'World of Warcraft' Game Currency Now Worth More Than Venezuelan Money (theblaze.com) 189
schwit1 quotes TheBlaze:
Digital gold from Blizzard's massive multiplayer online game "World of Warcraft" is worth more than actual Venezuelan currency, the bolivar, according to new data. Venezuelan resident and Twitter user @KalebPrime first made the discovery July 14 and tweeted at the time that on the Venezuela's black market -- now the most-used method of currency exchange within Venezuela according to NPR -- you can get $1 for 8493.97 bolivars. Meanwhile, a "WoW" token, which can be bought for $20 from the in-game auction house, is worth 8385 gold per dollar. According to sites that track the value of both currencies, KalebPrime's math is outdated, and WoW gold is now worth even more than the bolivar.
That tweet has since gone viral, prompting @KalebPrime to joke that "At this rate when I publish my novel the quotes will read 'FROM THE GUY THAT MADE THE WOW GOLD > VENEZUELAN BOLIVAR TWEET.'"
That tweet has since gone viral, prompting @KalebPrime to joke that "At this rate when I publish my novel the quotes will read 'FROM THE GUY THAT MADE THE WOW GOLD > VENEZUELAN BOLIVAR TWEET.'"
The Blaze? (Score:4, Insightful)
Really? I know the old saying that even a broken clock is right twice a day. But you couldn't come up with a more legit source than glen beck's propaganda rag?
Try:
http://fortune.com/2017/08/01/... [fortune.com]
Socialism's latest success (Score:2, Insightful)
Widespread desperation and misery in the country with the richest oil reserves in Latin America. Everyone is poor (except the leaders) and it's all the fault of the CIA (or whoever it's convenient to blame this time). And yet, no matter how many times it brings disaster, some people keep believing stories about how spending others' money instead of earning their own will work out good for them.
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Widespread desperation and misery in the country with the richest oil reserves in Latin America. Everyone is poor (except the leaders) and it's all the fault of the CIA (or whoever it's convenient to blame this time). And yet, no matter how many times it brings disaster, some people keep believing stories about how spending others' money instead of earning their own will work out good for them.
Your incorrect conclusion about socialism is based on a false premise - that Venezuela operates under socialism. What you have there is a crook and his crook friends mismanaging everything they can't embezzle or otherwise misappropriate, not a socialist state, no matter what they call it.
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Can we go with the version of socialism the USSR did against the Ukraine then? I'm sure the millions dead from starvation would like to speak up, well if they could.
No, it's not a crook. What you have is socialism propping up another dictatorship under the guise of "we'll provide it all" and it fully collapsing under not only their theft of private property, but the lack of that stolen private property to produce anything. And on top of that, if you were a private enterprise why would you want to do busi
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Why would we want to do that? The USSR was a totalitarian country that eventually collapsed. If we're tossing around worst-case insults, how about the capitalism that Germany did against Poland?
Note that Nazi Germany was right-wing and capitalist, and I am prepared to meet any factual arguments against that claim. Please do not claim that propaganda was necessarily characteristic of how the National Socialists operated, or
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That would be taking their grain to sell it on the world market.
You mean the mainland USSR was suffering severe food shortages, and they took everything that they could. Including cattle, then told those Ukrainian's that they had to produce the exact same quota for next year. Lot's of people ended up in gulag's from that one, and they were the lucky ones who stayed.
Is that why the crooks keep on stealing? Just the week, one go convicted, but has the system changed?
Yeah and what's the difference between the two. I'll let you think on that a little bit, because the answer should be obvious. If it's not, then you should brush up on reality a bit more.
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You mean what keeps happening over and over again? Those [whomever we're blaming it on this time] keep messing up these awesome, righteous societies, over and over and over and over.
What's it going to take to learn that [whomever] will always do that and that people should earn money instead of trying to split up money other people earned?
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Why would you take one failed 3rd world country
Venezuela, Cuba, Eastern Europe before 1990, the USSR, North Korea, China's Great Leap Forward, Cambodia, National Socialists in Germany, etc.
It's a long list and I'm sure someone could make it longer.
And Venezuela wasn't a "failed country" before Chavez.
