Hundreds of current and former Pdvsa employees attended an event to recruit workers to work for $10 an hour in construction helping the Caribbean island of St. Martin rebuild. Credit Meridith Kohut for The New York Times
New York Times: Once a Cash Cow, Venezuela’s Oil Company Now Verges on Collapse
PUNTO FIJO, Venezuela — A general with no energy experience has been installed as the head of the state oil company. Arrests, firings and desperate emigration have gutted top talent. Oil facilities are crumbling, while production is plummeting.
As the rest of the oil-producing world recovers on the back of stronger energy prices, Venezuela is getting worse, the result of dysfunctional management, rampant corruption and the country’s crippling economic crisis. The deepening troubles at the state oil company, the country’s economic mainstay, threaten to further destabilize a nation and government facing a dire recession, soaring inflation and unbridled crime, as well as food and medicine shortages.
When energy prices started to crater several years ago, Venezuela and other oil-dependent nations suffered in tandem. Now, prices are rising and others in the oil patch are on the mend.
Read more ....
WNU Editor: I mentioned earlier this year that Venezuela is my poster-child on how not to run a country, and why a command economy cannot work efficiently or fairly as a market economy. The above New York Times article just makes this point even more clearer.
7 comments:
I would like to see someone, Young Communist perhaps, explain why Venezuela failed.
You can say embargo or sanctions.
I'll counter do you need to the U.S. as a trading partner to succeed?
Do you need to be able to trade with 100% of the countries in the world to succeed?
I ask because that is the usual excuse.
If country A cannot trade with Russia/USSR,
If country B cannot trade with China,
If Country C cannot trade with the U.S.,
If country D cannot trade with Kirabti,
are they screwed?
Soros China and others want to have a basket of world currencies make up the reserve currency. They want to dethrone the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency. They want to buy and sell oil not in dollars. There have been oil trades made without dollars (Iran has done so with China) in the past 10 years.
Around 2004 Foreign Affairs magazine had an article about a basket of currencies being formed to replace the dollar. My 1st reaction was "HELL NO!" Imagine that. But then being a reserve currency allows know-nothing political to point their way out unbalanced budgets, so my view shifted.
I would also like to point out that Fortune 100 companies in the U.S. and probably European and Chinese countries trade goods & commodities without money. They swap finished goods for resources at an agreed upon rate. It has been going for decades. Indonesia has done this. There is no law written in the stars that you have to use the dollar, any national currency, or any basket of currencies.
1) Everyone wants oil
2) you can trade without money. Happens all the time.
So I reject the fact that Venezuela's problems are due to sanctions.
Not the article I was looking for, but it shows you do not need paper or electronic 'money'
https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/alternative-monetary-systems-address-economic-problems
Plus money is whatever you want it to be. It can be cigarettes (prison), round stones (Yap), etc.
It think the communists/socialists in Venezuela are incompetent, lazy, or corrupt.
Of course Mao was notoriously corrupt so why should not Hugo Chavez and Maduro not be corrupt too?
Mao had a lot of needs.
WNU editor, please, a lot of countries when peoples dies and millions fleeing are market economies, and are the headmasters of market and finance who command crisis and wars.
How many times Venezuela is "on the verge of collapse" according by capitalist journals?
"a lot of countries when peoples dies and millions fleeing are market economies,"
Name them.
Crony Capitalism does not count.
The editor raises an interesting point and with his experience with the former Soviet Union he would be in a position to know. It seems clear that Venezuela is sick. The symptoms are obvious. The editor has done a great job of listing them in a number of posts. As such, I do not need to rehash them.
While the symptoms are obvious, what is the diagnosis? Essentially what is the underlying cause of the disease that afflicts Venezuela?
Is it the failure of a command economy as the editor suggests? I tend to agree with the editor on this one.
Could it be imposition of US sanctions on Venezuela that is the cause of the nation's problems? This is how many would diagnose the problem. If this is the diagnosis, many around the world would deem the nation basically a good investment if only the "crippling" sanctions could be removed. Also, many around the world consider it a moral imperative to bust US sanctions. As such, this will make Venezuela more attractive to them than they otherwise would be.
Suggestion: In today's environment, sanctions never work. They do not affect the leaders and they cause undue hardship on the populace of the country being sanctioned driving the people further into the arms of the leaders being "sanctioned" prolonging their stay in power and strengthening their resolve to act against us. Furthermore sanctions are easily circumvented by pretty much anyone wishing to do so.
Since sanctions against Venezuela are not going to work and will never work, drop them immediately. If the diagnosis that this is a corrupt country run by incompetent thugs hence it is ill, then this is the correct course of action. Such an event will hasten the fall of this government and perhaps a new era in Venezuela can be ushered in.
A++ Poster.
You're idiolect is so atypical that people have drawn the appropriate conclusions.
Aizino,
You seem to have a problem with what I posted. Instead of resorting to name calling please be more specific about what you disagee with. If in error, I will try and address it.
Please follow along
I did not call you a name. If I called you a name, then name it.
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