Venezuela’s government left bar-owners reeling by imposing an alcohol ban over Holy Week and Easter weekend, forcing drinkers in the whisky-mad Catholic country to use covert methods in search of a fix.
The ban outlaws drinking alcohol from 5:00 pm to 10:00 am each night from March 31, and all day from the following Thursday to Easter Sunday.
3/26/2007
Chavez is en route to destroying his country. That pretty much sucks for low class Venezuelans, but it is great news for me and all Americans.
It works out very easily:
- He loves to hear himself speak
- He provides great sound bites
- He convinces a large number of Americans that his ideas are good
- Meanwhile his policy of redistribution fails miserably and creates a very visible representation of why Americans don’t really want socialism
Now he’s apparently moving quickly with conceptual plans for “social, or collective, property.” The goal is to seize private property, redistribute it, and form collectives to be “managed by workers who share profits.”
It reminds me of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
It also reminds of Zimbabwe, where “Wonderful Bobby” Mugabe took the land away from people who knew how to grow things like food — I call them “farmers” — and distributed the land to poor desperate souls who didn’t have much of a clue how to grow things. That is always a winning plan for creating an abundant food crop.
In addition to land, Chavez also nationalized the “telecommunications company and the electricity sector, and imposing greater state control over the oil and natural gas industries,” but you already knew that. He’s also planning to increase luxury taxes and do away with those silly presidential term limits.
Of course a few realistic folks are questioning the results of his oh-so-good-intentions:
“If Mr. Chavez really wants to help Venezuela’s poor farmers, he must offer them technical assistance and sufficient financing because land doesn’t become productive without investment,” said opposition leader Alfonzo Marquina. “We’re only seeing increasing shortages and more expensive products.” [emphasis mine]
But hey, despite severe restrictions of the press, “[s]upporters say Venezuela’s democracy is as healthy as ever.” Admittedly, I’m not sure what the benchmark for Venezuelan democracy is. The supporters also really appreciate Chavez’s initiatives.
Oh well, as long as the people of Venezuela are content with waiting for Chavez’s initiatives to work and/or for him to die, it’s really none of my business.
2/9/2007
Last summer, when oil prices were peaking and people were looking for reasons, it was popular to blame speculators. Many a chatroom comment went along the lines of “them speculators is runnin’ up the price of oil!” As you may notice, however, this line of reasoning is used for almost any item any time prices rise.
For example, Venezuela is blaming food supply shortages not on their own price control policies and central banking failures but on “unscrupulous speculators.”
Some local commentators in Charlottesville blame an increase in housing costs on house flippers.
Speculating is rooted in finding market mispricing and using that knowledge to profit. Hopefully. That’s it in a nutshell.
What people so often forget is that speculators can and do lose money frequently. For example, this guy lost money on Playstation 3 market speculation. He paid more for something than what it is worth. Now he’ll have to sell for whatever he can get, which will probably be less than retail resulting in a very good deal for a couple customers. The same thing will happen with anything when the people who aren’t good at speculating pay too much.
My soon-to-be employer is basically a speculator (more kindly referred to as energy trader or energy arbitrage). The company is very good at what it does and owns a sizable profit share of the markets in which it participates. Within those markets there are maybe 10 companies that consistently turn a profit. For each company making a profit, there are about 5 or 10 more losing money.
The point is that speculators only make money when they’re right.
1/30/2007
I just spend a few minutes watching a video produced by Set America Free about reducing our dependence on foreign oil in order to secure America. And I was left with one question: how can so many people with so much intelligence be so fucking stupid?
Oil independence and energy independence may have their values. They do not, however, have the value defined in the little video, which purports that we’ll basically solve all global security issues by becoming oil independent. Because the OPEC nations of the world will have to liberalize and democratize if they can’t rely on black gold.
Here’s a hint, if we don’t buy a single drop of foreign oil, we do not solve in any way the problem of the Iran’s and Venezuela’s of the world making a lot of cash to spend on evil things. They still have an abundance of cheap oil that they can sell at huge profit margins. Someone, somewhere is going to buy it. Period.
