There are reasonable options but no one cares

UPDATE

To follow up this post I wrote about the "productivity problem" and the "fiscal problem" of Venezuela.
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With the objective of being ever so helpful and dodging the bullet on me always a critic, I am offering for this starting year a few things that could be done to temper somehow the economic crisis in Venezuela (1). I am, of course, perfectly aware that the regime will probably not come close to a single one, and that the opposition would not dare to state clearly what should be done. Sigh....


Thus I am writing from ground zero, from the perspective of someone with a small business that thinks at ways he could improve his production, hire people, etc...    Not being a big time economist I am allowing myself anyway to say that my opinion is relevant and that if people like me were heard a little bit more by economists maybe things would not be so bad. But I am digressing.

To tackle this subject let me state that in the current crisis there are several distinct problems, the main ones being:

- difficulty to produce anything
- fiscal crisis
- oil revenue crisis recently added
- astronomical corruption
- political impossibility to form any "grand coalition" to take some measures because too many of the potential partners have economic privileges that they are unwilling to compromise.

The last three ones have been the bulk of this blog posts in recent weeks. There is no point for me discussing them again now. I will limit myself to the first two items, productivity problem and fiscal crisis in two coming separate posts. Stayed tuned over the week end.

Just to close this intro, of the last three ones the last one is the worst. If there were political will, if there were some kind of coalition, corruption could be tamed to a manageable level and good administration could avoid the worst effects of oil price drop. But opposition has embarked on a sterile quarrel between supporters of "la salida" and the others, between those who benefit indirectly from the regime and want "peace" and those who legitimately have lost patience. The regime is worse off, diied between corrupt, narco military, radicals and what not. What is worrisome is that the radical wing seems in the upswing and folks like "Marea Roja" are calling for control of Polar, a folly that will bring us instantly to Cuban levels of survival.  Not only consensus is impossible inside each camp, but the possibility of consensus across the line is remoter.

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1) I need not remind the gentle reader that as blogger that will never run for elective office in Venezuela, who is out of contact with any of the political parties that have a chance to reach power and could appoint him to something, never mind the strong likelihood that I would reject the offer, there is no point for me to suggest things that should be done. If you wish to read people offering radical "solutions", you have Twitter for that. Still, when I feel it appropriate to remind the gentle reader that there are options I do not mind writing them down, like I am starting to do today.