There is no way around it: hyperinflation is here. January is reported to be 10%. The government has stopped SIMADI. There is no word from CENCOEX and SICAD. In other words we do not know for sure whether Dollars are still being exchanged (a little bit still do, some particulars on occasion let us know that a small portion of their dollar debt has finally been approved for payment, never more than 10% of their total debt).
Draw your won conclusions. Mine is that the promised financial collapse predicted for April may have already started,
I also read somewhere that the dollars purchased through auction for the last couple months were paid for but the gov't has never paid out the USD. The Gov't just stole the money. Anyone know the truth to this?
ReplyDeleteThis government is really good at stealing money by now.
ReplyDeleteThis is NOT inflation of 10%/month.
ReplyDeleteThis is:
complete loss of confidence in the government
a belief that M2 is double or triple the stated amount
Of course they stopped SIMADI...! If you can exchange your dollar bill for 283 Bolivars in Cucuta, then somehow slip those same Bolivars through the SIMADI system, but this time using only 170 to get your dollar back, you'd do it too! Isn't arbitrage wonderful?
ReplyDeleteOr more likely what the robolutionaries do: pay 170 bolivars get one dollar then go to cucuta and get 283 bolivars: 113/170 = 66% return on investment!!!! guiso...
DeleteEven better if you are in the 6.3 guiso.
Very funny indeed! on February 25 I commented tongue in cheek "rumbo a los cuatrocientos". Well, maybe by middle March. If the little green men do not take over the government, this place will end up dolarized in next to no time like Ecuador then Zimbabwe. Not a bad outcome after all.
ReplyDeleteThat would make the most sense, other than for maybe the Chavistas that can no longer steal it at the discount... Any other thoughts from the blog on this? The Corps may have written everything off too soon, or are they still buying real estate to hold assests?
DeleteIs the price posted on dolartoday even remotely accurate right now?
ReplyDeleteI can't help thinking of Gideon Gono, one time Governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, boasting that he could print money faster than the markets could devalue it.
ReplyDeleteA few days later the ONE HUNDRED TRILLION dollar note came out of the printing presses and shortly afterwards good Gideon Gono threw the towel in, and Zimbabwe was functioning with US dollars, Chinese yuans, euros, South African rands, Australian dollars, and even... pulas of Botswana (whatever they are).
Wow! The future of Venezuela???? Bye-bye bolivar???? From wikipedia:
DeleteHyperinflation in Zimbabwe was a period of currency instability that began in the late 1990s, shortly after the confiscation of private farms from white landowners, towards the end of Zimbabwean involvement in the Second Congo War. During the height of inflation from 2008 to 2009, it was difficult to measure Zimbabwe's hyperinflation because the government of Zimbabwe stopped filing official inflation statistics.[1] However, Zimbabwe's peak month of inflation is estimated at 79.6 billion percent in mid-November 2008.[1]
In 2009, Zimbabwe abandoned its currency. As of 2014, Zimbabwe still has no national currency with currencies from other countries being used.[2]
"the promised financial collapse predicted for April may have already started,"
ReplyDeleteBut will that change anything? Venezuelans have proven through 15 years of misery that they adapt, corrupt themselves (se enchufan facil), and are ignorant enough not to care.
Hopefully this new "financial crisis" - which the average pueblo does not understand, at all - will really finish messing things up. To the point of generalized Famine, HUNGER, if necessary, I'm afraid.
Obviously nothing short of that would overthrow this regime.
"But will that change anything?"
DeleteMaybe not. Robert Mugabe is still in charge in Zimbabwe.
And, he is still a thug.
And Venezuela is almost as ignorant and uneducated as Zimbabwe, that's why.
DeleteI would ask Mark Weisbrot about this but he stopped writing about Venezuela since he discovered Greece.
ReplyDeletehttp://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2012/05/16/weisbrot-and-krugman-are-wrong-greece-cannot-pull-off-an-argentina/
ReplyDeleteWeisbrot is (politely but firmly) taken to task for his facile analysis of Greece. The writer is now Greece's Minister of Economy.
Varoufakis is counting on the success of his default blackmail strategy. So far the "surplus countries clustered around Germany" are calling his bluff. But more importantly, public opinion in places like the Czech republic is against Greeks collecting a generous government pension at the age of 57 while the have to work an additional 8 years to pay for the Greeks. Spain is doing very well out of the EU, thankyouverymuch. Why join the Greeks in a default disaster?
DeleteTony
And in 2012. PDVSA claimed $120 billion in export income. How much of today's export income is being siphoned off to robolutionaries? It appears that robolutionaries didn't want to take an income cut- especially since they could see the potential of the end coming. Result: a bigger proportion of reduced export income is being siphoned off, resulting in a drastic cutoff of export income transferred into dollars for imports. Demand for dollars skyrockets.
ReplyDeleteDaniel, your readers may wishto think about this question:
ReplyDeleteWhen does a currency cease to be a currency?
Venezuela is topping the charts for all the wrong reasons – inflation, homicide, food shortages, HIV, teenage pregnancy. All this whilst sitting on the world’s largest proven oil reserves which, until the recent price collapse, had been producing bumper revenues.
The Venezuelan Bolivar Fuerte, which is anything but fuerte (strong), has seen a devaluation of nearly 70% over recent weeks. The free market rate is now more than twenty seven times the official rate. The market view is that further serious devaluation will occur. The IMF has long urged significant policy changes to stave off a disorderly adjustment. Major US corporations are withdrawing from the Venezuelan market, writing down their Venezuelan based assets to zero or deconsolidating Venezuelan results from their financial accounts.
The Bolivar Fuerte, introduced in January 2008 when 3 zeros were removed from the currency unit, is only partially convertible and looks as certain a one-way downhill bet as one can imagine. The fact that the failed currency and the failed progressive socialist revolution are both named after Simòn Bolivar, who was anything but a socialist, remains a tragic and ironic reminder of what has happened in Venezuela.
The Bolivar Fuerte is dead; no international investor will hold it. The only currency worth holding in Venezuela is a dollar bill. Will the turmoil result in popular protest overthrowing the current regime or will a military coup happen, maybe later this year? Whatever happens the outcome will be painful and a currency will have died because Chavismo will have made it not worth the paper on which it has been printed.