The Scandanavian countries have some of the highest standards of living in the world and would definitely be considered "socialist" by your view
Not sure what you think "my view" is. But Swedish Americans, Danish Americans, Finnish Americans all have a 50% higher standard of living than respective Swedes, Danes, and Finns living in the Nordic countries. [nationalreview.com]
It's also called being part of a society rather than some Randian utopia of self centered greed.
Yay for straw men. What would we do without
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Not sure what you think "my view" is
Well then... let's remedy that so we can have some objective discussion.. what constitutes a "socialist" nation in your view and why
Yay for straw men. What would we do without them?
The same thing we're doing right now...
But OK, I'll agree that socialism doesn't always disasterously fail everyone, everywhere. And free markets don't always help everyone.
on that we are agreed at least.
But that doesn't mean we can't look at China today vs. Great Leap Forward China, or Venezuela before and after Chavez and learn some lessons.
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Well then... let's remedy that so we can have some objective discussion.. what constitutes a "socialist" nation in your view and why
No thanks. If you really think the thing you like isn't similar to all the bad things, then you're probably right.
I will say that I'm predisposed to be against government giveaways, and a big part of the reason is that US society and institutions have been unkind to me. A huge number of people seem to be largely motivated by condescension or hatred, and many of the rest are happy to pursue their own self-interest regardless of who else gets hurt. So "being a part of society" has not much appeal and any he
Re:Socialism's latest success (Score:5, Insightful)
Not sure what you think "my view" is. But Swedish Americans, Danish Americans, Finnish Americans all have a 50% higher standard of living than respective Swedes, Danes, and Finns living in the Nordic countries.
Selection bias. No poor Swede, Dane or Finn would ever consider emigrating to the US. The US is a great country to be rich and a terrible country to be poor. To be honest, if the only measure of my life was making money I should probably emigrate too. But you know, it's my home. All the taxes I pay means it's a fairly nice place to live, there's not so many violent and desperate people as in the US. And if any American wants to brag about charity, maybe it's a bit de facto charity.
I have a few friends that have worked in the US, they went to lucrative jobs with big international companies. They wouldn't have gone otherwise. If they became unemployed, they never would have stayed. Social democracies don't work magic, the money we spend giving everyone a basic standard of living comes from redistributing wealth not some magic well. The highs don't get so high and the lows don't get so low. You don't go the US unless you're already a winner.
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If you saw news stories like this [detroitnews.com] or this [abc7chicago.com], would you trust the government to run a redistribution plan?
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I see your failing, your are confusing psychopathy with socialism. Any time an autocracy is established, it will be established by psychopaths and regardless of the economic system, that society will fail as a result of the egoistic actions of the psychopaths in charge of that autocracy. So the break down is not in the socio-economic system but in the proportion of psychopaths controlling that socio-economic system, the higher the ratio in control and the more rapid and destructive the collapse. So more a m
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Government power seems to attract such people. That's why supporting power in government hands is so foolish and dangerous.
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The solution for that is obvious, test for psychopathy prior to allowing people to run for public office, the tests can not be cheated as brain function can be measured directly and problem solved and should they go one step further, as the condition is genetic, it can be solved in the womb.
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Unfortunately, concentrating power in private hands generally works worse. Playing government and business off against each other seems to work better.
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In the first place, Nazi Germany was neither leftist nor socialist. That particular historical lie seems to have become prevalent among idiot right-wing ideologues. I suggest that you ditch it (do your own research if you like) so you don't sound ideologically blinded from the start.
In the second place, you're not in general talking about countries with a histor
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Sure, but Finnish Americans are doing 59% better. If the American economic system were substantially worse than Finland's (which is something ideologues try to tell us) then the expectation would be that Finns in Finland would have a better standard of living than Finn ex-pats in the US and Americans of Finnish ancestry. But the opposite is true.
I'm not trying to tell Finland to be like America. I would like America to be like America. And other countries that aren't like Finland shouldn't think they ca
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Not really, because US only allow emigration of highly educated people who can support them self. So the people who moved to US would have been better of then an average person in their home country, even if they stayed home.
But this is moot. None of the Nordic countries or Germany are what you would call socialist countries. They are "free marked" capitalist countries, and the only difference between them and US, is the exact amount of money the government moves between citizens, and thus exactly which ser
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Not really, because US only allow emigration of highly educated people who can support them self. So the people who moved to US would have been better of then an average person in their home country, even if they stayed home.