The only benefit to Americans is that we can feel so great for not being the ones who buy the cheap oil. I say whoop-dee-doo. But since we’re a culture who joyfully spends a dollar for a pint of water, why not start spending a dollar for a pint of gasoline so we can feel good about ourselves.
1/22/2007
The Saudis are key player in the OPEC cartel. They’re the biggest and lowest cost producer. And they are usually the ones expected to significantly alter their output. When the Chavezes of the world stamp their feet and throw temper tantrums complaining that the oil price is too low, they are very reluctant to give up major capacity (and when they do give up major capacity it’s usually an inadvertent result of mismanagement). OPEC is great for oil producers, but not so great for the average customer. So why not bribe/subsidize the Saudis to leave OPEC?
I propose we promise them a long term price guarantee. That may not be a bribe, but bribe just sounds sexier and more dangerous. We’ll give them them difference between $55 (just a number I picked) a barrel and the market price on the condition that they run at peak output and turn a deaf ear to OPEC production quotas. Maybe even ramp up the price fifty cents for every dollar oil goes below $35. Let’s get the Saudis to overproduce.
What does this accomplish?
The worst case scenario is that someone else steps up to limit oil supply. The prices stay the same and we owe the Saudis nothing.
A better case, is that world oil prices decline. This is great for consumers all over the world. It also seriously affects the revenues going to Venezuela, Iran, and Russia. (Exxon and the oil companies would also probably return to where they spend the most of their time: making only modest profits.)
And what’s the cost? We’d be overpaying, maybe by a lot, for something like 10 million barrels of oil per day. But since we use roughly 20 million barrels of oil per day in America, we gain every time oil is below the $55 price floor.
This may not exactly be free trade or fair trade or legal. But it would be awesome if it worked.
2/6/2006
This is an intriguing question that has been bugging me for a while. We are usually operating under an “OPEC=>BAD” mantra. So why should a country that we are basically in control of belong to the cartel that we all seem to hate? Let’s look at a bit of OPEC history, then analyze some light research of what’s going on in Iraq.
The member countries are (estimated % of OPEC production in parenthesis):
- Alegeria (4.5%)
- Indonesia (3.6%)
- Iran (12.9%)
- Iraq (6.8%)
- Kuwait (7.9%)
- Libya (5.3%)
- Nigeria (8.0%)
- Qatar (2.6%)
- Saudi Arabia (30.8%)
- UAE (7.8%)
- Venezuela (10.0%)
- Ecuador
- Gabon
And formerly
Six of the eleven are in the Middle East and represent what some call the core OPEC states. That leaves 3 African nations, 1 South American, and Indonesia over there near Australia.
From OPEC’s functions and history:
The OPEC Member Countries coordinate their oil production policies in order to help stabilise the oil market and to help oil producers achieve a reasonable rate of return on their investments. This policy is also designed to ensure that oil consumers continue to receive stable supplies of oil.
OPEC’s objective is to co-ordinate and unify petroleum policies among Member Countries, in order to secure fair and stable prices for petroleum producers; an efficient, economic and regular supply of petroleum to consuming nations; and a fair return on capital to those investing in the industry.
Reasonable rates of return on investment? Stable supplies of oil? Fair and stable prices? “Fair returns?
The Saudis are looking at a 1,000% ROI when oil is only $15 a barrel. Yeah that’s reasonable. Let’s also not look past embargoes and the wars between member states (all involving Iraq under Saddam Hussein to my knowledge). And as usual, unless you are talking about a large redneck festival, I hate the word fair. It simply reeks of an inherent admission of unfairness. As a rule, I believe anyone who refers to anything as fair is a jackass salesman who’s trying to scam me.
Furthermore, OPEC reminds me of the town slut who takes gifts from and sleeps with absolutely everyone then gets upset when you dare question her morals.
