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>Maduro is facing assault on all sides due to this crises. Trust me he's rather be in the heady days of Chavez, when things were all kosher and happy. As someo

by fspear 10y ago

>Maduro is facing assault on all sides due to this crises. Trust me he's rather be in the heady days of Chavez, when things were all kosher and happy. As someone who lived in Venezuela during Chavez's regime things were anything but "Kosher" and "Happy". These are EVIL individuals who only want to make themselves rich at the expense of an entire nation.

edblarney 10y ago
Chavez enjoyed popular support and had no problem maintaining power, because the economy was doing great due to Oil. Maduro is barely holding on to power. Maduro would desperately want the Chavez era. Point being: Maduro is not creating this crises opportunistically, he's and idiot, and doesn't know how to manage things after the oil crash.
- aclsid 10y ago
  To be honest, Venezuela was doing great during Chavez because the guy as much as he was Trump like in his rethoric, was no fool. As soon as Maduro took power, he created massive chaos in the foreign currency exchange system, and he kept tampering with the economy with one failed policy after another, until we have arrived here. The problem with socialism the way I see it is that at some point there will always be a guy who wants to concentrate all the power to himself, like Chavez, Fidel, Mao, Stalin, etc. and then leave a big mess behind after they leave or after they have been in power for several years.
  - scast 10y ago
    Do you honestly believe Chavez would not be in this position? Seriously? (de pana?) Venezuela was doing 'great' because oil prices were soaring, which in turn made dubious economic policy affordable. Chavez did enjoy massive political support, mainly because venezuelans do enjoy their free rides (just look up how many pensions and public jobs Venezuela has, which, by the way, are now the ones being affected the most by this crisis). I am absolutely sure that Maduro, while incompetent, is in the same kind of problems Chavez would be, and is pushing the same agenda Chavez would have. Let's not get confused by personality cult here.
    - aclsid 10y ago
      Sorry, I'm not biased politically, which is kind of a rare thing these days here I guess. I am able to see good things both in a guy like Leopoldo Lopez and Chavez as well. Just ask yourself if you can do the same. But on to the point. If you lived in Venezuela right around the time when Chavez died, you would remember vividly how you were able to access those Cadivi dollars, no matter how bad and annoying the system was with the three/four stupid folders they made you fill. Importers could buy stuff with their black market dollars and then replenish their stash when Cadivi finally payed them. As soon as Maduro took power he dismantled Cadivi and it has been next to impossible to get dollars at the official exchange rate. In my opinion that is the root of all problems, and yes, I do believe that under Chavez that would not have happened even if he was foolish enough to establish that exchange control for so long in the first place. Hell, think about it, if tomorrow they really start offering dollars at whatever conversion rate, let's say 2000 but coming from the Central Bank, I can bet you everything I have this whole problem goes away immediately. There is an inherent quality at just being able to go to your bank to exchange currency instead of exchanging on a pool of people you know.
      - scast 10y ago
        I'm very sorry to sound harsh, but you have a fundamental misunderstanding on how economy works. It's not the government who choses an exchange rate (or for that matter, the value of anything), it's the market. If you choose to believe that Cadivi was a 'great' thing, you are simply living in a fantasy fueled by high oil prices and cheap dollars that make you think that this was 'great'. The thing with free rides is that, no matter how high or 'great' they sound on paper, they eventually end, and you see the real problems. > "Importers could buy stuff with their black market dollars and then replenish their stash when Cadivi finally payed them." Sounds just great. A 'great' working economy, working around arbitrage and fantasies. I don't need to have 'political biases' to see that Chavez, whose agenda crippled the entire private sector and killed every other possibility of economic growth that didn't depend on oil, would be in exactly the same position as Maduro.
        aclsid 10y ago
  - edblarney 10y ago
    I agree with scast. 95% of the issue is oil prices. Chavez would be strung up just as bad as Maduro right now if he were not already dead. The 'free money' stopped flowing, and the system fell apart.
    - aclsid 10y ago
      I believe the problem here, more than oil prices, is mismanagement of an epic proportion. In Venezuela way too many things are either free or subsidized. You get free college for kids arriving on fancy SUVs, public hospital infrastucture rotting away and the never ending public servant attitude of not showing to work, arriving late, stealing stuff, etc. Extremely cheap gasoline, and the list goes on and on. At the current prices, countries like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela can still turn a profit on their production, as opposed to the UK with their deposits on the North Sea or the US/Canada with shale oil. But of course, there is always the question of who created Maduro, and Chavez is fully responsible for that disaster.
      - edblarney 10y ago
        Clearly the underlying problem is total fraud and incompetence, but you paper over that with free oil money as long as it lasts ... Chavez was able to paper over his incompetence. Maduro can't. So the plebes revolt.