Sure, the selection of immigrants is a factor. But being an alien in a foreign land should balance that somewhat. We've been told by socialist politicians and pundits that Finland's system is superior to ours. If true, why can't it overcome these factors and produce similar outcomes? Conclusion: it's not substantially superior; if it has advantages they are small ones at best.
But this is moot. None of the Nordic countries or Germany are what you would call socialist countries. They are "free marked" capitalist countries, and the only difference between them and US, is the exact amount of money the government moves between citizens, and thus exactly which services the the government is responsible for ensuring.
I know that, but that's not the story socialist politicians and pundits tell. They point to these countries' success and claim i
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While right-wing politicians and pundits tell stories about how Communism failed, and therefore any government attempt to help people should be avoided.
That's about the same level of reasoning, anyway.
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Yeah, perhaps it's just a complete coincidence that all those places had such bad luck while proclaiming socialism. Even then, why not do the things associated with good luck rather than the things associated with misfortune?
And then? (Score:3)
Re:And then? (Score:5, Funny)
Fair point: I do not think there are many people who would exchange real money for Bolivars.
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Unless you can then resell the token for real world currency
You can.
Have you not heard of gold farmers?
However, farmed gold sells at a lower exchange rate than WoW token dollars do going the other way, due to the risk created by the fact that selling gold for cash is a violation of the terms of service, so the buyer is taking a risk buying farmed gold.
On the gripping hand, though, at the rate the Bolivar is going it'll drop below the value of a farmed gold piece in a few months.
WoW Gold worth than $FailRegime (Score:2)
So what? (Score:1)
This 'news' means absolutely nothing.
Units vs collective (Score:3, Insightful)
The individual UNITS are worth more. But the units are arbitrary and a comparison between units has nothing to do with the value of the currency itself. You can say a single WoW gold is worth more than a Peso, or a cent, or a Rupee, or a Yuan, or whatever you want. It means nothing.
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If you look at it per capita:
36 Retweets (Score:2)
36 retweets is now considered "viral"?
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heh heh retweets
You may have heard of a thing, it's called a screenshot.
For some reason, this seems to be the thing to share around social networks. Screenshots of tweets. Guess it's easier than copy and paste.
Incedible (Score:4, Insightful)
How a basically rich country can be driven utterly into the ground by massive mismanagement. Leads me to believe that it all comes down to the people and who they put in charge. As long as people do not start to wise up, we will continue have catastrophes like that. Not that what is going on in the US, the UK or the eastern parts of the EU is any better: Stupid people that believe stupid promises by utterly evil politicians.
Heard this before (Score:2)
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It's good Venezuela happened (Score:1)
Yet another socialist economy down the tubes. Even worse because they are resource rich. This will put the kibosh on the socialist "revolutionaries" that infest capitalist economies for a generation or two. Venezuelans have taken one for the team (mankind). Sean Penn and Danny Glover are, I hope, over-medicated due to being in a severe depression.
Can you buy food with it? (Score:1)
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Hey kids! (Score:1)
Socialism sucks. No matter how it's tried, no matter when, no matter where. There is no perfect form of socialism, or communism, or any form of leftism. Ever. It all sucks and it all falls apart at the seams.
You can hate free markets and capitalism all you want. But it's the least worst system of economics that we know. You haven't yet figured out a better system.
Errrm ... Yes? ... (Score:2)
... by now my toenails are probably more worth than Venezuelan money. No surprise here to be honest.
Of course it is. (Score:2)
...World of Warcraft is far more stable than Venezuela today.
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...World of Warcraft is far more stable than Venezuela today.
I don't know about that, if a token is under 10k gold now, the WoW economy has crashed as last time I logged in as few months ago it was in the 20-30k range.
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...World of Warcraft is far more stable than Venezuela today.
I don't know about that, if a token is under 10k gold now, the WoW economy has crashed as last time I logged in as few months ago it was in the 20-30k range.
After checking, tokens have been going up and haven't been at 8k for years. For the last year it's been around 40k, jumping up to ~120k recently.
