Ow,
Hi.
The economy has not collapsed because Chavismo is using the reserves, getting loans from the Chinese, the Japanese, the Brazilians and compromising our oil for decades.
Venezuelans first compromise their future before trying even to reduce spending.
Venezuelans do have more dosh now than in 1998, but the standard of living of the average Venezuelan is lower than in 1980. There are twenty million more Venezuelans (and others).
I wonder if Chavez wants to multiply the population to 50 or 200 million as he said two years ago.
OW, are you so pathetic and obtuse that you cannot converse on salient issues of the day?
The coup in Honduras, for example.
You are experiencing extreme contradictions and pains as your cherished ideology withers under the rigors of the winds of 'truth'.
Those dreaded 'externalities' that make your staid, (but insane) intellectual preoccupations a joke. Worth mocking...with a hearty laughter that comes unassummed, without regard for having happened at moments inopprotune...
Our laughter is 'with' the people (yes, you will note with your fellow number crunchers, an abstraction).
Your error (and the error of most of the folk entralled by the death-cult, maximize growth, folk/volk) is to believe, in your paranoid delusion that we are merely laughing 'at' you.
And you will have missed the joke, etirely.
slave revolt,
what do you see in these facts? which underlying process generates these externalities?
Welcome back traitor i had kinda hoped you had taken my advice and fucked off to your neo liberal friends in brazil but it seems venezuela still fascinates you in more ways than one. Mr OW in case you didnt know the world is suffering a great slump in which every country is suffering to one degree or another and Venezuela is no exception. No economy whether it is a planned economy like Cuba, a semi planned economy like venezuela or a free market economy like your role model The United states is immune to the world crisis caused by your capitalist ideas. Venezuela it has to be said is holding up quite well considering the storm, inflation is coming down unemployment is still lower than 1999 and is holding up quite well considering the world crisis also agricultural production is increasing and industrialisation continues apace despite your lies to the contrary. I have increasingly noticed as of late along with your mate roy carson on vheadline that you are increasingly taking a more hostile line towards chavez as of late, fair enough thats democracy but i do think it is about time that you were removed from venezuelanalysis as a link and are instead transferred to the opposition as a link of theirs because you have made it clear that you are not a friend of the revolution.
As neo liberalism is now failing chavez must and indeed is continuing to move the revolution leftwards towards more nationalisation and control and is thank god ignoring ow rantings. My only advice to chavez however is that if he wants to avoid more damage to the economy caused by world capitalism he should do ther following.
Nationalise all Banks and insurance
Nationalise all food production
Indeed nationalise 90% of the economy
Price controls on all goods
State monopoly on foreign trade
Abolise the bourgeois media
And keep ignoring ow!!!!!!!!!
Steve, I thought you were dead. Good to see you are still here, writing the same old crap.
Last I heard you were in Scotland, or thereabouts. I assure you you would have a different take on Venezuela if you lived there. But then again, you are a deranged man, so anything is possible with you.
I just had a good chuckle at CC. Tosh (that for no apparent reason calls himself Carlos or John) is lecturing about democracy. Yes, the same guy who rabidly supports and justifies the Cuban regime. hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha, you've got to see it with your own eyes. hahahahahahahahahaha
Ow, come to live in Venezuela before you keep talking so much crap. You have no idea about what you are saying. Fuck off, traitor!
asteve - good toi see you back. I completely agree with your formula and I am sure that you concur that the "vil suciedad" has to be put in its place.
Your measures are fantastic.
Kepler - you are such a lying bastard. Chavez said that the population could grow to 50 million before any family planning was needed.
Why is this, you ignorant fucker? When Gomez died in 1935 the population was around 3.5 million, about teh same as at the end of the federal War in 1863. The population diid not increase mainly to poverty and the diseases realted ti it, mianly malaria.
Thus, a country the size of venezuela and easily support 50 million people. Back in 1954 when our great Comandante was born, the population was only around 4 million.
"Chavez said that the population could grow to 50 million before any family planning was needed."
Did he? Please, make my day and send me a link. I read something else, but if it is true he said that I would be very please to get that link. He is then more stupid than I thought.
Ano, population growth had been too high before the pathetic coward of the Museo Historico shit on his pants during his coup of 1992. Still, family planning is becoming more urgent than ever.
Ow, back to your post: I downloaded the whole document but honestly it is too long and I haven't got the time to go through it all in detail. Can you give us a hint what to look at specially? I saw things you have mentioned already: stagnation of non-oil exports.
By the way, look at this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europ...ope/
8144165.stm
I had friends in Czechoslovakia back when it was socialist and I "lived" with them the whole transformation, I had lots of letters from there. I remember the excitement. I went soon after the fall of communism and could see in what a shambles that region was but how people wanted to progress.
The standard of living of the average Czech was definitely way below the standard of Venezuelans back then or now.
Now the Czech republic is so much better off.
Population per se isn't a problem. The economy is.
If Venezuela had a dynamic economy wherein its people generated wealth an increased population would be fine.
