queuing up. Useful idiots in Venezuela and abroad still say the shortage economy has to do with capitalism and an economic war.

The video you see above is heart-breaking. it shows a chicken farm. The owners cannot find chicken food, which is imported, so they have to let the chicken run around the farm and find whatever they can. The chicken are desperate for grain, for anything. You cannot feed them nowadays like you use to do a hundred years ago...not if you need to feed a very urbanized nation.

At the same time as this is happening, Chavismo is 

1- importing massively chicken and other products from other South American nations - the ones with governments supporting the Chavista regime

2- still maintaining a currency control system whereby middle to upper middle class Venezuelans can buy a quota of highly subsidized foreign currency in order to spend it abroad. An expression of 21 Century Socialism is "raspar el cupo". That means: people who have credit cards and can afford that go abroad, buy some stuff but also simply get the cash in dollars or euros and then deposit it abroad. This is simply state-sponsored theft from the poor.

You can fairly say there is no one with lofty values running the so-called revolution nowadays. The people are taking umbrage and no matter how much the regime will try to cheat 6 December, things will become very hard for officialdom.

Hats off to Setty and Daniel for the video.

This is not a joke: ministry of trade in Venezuela

Since Maduro has been in power - since early 2013 - Venezuela has had five ministers of trade:

• Alejandro Fleming
• José Khan
• Dante Rivas
• Isabel Delgado and
• David Cabello, Diosdado Cabello's brother

Diosdado Cabello's wife is the minister of tourism, by the way.

The average term for a minister in today's Venezuela is less than a year. For this ministry the average is exactly six months. That is quite shocking considering the change comes from the same functionary, not from a newly constituted government. My estimate is that David is going to outlast the previous ministers, though: the top military coupsters of 1992 and their relatives tend to last longer at any ministry than the average. 

Even Brazil is not sending official observers to Venezuela's elections in early December because there is no guarantee they would be able to do their work.

Venezuelas Wirtschaft 7 Wochen vor den Pseudowahlen

Die venezolanische Zentralbank hat seit Ende 2014 keine Daten zu Inflation oder Wachstum veröffentlicht. Sie kann es nicht, weil sie völlig von der Zentralregierung unter Kontrolle steht. Venezolaner haben jetzt kein Recht auf Zugang zu den Wirtschaftsdaten ihres Landes.

Da die venezolanische Regierung mit Bonds in Dollars handelt und darum gezwungen ist, einmal im Jahr den US-Amerikanern Rechenschaft zu geben, musste sie aber in einem Bericht in den Vereinigten Staaten ihre frühere Aussage relativieren, wonach die Wirtschaft im Jahr 2014 um 4% gesunken wäre. Eigentlich soll sich diese Zahl nur auf die Daten bis September handeln. Also: es ist wahrscheinlich, dass die Wirtschaft im letzten Jahr viel mehr schrumpfte als bis jetzt angegeben.

Der Vorsitzende der Zentralbank, Nelson Merentes, hatte Anfang 2014 gesagt, die Wirtschaft würde um 4% wachsen. Dieses Jahr wird noch schwieriger sein.

Maduro kundigte jetzt die Erhöhung des Mindesteinkommens um 30% an. Das ist 16399 Bolívares. Venezuela hat drei offizielle Wechselkurse, die aber kaum nützlich sind, um eine Idee zu haben, was man mit diesem Einkommen machen kann. Die Miete einer Einzimmerwohnung in einem heruntergekommenen Viertel würde mehr als doppelt so viel kosten. Mit diesem Geld könnte man nicht eine Familie von 4 Personen nicht mal 2 Wochen ernähren. Nur Benzin scheint fast kostenlos zu sein. Die meisten Menschen könnten sich aber nicht mal 2 Reifen eines Autos leisten.

Ein Professor an der Universität verdient zur Zeit höchstens dreimal so viel wie das, im Durchschnitt würde ein Informatikerdozent mit 5 Jahren Erfahrung weniger als 36000 Bolívares im Monat verdienen.

Die Politikerin von Extremlinks Sarah Wagenknecht wird wahrscheinlich sagen, dass der Kapitalismus die Schuld trägt und dass Venezuela unter einem Wirtschaftskrieg leidet.

Bald kommen die Pseudowahlen der Nationalversammlung. Man würde denken, dass die Regierung verloren hat. Das ist nicht so deutlich. Ich werde bald erklären was das Regime machen wird, um seine Macht weiter zu verteidigen.