Can someone please explain (Score:2)
I'm normally good with understanding markets when they are free, but not so good with manipulated ones. Can someone explain how this relates to the official exchange rate:
http://www.xe.com/currencychar... [xe.com]
The official exchange rate appears to be pegged to the USD. How is it then that people are spending so many bolivars for $1. Do people not honour the exchange rate? Does the government refuse to cover the value of it?
How can this "official" exchange rate not reflect what the currency is actually worth, with
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The actual exchange rate is what you can get on a large scale. Official exchange rates are those that a government is committed to propping up, and they only have effect when the government is indeed providing sufficient support that people will trade dollars and bolivars at the official exchange rate.
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So it really is just a case of the government quoting a figure they have no intend to support right? If it were a pure volume thing then now would be a good time to spend $10000US on bolivars in the black market and then go convert them back through the official channels.
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The official exchange rate is a government-set figure, which they might or might not intend to support (and may or may not follow through with their intentions). If the real exchange rate differs significantly from the official exchange rate, you know the government isn't supporting its exchange rate. If the government were, arbitrage (what you describe in your second sentence) would bring the real exchange rate into line. Bear in mind that some institutions that practice arbitrage when they can are wel
So I guess that means.... (Score:2)
Leftism is incompatible with functioning economies (Score:1, Insightful)
Blame capitalism and corporations all you want. The reality, however, is that there's an extraordinarily high correlation between leftism and failed economies. We shouldn't be surprised by this. Leftism is inherently incompatible with the efficient allocation of resources. When resources are inefficiently allocated then we see a partial or total collapse of the economy in question. This isn't even something that can be fixed. The leftist ideology of taking from the capable and giving to the inept will alway
Re:Leftism is incompatible with functioning econom (Score:5, Interesting)
Can you define "leftism"? Some of the most successful economies in the world could be defined as "leftists" if you include social Democrat nations like Sweden and Germany.
The Chavista regime certainly can be defined as leftist, but a more accurate description would be a kleptocracy.
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However neither Germany nor Sweden or other Scandinavian countries would consider themselves "left".
That is just a stupid american label.
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Point is they are in no way left. Germany us right now ruled by a big coalation, CDU, a conservative right party and SPD, a slightly left from the center party.
The countries you mention have strong social nets, that does not make them left.
It is just your label and in comparission to countries that have 'left' parties or even governments completely missleading.
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Neither Sweden, nor Germany became prosperous prior to instituting a Leftist agenda.
Germany was the first country to implement modern state socialism [wikipedia.org], including healthcare, pensions, disability, and support for families with children, beginning in 1883 under the guidance of that bleeding heart liberal Chancellor Otto von Bismark. At the time, German per capita income was a tiny fraction of what it is today.
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To be fair, von Bismarck (it's an old name and predates the modern "mark" spelling) intended to suppress socialists that way.
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To be fair, von Bismarck (it's an old name and predates the modern "mark" spelling) intended to suppress socialists that way.
Of course. I was being sarcastic when I called him a liberal. But the reasons for his policies are not what is important. What is important is that they worked. Germany was socially stable and prospered. In fact, they did so well that by 1914 the Germans felt they could fight the whole world and win.
Re:Leftism is incompatible with functioning econom (Score:5, Insightful)
An example of "leftism" you forgot to list would be taxing the citizens to bail out failed investments by corporations. Oh wait!
Wonder who is the "kleptocrat".
Re:Leftism is incompatible with functioning econom (Score:4, Insightful)
Leftism is the idea that government can be used to solve practically any problem.
That's not correct, but let's go with this for now. By extension then, "rightism" would be the idea that the free market can be used to solve practically any problem. Let's see how this solves the problems you posted:
Are there people who are hungry and can't get food?
They have to offer something to the free market; otherwise they can't buy food for themselves or their children. If they can't offer something (maybe they're sick, too young, lack skills, or maybe the market isn't in a great state) they starve and the problem solves itself - no more hungry people!
Are there people who can't afford housing?
The free market solves this problem easily: homeless people can either die or, as an alternative be jailed in for-profit prisons for loitering, sleeping under bridges, and so on. Either solution solves the homeless problem in a nice market-driven way.
Do you really think the free-market solutions to your problems are better?
Almost all Leftists are Klepotocrats.