But when the country lives off selling natural resources that can only be sold in limited quantities then income is limited and the more people you have the less wealth each person gets.
So given how Venezuela's economy works population growth definitely is a problem.
Kepler, I do intend to post on it. It is a fabulous document and I recommend that it be read by everyone who can find the time.
It is also very frank and honest. Despite all the accusations of the government supposedly manupulating numbers I just don't see that.
Further, a reading of the document makes clear that a) the Venezuelan economy is not broke nor is it about to implode - the government itself had a net worth of about $100 billion as of the end of 2008 b) in the middle of an oil boom many things started to come unhinged and we saw many things start to happen that shouldn't have happened.
I suspect these documents get ignored by Toro and Nagel and Caracas Chronicles and by Weisbrot at CEPR because an honest and complete reading doesn't support the picture either side tries to paint of Venezuela.
Kepler - family planning happens amongst your class as it does amongst the whites in the US. The chicanos will outnumber the whites in the nuS by around 2040 and the mestizos already outnumber the whites in Venezuela.
I heard Chavez make this comment at least 3 years ago on Aló Presidente. I don't have time to navigate for a link today.
Have to go and buy una caja crate of Solera verde to get me in the mood to insult you, you piece of rotting dog turd. 
As i have said what venezuela needs is communism plain and simple with the nationalisation of all enterprises over 20 workers. The measures chavez has taken so far has loosened the corset of capitalism but has not yet removed it. Only by doing this can unemployment and inflation and poverty be completely wiped out
"..and the mestizos already outnumber the whites in Venezuela".
You make it sound like great news. Mestizos always outnumbered the whites and by far with figures ranging in the 70-85%, a much different picture than in the US. There are historical reasons for that, since Spaniards (and Portuguese) would generally send only men to the colonies, these would shack-up with local women or slaves.
Ano,
Eres un acomplejado racial y social increíble. My family is working class and my ancestors to a big extent African and Native American, and European, as yours and unlike your relatives we never voted for AD or COPEI, but neither did we vote for Perez Jimenez's and Akhmadinejad's biggest fan.
You really should go to a psychologist. You have such complex with ethnic groups imagined or real and with classes. This reminds me of the Chavistas driving in a brand new SUV and shouting at a friend of mine with an oppo poster on her old poor car: "Capitalista de mierda".
Talk to your acomplejados del "Grupo Afroamericano Con Chavez hasta la Muerte"
I don't waste the time any further with you.
Ow, how come they were making such bad deals with the Chinese.
Population growth is not a problem if these people could feed their kids but they can't.
One of the prerequisites for development is stop having so many children.
It is a whole vicious circle: no resources, dad is anyway often a maricon who just leaves the mother with 6 children and goes to make another woman pregnant, children grow up in miserable conditions in a cocaine-full environment. The slum you know of is a new slum. Wait 5 years and you will see you won't be there safely.
Watch City of God. It is the story of every slum.
Steve, I agree with you 100%. I would also force everybody to the fields so they can partake in the effort to grow rice and beans. Whoever doesn't cooperate is shot on the spot. Long live communism!!!
Charly - no need to give me a history lesson. I made that observation as a matter of record - nothing more.
Kepler - you suffer from a complete sense of humor failure. It must be living in Deutschland too long.
According to your theory of population demographics, we should reduce the world's population. There are plans for that laid out by the Illuminati if you wish to Google it.
You appear to forget that historically people had large families so that the kids could take care of them in their old age.
Your observations on male behavbior in Venezuela is tru - in some cases, but far too much of a socially racist generalization. Par for the course for you.
Mr impartial, smug and sacastic comments are completely inappropriate and i disrespect you for those comments. I believe in a workers and peasents democracy where debate and free speech and power is the preserve of All venezuelans not just the bourgeois few. I am not a stalinist, maoist or a pol pot nut i am revolutionary communist and proud. By the way i have no intention of advocating forcing people onto the land only a silly ass would come out with such a statement and i disrepect you for that suggestion as well
Ow,
I will check it when I have time, but don't over-interpret too much about Nagel's or Toro's intentions. It may be they simply haven't read that report yet.
Anyway, remember what I said: in the eighties the disaster was not felt immediately because the government decided to print money, get more loans.
The lack of global context here is striking. South America is generally outperforming the rest of the world in regard to maintaining marginal economic growth, and Venezuela, unlike many other countries, is still growing, albeit it just barely
and Ow considers this a failure
out here in California, we are looking at 13% to 15% official unemployment within the next 6 months (unofficial, probably pushing towards 20%), up from around 6%, with the rest of the US slightly behind, and a US 2009 GDP contraction in the 3.5% to 5% range, while Europe is doing worse, and Japan, much worse, just look at the IMF and World Bank reports that come out periodically, and you will see that my memory of them is not far off the mark
unfortunately, Chavez didn't succeed in getting a lot of manufacturing capacity built so as to adopt the East Asian export model, or he could have achieved the anticipated 12%-16% GDP decline anticipated for Japan this year
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