Traders Are 'Scared As Hell' Of What's Happening In Venezuela
Source: Business Insider
Venezuelan investors are abandoning ship en masse after the government indicated that it would not take immediate measures to stop the country from sinking deeper into chaos.
"I am scared as hell," one Latin American bond trader said. "Default [is] likely within 12 months; the oil price collapse [is] just adding to a completely dysfunctional political and financial situation."
This week the Venezuelan government reiterated that it would not devalue its currency, giving it more bolivars for every dollar. It does not want to do that because the country already has the highest inflation rate in the world, at 64%. The official exchange rate is 6.3 bolivars per dollar, but the black-market rate sits at 113.62 bolivars to the dollar.
In the meantime, Venezuela is already suffering from food shortages. A lot of that food — along with other household goods — is imported, and without the cash from oil, the government will not be able to subsidize those imports, according to a report by the research firm Stratfor.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/traders-scared-as-hell-of-venezuela-2014-11
I can't see any outcome for Venezuela other than defaulting.
= new reply since forum marked as read
I'm amazed at the on-the-ground knowledge you seem to have. 
What makes you think he was "dark skinned"? Or that anybody cared about his skin color?
And the US does has lots of dealing with "dark skinned" politicians....you have heard of Africa, right?
Reading comprehension!
I was referring to the racial attitudes of the European-descended elites IN VENEZUELA. And in fact, Chavez was the first president of Venezuela to not be of pure European descent.
Gee, I wonder if there are any other countries where some people object to having a mixed-race president. 
Yer killing me with laughter.
Yer both killing me because I'm laughing so hard. 
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/mexico/ezln/1997/jigsaw.html
We gave them paper, promissory notes, and that's ALL we gave them. We traded them paper for crap, in essence. We kept their people working, and we played with their plastic shit. It's not the same dynamic at all. Maduro has given away the store--the oil that is the engine of their economy.
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Increasingly-Desperate-Venezuela-Makes-Oil-for-Cash-Deal-With-China.html
I suppose you equate standing in line waiting for the "Apple store" to open to sell their new version of shit the same as .... this?
\
I had an economics professor (who was with the IMF for a time) who used to joke that if you needed more money, you just printed more. It's a simplistic solution, and it can work if someone is trying to gouge you, but Maduro has taken it sixty steps too far--which is why inflation in VZ is at 63 percent.
There's no excuse for the mismanagement in VZ. It wasn't great when Chavez was in fair health and running the show, but it wasn't getting worse. Under Maduro, the nation's birthright has been squandered. They are now in extremis.
"You people?" Some of us have heard THAT before....
Maduro and Chavez FUCKED the people of VZ by keeping them down and giving away THEIR birthright to Cuba. Are you sure YOU'RE on the right site? You think it's "OK" to ration basic goods while the Boligarchs live high off the hog? Would you stand in a line like this in an ostensibly wealthy nation?
Good grief, what nerve, to call people rightwingers because they think that people who live in a country ought to enjoy the fruits of it, not let their leaders fart through silk while they spend the money on themselves and their "good friends" who fawn over them from a repressive island in the Caribbean...
I guess you think the government censorship of the VZ media and internet is "OK" too--and the government murder of students during the demonstrations was just hunky dory as well?
And you really think this kind of nonsense is helpful? Here, read-LEARN:
“Maduro ya se maduró ,” quipped vendor Maribel Nieble, with a play on the president’s last name that meant “Maduro has turned rotten.”
She had a sorry-looking pile of bananas on her stand, but it was really just a facade. Hidden underneath in a dirty fruit crate were several illicit bottles of Downy-brand laundry detergent and cooking oil. When a bus pulled up and Nieble didn’t see any troops, she quickly set out her wares, concealing them again once the crowds thinned.
“I feel like a drug dealer,” she said.
In stores, the detergent’s price was capped at the equivalent of about 60 cents, if using the government’s highest official exchange rate of 50 bolivars per dollar. Nieble was selling her Downy for twice that.
“I have six kids and two grandchildren,” she said. “I’m just trying to survive.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/with-goods-scarce-in-caracass-stores-street-sales-boom-and-officials-glower/2014/11/13/95b79f52-87da-442b-b7b3-cb0989903dd7_story.html
Talk about missing the point...
in the VN. Govt.
No, no, can't have that now can we? Not in the workers paradise of the Chavistas.
Had to run off for a quick search grab to remind people just how this term came into use, for chrissakes.
Banana Republic
"Although the United States is, uh, a very rich country and San Marcos is a very poor one, there are a great many things we have to offer your country in return for aid. For instance, there, uh, there are locusts."
— Fielding Mellish, Bananas
Any backwards tropical country (almost always fictitious, more often than not Latin American), that is ruled by a small corrupt clique (often but not always presided over by a man with a chest full of medals and epic facial hair). Also known in Spanish as "República Bananera" or "República del Plátano". Usually a People's Republic of Tyranny or a Puppet State. Will probably contain Jailbirds of Panama.
The terms has its origins in the United Fruit Company, an honest-to-god Mega Corp. with a Corrupt Corporate Executive approach. With the help of their buddies in the CIA, and some "well-intentioned" and actually well intentioned American presidents, United Fruit created countless US-friendly military dictatorships throughout the tropics dedicated to growing bananas. In these countries, United Fruit paid extremely low wages and close to zero taxes. Marxist and Maoist guerrillas surfaced everywhere, and a cycle of civil wars and dictatorial overthrows ensued.