That's... rather silly. You may as well say almost all rightists are oligarchists, and they long to be led by a handful of billionaires - who are obviously their betters, or else they wouldn't be billionaires, now would they?
Alternatives (Score:1)
The alternative is people dying in the street. Which if you are okay with that, I will respect that at least as a consistent political principle, but let's do be quite clear about what is being advocated here.
Re: Alternatives (Score:1)
People won't die. They stay with family and do what they can to help out. Only the most abusive people will not receive help from friends and family.
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Because, as we know, every poor person has well-to-do friends or family whose only purpose in life is to help them. To give them shelter if they're homeless, feed them of they're hungry and perform surgery on them if they're sick. And if they die, it's proof positive they were abusive people and didn't deserve to live anyway. Thus the free market saves society the cost of judging and executing those abusers! Is there anything the free market can't do?
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Leftism is the idea that government can be used to solve practically any problem. Are there people who are hungry and can't get food? Create a government food stamp program. Are there people who can't afford housing? Create a government Housing and Urban Development department to build a government housing project. The list goes on and on, from electricity, phones, communications, medical care, schools, jobs, transportation, and almost anything else of which you can think. Most always, Leftism does not involve any free market solution. Instead, the preferred method is to tax those who are working, and then redistribute it to Leftists' constituents, thus weakening any opposition to the left, and creating a voting base dependent on politicians for.... everything!
Neither Sweden, nor Germany became prosperous prior to instituting a Leftist agenda. As a reminder, East Germany collapsed, while capitalist West Germany was the prosperous nation.
Almost all Leftists are Klepotocrats. Very few have ideas other than "tax and spend". Of the few which are not, most of them focus instead on regulation because they realize that they have reached the upper limits of taxation without collapsing their economies. However, at its core is still the idea of a government solution, for which high taxes are a prerequisite.
This idea that businesses are just collapsing under the burden of taxes and regulation is a ridiculous fiction. Businesses wield stupendous power here in the US - we have an extreme, obscene concentration of wealth. [youtube.com]. What we have NOW is a kleptocracy, fully supported by both parties.
We, the electorate, have very real power to address this issue, and many others - issues that, despite appearances, the nation is pretty much unified in its opinion on.
To counteract this, we see propaganda... the stuff your
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Disclaimer: I have no preference as history later only shows an alternation of spending and taxation anyway.
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Can you define "leftism"? Some of the most successful economies in the world could be defined as "leftists" if you include social Democrat nations like Sweden and Germany.
Don't be ridiculous - of course someone who throws around the term "leftism" in that manner can't adequately articulate what it means. Present day Venezuela is no more an evolved and truly Marxist state than were the Soviet "socialist" republics, which were also more like the a "kleptocracy." "Leftism" is typically used to refer to ill-fated attempts to institute communism, which has never existed in the pure, altruistic, governmental end state that itself evolves into a mutually beneficial pseudo-anarchy.
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Redistribution has been part of governing systems since the beginning. Your libertarianism is a fantasy that would lead to revolution. What counts is sustainable redistribution.
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Perhaps you should review a little history as to why the kinds of redistribution in place today came about.
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Remember who you're talking to, MM.
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The Roman empire failed because the productive minority were being taxed to death to give bread to the lazy.
Actually, it was the productive majority who were being forced off their land so that the wealthy could have wine and olives.
See the Latifunda.
Add in corruption, a lack of other civilizations to plunder, and plagues, and you have problems.
Re:Leftism is incompatible with functioning econom (Score:5, Insightful)
Germany? "leftist"?
By European standards, Germany is economically conservative. But compared to America, Germany is "leftist". Like most people, Americans use themselves as the reference point. Plenty of Americans believe their own government to be leftist.
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It's important to remember that "socialism" (public ownership of resources and the means of production) is not NECESSARILY synonymous with "leftism" (belief in equality of outcome, etc).
There IS one scenario where non-leftist socialism can (and does) work: when the country
a) Has substantial, valuable natural resources with a large, robust international market, and
b) Is willing and able to limit the ability of "outsiders" to become citizens with an equal right to their share of those resources.
By almost any
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I KNow! Since Obama was elected look at what happened to the USA!!! ... oh wait a minute?