by fspear 10y ago

edblarney 10y ago

Chavez enjoyed popular support and had no problem maintaining power, because the economy was doing great due to Oil. Maduro is barely holding on to power. Maduro would desperately want the Chavez era. Point being: Maduro is not creating this crises opportunistically, he's and idiot, and doesn't know how to manage things after the oil crash.

aclsid 10y ago
To be honest, Venezuela was doing great during Chavez because the guy as much as he was Trump like in his rethoric, was no fool. As soon as Maduro took power, he created massive chaos in the foreign currency exchange system, and he kept tampering with the economy with one failed policy after another, until we have arrived here. The problem with socialism the way I see it is that at some point there will always be a guy who wants to concentrate all the power to himself, like Chavez, Fidel, Mao, Stalin, etc. and then leave a big mess behind after they leave or after they have been in power for several years.
- scast 10y ago
  Do you honestly believe Chavez would not be in this position? Seriously? (de pana?) Venezuela was doing 'great' because oil prices were soaring, which in turn made dubious economic policy affordable. Chavez did enjoy massive political support, mainly because venezuelans do enjoy their free rides (just look up how many pensions and public jobs Venezuela has, which, by the way, are now the ones being affected the most by this crisis). I am absolutely sure that Maduro, while incompetent, is in the same kind of problems Chavez would be, and is pushing the same agenda Chavez would have. Let's not get confused by personality cult here.
  - aclsid 10y ago
    Sorry, I'm not biased politically, which is kind of a rare thing these days here I guess. I am able to see good things both in a guy like Leopoldo Lopez and Chavez as well. Just ask yourself if you can do the same. But on to the point. If you lived in Venezuela right around the time when Chavez died, you would remember vividly how you were able to access those Cadivi dollars, no matter how bad and annoying the system was with the three/four stupid folders they made you fill. Importers could buy stuff with their black market dollars and then replenish their stash when Cadivi finally payed them. As soon as Maduro took power he dismantled Cadivi and it has been next to impossible to get dollars at the official exchange rate. In my opinion that is the root of all problems, and yes, I do believe that under Chavez that would not have happened even if he was foolish enough to establish that exchange control for so long in the first place. Hell, think about it, if tomorrow they really start offering dollars at whatever conversion rate, let's say 2000 but coming from the Central Bank, I can bet you everything I have this whole problem goes away immediately. There is an inherent quality at just being able to go to your bank to exchange currency instead of exchanging on a pool of people you know.
    - scast 10y ago
      I'm very sorry to sound harsh, but you have a fundamental misunderstanding on how economy works. It's not the government who choses an exchange rate (or for that matter, the value of anything), it's the market. If you choose to believe that Cadivi was a 'great' thing, you are simply living in a fantasy fueled by high oil prices and cheap dollars that make you think that this was 'great'. The thing with free rides is that, no matter how high or 'great' they sound on paper, they eventually end, and you see the real problems. > "Importers could buy stuff with their black market dollars and then replenish their stash when Cadivi finally payed them." Sounds just great. A 'great' working economy, working around arbitrage and fantasies. I don't need to have 'political biases' to see that Chavez, whose agenda crippled the entire private sector and killed every other possibility of economic growth that didn't depend on oil, would be in exactly the same position as Maduro.
      - aclsid 10y ago
- edblarney 10y ago
  I agree with scast. 95% of the issue is oil prices. Chavez would be strung up just as bad as Maduro right now if he were not already dead. The 'free money' stopped flowing, and the system fell apart.
  - aclsid 10y ago
    I believe the problem here, more than oil prices, is mismanagement of an epic proportion. In Venezuela way too many things are either free or subsidized. You get free college for kids arriving on fancy SUVs, public hospital infrastucture rotting away and the never ending public servant attitude of not showing to work, arriving late, stealing stuff, etc. Extremely cheap gasoline, and the list goes on and on. At the current prices, countries like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela can still turn a profit on their production, as opposed to the UK with their deposits on the North Sea or the US/Canada with shale oil. But of course, there is always the question of who created Maduro, and Chavez is fully responsible for that disaster.
    - edblarney 10y ago
      Clearly the underlying problem is total fraud and incompetence, but you paper over that with free oil money as long as it lasts ... Chavez was able to paper over his incompetence. Maduro can't. So the plebes revolt.