Since it was usually the Communists who opposed the dictatorships note , in Latin America, the term is associated with countries that have governments that are controlled by multinational corporations, and not with just any decadent dictatorship per se. In Europe and the U.S, the connotation tends to fall more closely with that of any dictatorship in any tropical country, capitalist, socialist, or what have you. Although, possible exceptions notwithstanding, there aren't really any left in Latin America these days, they can still be found in Africa and Southeast Asia.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BananaRepublic
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Wikipedia:
Original banana republic
The history of the first banana republic begins with the introduction of the banana to the US in 1870, by Lorenzo Dow Baker, captain of the schooner Telegraph. He initially bought bananas in Jamaica and sold them in Boston at a 1,000 percent profit.[7] The banana proved popular with Americans, as a nutritious tropical fruit that was less expensive than fruit grown locally in the U.S., such as apples. In 1913, for example, twenty-five cents bought a dozen bananas, but only two apples.[8] Its popularity among Americans was also spurred by the American railroad tycoons Henry Meiggs and his nephew, Minor C. Keith, who in 1873 began establishing banana plantations along the railroads they built in Costa Rica to produce food for their railroad workers. This experience led them to recognize the potential profitability of exporting bananas for sale, and they began exporting the fruit to the Southeastern United States.[9]
In the mid-1870s, to manage the new industrial-agriculture business enterprise in the countries of Central America, Keith founded the Tropical Trading and Transport Company: one-half of what would later become the United Fruit Company (Chiquita Brands International, created in 1899 by corporate merger with the Boston Fruit Company and owned by Andrew Preston). By the 1930s, the international political and economic tensions of the United Fruit Company had enabled it to gain control of 80 to 90 per cent of the U.S. banana trade.[10] Nonetheless, despite the UFC monopoly, in 1924, the Vaccaro Brothers established the Standard Fruit Company (Dole Food Company) to export Honduran bananas to the port of New Orleans in the Gulf of Mexico coast of the U.S. The fruit exporters were able to keep U.S. prices so low because the banana companies, through their manipulation of the producing countries' national land use laws, were able to cheaply buy large tracts of prime agricultural land for banana plantations in the countries of the Caribbean Basin, the Central American isthmus, and the tropical South American countries — and, having rendered the native peoples landless through a policy of legalistic dispossession, were therefore able to employ them as low-wage workers.[9]
Moreover, by the late 19th century, three American multinational corporations — the United Fruit Company, the Standard Fruit Company, and the Cuyamel Fruit Company — dominated the cultivation, harvesting, and exportation of bananas, and controlled the road, rail, and port infrastructure of Honduras. In the northern coastal areas near the Caribbean Sea, the Honduran government ceded to the banana companies 500 hectares (1,235.52 acres) for each kilometre of railroad laid, even though there was still no passenger or freight railroad to Tegucigalpa, the national capital city. Among the Honduran people, the United Fruit Company was known as El Pulpo ("The Octopus", because its influence had come to pervade their society, controlled their country's transport infrastructure, and sometimes violently manipulated national politics.[11]
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The history of the first banana republic begins with the introduction of the banana to the US in 1870, by Lorenzo Dow Baker, captain of the schooner Telegraph. He initially bought bananas in Jamaica and sold them in Boston at a 1,000 percent profit.[7] The banana proved popular with Americans, as a nutritious tropical fruit that was less expensive than fruit grown locally in the U.S., such as apples. In 1913, for example, twenty-five cents bought a dozen bananas, but only two apples.[8] Its popularity among Americans was also spurred by the American railroad tycoons Henry Meiggs and his nephew, Minor C. Keith, who in 1873 began establishing banana plantations along the railroads they built in Costa Rica to produce food for their railroad workers. This experience led them to recognize the potential profitability of exporting bananas for sale, and they began exporting the fruit to the Southeastern United States.[9]
In the mid-1870s, to manage the new industrial-agriculture business enterprise in the countries of Central America, Keith founded the Tropical Trading and Transport Company: one-half of what would later become the United Fruit Company (Chiquita Brands International, created in 1899 by corporate merger with the Boston Fruit Company and owned by Andrew Preston). By the 1930s, the international political and economic tensions of the United Fruit Company had enabled it to gain control of 80 to 90 per cent of the U.S. banana trade.[10] Nonetheless, despite the UFC monopoly, in 1924, the Vaccaro Brothers established the Standard Fruit Company (Dole Food Company) to export Honduran bananas to the port of New Orleans in the Gulf of Mexico coast of the U.S. The fruit exporters were able to keep U.S. prices so low because the banana companies, through their manipulation of the producing countries' national land use laws, were able to cheaply buy large tracts of prime agricultural land for banana plantations in the countries of the Caribbean Basin, the Central American isthmus, and the tropical South American countries — and, having rendered the native peoples landless through a policy of legalistic dispossession, were therefore able to employ them as low-wage workers.[9]
Moreover, by the late 19th century, three American multinational corporations — the United Fruit Company, the Standard Fruit Company, and the Cuyamel Fruit Company — dominated the cultivation, harvesting, and exportation of bananas, and controlled the road, rail, and port infrastructure of Honduras. In the northern coastal areas near the Caribbean Sea, the Honduran government ceded to the banana companies 500 hectares (1,235.52 acres) for each kilometre of railroad laid, even though there was still no passenger or freight railroad to Tegucigalpa, the national capital city. Among the Honduran people, the United Fruit Company was known as El Pulpo ("The Octopus"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic
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