Sifting Through Swiss Gold Vaults for Clues of Venezuela Default
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-25/sifting-through-swiss-gold-vaults-for-clues-of-venezuela-defaultVenezuela shipped 35.8 metric tons, or $1.28 billion, of the precious metal to Switzerland in January, according to data from Swiss customs authorities. That, combined with a $472 million withdrawal from the country’s cash reserves on Friday, is boosting bets Venezuela will make good on its commitment this week. After that, it’s anyone’s guess.
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The $472 million withdrawal is the largest since October, when state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela SA had two big bond payments due.
Payments later in the year are the ones that worry investors. Venezuela has $2.6 billion in interest due before the end of 2016, plus an additional $5.5 billion in debt and interest coming due for the state-owned oil producer known as PDVSA, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
The probability of the country defaulting in the next 12 months stands at 68 percent, according to credit-default swaps, after the price collapsed for oil, the source of 95 percent of Venezuela’s foreign-currency earnings. That’s down from 83 percent two weeks ago after oil rebounded somewhat and the government took steps to ease its cash crunch.
Goddamn to hell Maduro and the Chavista regime. They've managed to leave in economic ruin one of the most oil-rich countries in the world even after enjoying an oil price boom of over $100 for more than a decade. To any of you clueless ideologues that keep supporting Maduro, I ask you, do you even math?
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And it's only gotten worse under Maduro, and NOT because of the fall of oil prices. Several countries in the continent have managed to be in better states without relying on one single export and were smart enough to diversify their economies. The Chavista regime, on the other hand, decided to simply take most of the oil revenue to fill up their pockets and not reinvest it properly in the country's infrastructure and economy. In fact, they did the opposite: despite having all that big oil revenue for more than a decade, they still thought it wasn't enough and the asshole of Chavez decided to start taking away private businesses and agricultural lands which were already productive and decided to hand them over to some idiotic inexperienced military managers. Guess his was his way to appease the military generals so they wouldn't ever turn against him, guaranteeing himself the support of a fanatical armed forces (just so you know, constitutionally speaking the Venezuelan armed forces are not supposed to show any support for any political party or ideology, but under Chavismo, they have not been hesitant to show their support for Chavismo itself, to the point of its major general declaring themselves to be "Bolivarian" and "Chavistas"
. Any government with any semblance of sense and education would've been able to turn Venezuela into the #1 economic powerhouse in the continent, but instead we got the opposite; a populist regime which does not take any responsibility for its errors and instead blames the country's economic decline and poor state of affairs to external forces, particularly the US/CIA.