Sorry enough right wing rhetoric. All of scary and evil socialist Europe is not turning into Venezuela either so your argument is mute
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Math really doesn't care whether the country is "right" or "left". If you spectacularly over-spend, stifle economic activity, actively undermine private economic activity, and on top of that fail to diversify your economy while constantly pocketing money for yourself and your cronies, your economy and country is going to have a bad day. Using a "right" or "left" style of politics doesn't make you immune to corruption and gross mismanagement of that sort.
There's nothing obviously wrong with a little social
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The CIA has been working hard for decades to destabilize the remaining socialist/communist governments in South America. Looks like they've succeeded in this country at least. Of course, it will ultimately backfire and produce horrific results, as it always does when the CIA goes fucking around with South America or the Middle East. But that's just more fun from the three-letter agency that never, ever learns.
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For anyone interested, here's a good read [amazon.com] on the subject. A little out of date now, but as timely as ever.
Re:western bankers (Score:5, Interesting)
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I didn't say the administration was a good one. But if you think the CIA hasn't played a very active role in this situation (as it has in MANY, MANY other coups and economic crashes in the region), you're being very naive. Regardless of the competence or incompetence of the regime, they can make it almost impossible for a socialist/communist government to survive. Cuba is one of the very rare exceptions, and they were only able to do it because they were so stringently isolated and resilient.
It's a leftover
Re:western bankers (Score:4, Informative)
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No mate, this is all conspiracy theory. Venezuela is walking the same worn path that all communisms have walked. First it starts with the idea that you will create a new sort of man: the socialist man, a mythical human that is no longer interested in its own well-being or individual achievement.
No, first it starts with the existing system collapsing and the people losing confidence in them enough they are willing to drastically try something else.
Re:western bankers (Score:5, Funny)
Are you saying the CIA convinced Venezuela to ditch capitalism and embrace socialism as a means to destabilize itself?
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It's amazing how every socialist paradise always gets poorer and poorer and it's always the fault of the CIA, even while Obama was president.
You guys should just give it up. The CIA will always be there making your utopian plans fail, no matter what. Every leader everywhere is powerless against the CIA's efforts, and clearly always will be.
If you stick with free markets, the CIA might let you prosper. Otherwise you have no chance. How many disasters is it going to take to learn?
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When Obama was president the CIA helped make Syria hell and contributed to the humanitarian crisis and thousands upon thousands of civilian deaths, so the CIA is not only about stopping utopian plans whatever that's supposed to be.
Social democracies are fine and it's easy to argue they're equal or better than capitalistic democracies, and I would be surprised if the terrorism in Venezuela, like in Syria, wasn't fueled with weapons and cash from the CIA.
Who's capital controls who. We need to have less parano
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Trump has stopped the CIA mess in Syria, I hope he also stops the waste of resources and lives in Venezuela.
It keeps happening over and over. How does "hoping" it might work out differently make sense? It seems like the only choices that work out at all are the ones the CIA bogeyman won't mess up: free markets and elected governments.
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"It keeps happening over and over. How does "hoping" it might work out differently make sense?"
It seems the CIA interference in Syria has stopped since Trump is in power. When I used the word hope for Venezuela I meant I hoped Trump would curb that too (if he was the one responsible for the CIA exit from Syria but I'm not holding my breath and the CIA exit from Syria may have simply been because it's become obvious to enough people that they were a liability).
"It seems like the only choices that work out at
Re:western bankers (Score:5, Interesting)
I thought the target was Saudi Arabia. Drive down the price of oil, so that they are forced to dip into their savings and rainy day funds. It might take a few years but eventually they will be living hand-to-mouth in terms of bringing money into the country.
The side effect was that Venezuela also suffered a loss of earnings from the oil industry. There was a national strike, the government punished those oil workers that supported the strike, froze wages and fired experienced workers like geologists. Now with that knowledge lost, the replacements make mistakes when drilling which causes damage to machinery. which causes further loss of productivity. So oil production is in decline.
An international web site called Oil Pro is actually shutting down: www.oilpro.com
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Mostly when oil collapsed from $100/bbl to $35/bbl countries like Venezuela and, to some extent, Russia who were dependent on that income to prop-up social services suddenly had problems.
