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Post by Deleted on Oct 22, 2019 17:40:03 GMT
I was going to put this in Current Events, but maybe it belongs here... <shrug> Just trying to keep things neat and tidy, Ozarks Tom!
The question is, "How has a country with such vast resources reached such an abysmal low? What happened to their oil-rich economy? Why is no relief on the horizon?"
The writer of this article maintains that the collapse of Venezuela was carefully engineered and executed.
... [T]his collapse was generated to bring instability to the entire Latin America region as you´re already aware. The main reason, I think, was to kick Venezuela out of the oil producer countries to take over their quotas in the OPEC that were expected to be close to 3 million barrels per day, a substantial amount of money. Screwing us 30 millions of Venezuelans in the process, of course.
Read the article here: |
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Post by Ozarks Tom on Oct 22, 2019 17:53:14 GMT
The author is a truly paranoid socialist. For his "engineered" theory to work Hugo Chavez, who nationalized the oil industry, sending its production down and corruption up, would have to have been a secret CIA agent. I'd love to know if the author voted for Chavez and Maduro.
What destroyed Venezuela? Socialism, nothing else.
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Post by blackfeather on Oct 22, 2019 19:00:02 GMT
Some claim that the U.S. froze assets and later put on sanctions are the causes of their problems, but Socialism is the main cause, our actions may have accelerated the situation but is was going to end up in the same place regardless. As far as other countries wanting their business, We were one of the main customers sanctions took some of that away. What one must remember is Venezuelan oil needs to be mixed with thinning chemicals be sellable. Sanctions cut back the amount of chemicals they could get their hands on, thus cutting their production. The Russians purposed to buy their thick oil and mix it themselves but I don't know if that ever got off the ground. Sanctions sped up the demise of their oil industry. The Russians are now helping but infrastructure problems have hindered their exports, (less oil wells in production, and insufficient port facilities) and finding new buyers is difficult when the world now has an oil glut. Why buy thicker oil when you can buy prime oil cheaply?  |
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Post by john on Oct 22, 2019 20:30:55 GMT
Entirely possible that he was a secret CIA agent, maybe even a secret to Chavez himself. They don't necessarily have to work with a dictator to use him. Just find someone likely to act the way they want, and pull strings behind the scenes to help get their guy "elected."
Venezuela certainly collapsed because of socialism. When they nationalized the oil industry, the foreigners who were running the oil production left the country because there was no longer anything in it for them. The locals tried to run it themselves and drove production into the ground. Then oil prices dropped and the already dwindling income stream shrunk even more. They desperately needed that money to keep the welfare state afloat.
But what brought about socialism there? I don't know, just trying to think of how the author could be correct. It's possible that some nefarious actors engineered a swing toward socialism in an effort to collapse the economy. I don't see much substance to the theory, though. Seems more likely that it happened the old-fashioned way, grass roots envy and class warfare.
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Post by BrewDaddy on Oct 22, 2019 20:46:02 GMT
Entirely possible that he was a secret CIA agent, maybe even a secret to Chavez himself. They don't necessarily have to work with a dictator to use him. Just find someone likely to act the way they want, and pull strings behind the scenes to help get their guy "elected." Venezuela certainly collapsed because of socialism. When they nationalized the oil industry, the foreigners who were running the oil production left the country because there was no longer anything in it for them. The locals tried to run it themselves and drove production into the ground. Then oil prices dropped and the already dwindling income stream shrunk even more. They desperately needed that money to keep the welfare state afloat. But what brought about socialism there? I don't know, just trying to think of how the author could be correct. It's possible that some nefarious actors engineered a swing toward socialism in an effort to collapse the economy. I don't see much substance to the theory, though. Seems more likely that it happened the old-fashioned way, grass roots envy and class warfare.
A year or so ago I stumbled across a 12 year old issue of National Geographic with Venezuela the topic on the main cover. This was more or less as the slide was starting to serious socialism as I understand...
As I recall the article mainly showed how the elites were livin' it up and hoping for the best, some oblivious to what was happening, and others getting the heck out of dodge with whatever assets they could. The other part was about the lower classes struggling for food and supplies...
This has been a long time coming...
bd
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Post by john on Oct 22, 2019 21:56:43 GMT
Rosneft is still trying to take over the Venezuelan oil company. Just saw an article about that this morning. Russia is doing something like China does to poor countries all over the world, offering to "help" but with many strings attached. Kind of like loan-sharking on a global scale.
But the Venezuelans aren't incompetent when it comes to oil production. They have well-educated engineers and know how to get it out of the ground without foreign help. It's just that those in charge take all the profit for welfare programs without allocating anything to maintain equipment and keep the wells producing. So stuff breaks and they can't fix it, drying up the oil flow.
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Post by Ozarks Tom on Oct 22, 2019 23:48:37 GMT
Here's the timeline I remember. Chavez nationalized the oil industry, and the foreign companies doing the production had no reason to stay. Their engineers and competent people went elsewhere when their pay was cut back to local wages. Prior to that, even with the difficulty in refining and moving their oil, they were a fairly prosperous nation.
Like any socialist leader who's always watching his back, he put generals in charge of the oil industry, while carefully overlooking the proclivity of South American generals for corruption.
Yeah, we put sanctions on them, but mainly the corrupt elite and their companies that were robbing the place blind, sort of like the sanctions we have on Russia.
I've always said the problems in Mexico and the countries south stem from their initial conquering by the Spanish and Portuguese. Their lust for treasure continues to this day with their descendents. There's never been a true democratic system there, it's always been the elites, then everyone else. Guess which way the "everyone else" votes.
We're just lucky those countries have never coalesced into one big socialist cabal. We'd have another China to the South.
Our sanctions are just hurrying along the inevitable. Venezuela will become another junta ruled debacle. Their history and centuries old mindsets preclude anything else.
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Post by Ozarks Tom on Oct 23, 2019 2:21:11 GMT
For anyone who's interested, I posted a couple comments on the site. Apparently Jose is a snarky SOB who doesn't like being questioned.
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Post by john on Oct 23, 2019 3:04:14 GMT
Ozarks Tom, I'm confused by your comments. I found the article hard to read because his thoughts are quite unclear (seems like more than a language barrier issue) but I read it again and still didn't see him blaming America or the CIA. Did he even mention America? I don't see it. Am I losing my mind? I also don't see where you get the idea that he's a socialist. He doesn't seem to have much of a political ideology at all, except he doesn't like the foreign fans sold at Home Depot or something and he talks trash about Cuba's parasitic society, and their fake doctors sent out into the world to bring income into the Cuban government. That seems to lean the other way from him being a socialist.
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Post by john on Oct 23, 2019 3:15:53 GMT
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Post by john on Oct 23, 2019 3:40:24 GMT
Oh yeah, it's getting more clear. In another post, he says, "I am sure that things are going to be much better, including Maduro being wrapped in gift paper and sent to his final destination, whatever this could be." And he refers to "President Guaido" so he's definitely not a Maduro fan. He also rants about how Cuba and possibly Russia engineered Venezuela's demise. That part seems crazy, but he really hates Cuba. Definitely not a socialist: "This crisis is compared only with the Mediterranean one. No wonder, Greece government was openly identified as well as a “leftist” one. They destroyed the economy of the country, via subsidized society. There was no way to make this an on-going policy, sustainable on time." www.theorganicprepper.com/why-venezuelas-economy-is-worse-than-that-of-a-war-torn-country/ |
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