As far as OilPro shutting down - The price of oil has nothing to do with it. The CEO was corrupt and stole data from a company he started and sold to NY bankers. See http://www.chron.com/business/... [chron.com]
-T
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Why would they waste their time in doing so when Venezuela government did that job perfectly on it's own. The problem here is that the economy of Venezuela was gutter from the inside by its own leader that is now in the process turning him self into a dictator over the country. That was dune by removing private industry that the country needed when the government took it over and handed it over to people that had no idea what they where doing and they still don't know what they are doing when it comes to th
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Days if CIA getting involved into governments of other countries are over (mostly, but completely in South America). It ended when the cold war stopped.
LOL. You just keep telling yourself that.
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If the CIA is really meddling in the affairs of as many countries as you lot seem to think, where are the success stories then?
Well, you usually don't hear about them until many decades later of course. But, in fairness, the CIA has been pretty successful at defending the value of the Dollar and representing U.S. business interests (including defending the Dollar against anyone stupid enough to challenge it [theguardian.com]). But their attempts at regime change have been a series of disasters with often horrific unintended consequences. Here, read all about it [amazon.com].
But here's is a question for you. What do you think the CIA does all day? You don't seem
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Well, we do know for a fact that it was the CIA, not the Air Force, that commissioned the development and production, and was the primary early operator of, the U-2 and A-12 (predecessor of the SR-71). The NRO, which designs and operates reconnoissance satellites is a joint CIA/Air Force endeavor. And rumors have been abounding since its retirement about a manned SR-71 replacement. Aircraft and spacecraft development eat up a lot of money, especially if it's done in secret. It's a bit more reasonable, I wou
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I don't think anyone is happy about what is happening. More blood will flow in the streets of Caracas, and things will get worse before they get better. Totalitarian socialism doesn't just cause economic damage. It also tears apart the fabric of society, as people stop trusting each other. Venezuela has a murder rate many times that of America. When change finally comes, it will be messy and violent, and the problems will likely spill over the border into Colombia.
It is easy to blame the Venezuelan peop
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I blame a governing system that essential created anemic checks to the presidency. The Presidential system works in the US because Congress and the courts have enjoyed considerable prestige and legitimacy, and have been since the beginning very willing to challenge the executive. Sadly in other republics in the Americas, the legislative and judicial branches have all too often become little more than vestigial appendages. I firmly believe these countries would be better served by a parliamentary style of go
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I also blame outside negative interference, it always makes things worse, and radicalizes society at all levels.
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I also blame outside negative interference, it always makes things worse, and radicalizes society at all levels.
Who interfered? There are Cubans in Venezuela, but they were invited in, and aren't in control. Venezuela has bad relations with Colombia, but that is because of Chavez interfering in Colombia by supporting the FARC. Both Chavez and Maduro have blamed their problems on American interference, but that is mostly fabrication. Venezuela was kicked out of Mercosur, but their economy was already in the toilet when that finally happened.
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It was a mess before Chavez, but whatever, how are the overt US economic sanctions supposed to do anything other than make things worse.
"blamed their problems on American interference, but that is mostly fabrication"
Is it? Mostly? The hooligans and terrorists are getting their backing from somewhere (and I'm assuming they didn't mean only the Americans).
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Which "overt US economic sanctions"?
US buys a large part of their oil and the fact that their oil production have fallen to half of what it used to be, due to political appointments in the oil production is not really the fault of that stupid government which gives socialists a bad name.
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Which "overt US economic sanctions"?
The US has put sanctions on specific individuals involved in abuses and political violence. Of course these did nothing whatsoever to cause Venezuela's problems, because they are not on the country or government, but only on individuals ... and they were only put in place a few weeks ago.
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"Of course these did nothing whatsoever to cause Venezuela's problems"
Of course. They are only meant to cause more problems.
"because they are not on the country or government, but only on individuals"
Only individuals?? The sanctions are on "13 senior officials of Venezuela's government, military and state oil company PDVSA".
"and they were only put in place a few weeks ago."
Yes. I also thought the US had imposed oil sanctions, but they seem to have changed their mind.
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A good part of agreement. I also thought the US had gone ahead with oil sanctions but they didn't.
Fixed Article Title (Score:2)
"Venezuelan Money Now Worth Less Than 'World of Warcraft' Game Currency".