onlooker wrote:The problem is it works actually for a relatively few people on this planet.
asg70 wrote:onlooker wrote:The problem is it works actually for a relatively few people on this planet.
I think you'll find that in all societies (including soviet russia, where the Politburo were the "very few") all the way back to neolithic times that it's been this way. Just, ya know, deal with it.
asg70 wrote:It's a nature vs. nurture debate. Simply not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur. For instance, think of the wage-gap between men and women. A large part of that is due to different sets of priorities men and women tend to have. Men don't have to worry as much about work-life balance. Women try to squeeze having a family in someplace, and that means not being chained to your desk 60-80 hours a week. But that's what it takes to create a startup like Facebook. If you reorder education to encourage that sort of obsessive-compulsive like drive that it takes to be an entrpreneur then what is that going to do to what's left of a family unit that's already in disarray?
Venezuela, a socialist autocracy that once was South America’s most prosperous nation, is suffering a collapse almost without precedent, its gross domestic product dropping 40 percent since 2013. Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA), the government oil company and economic linchpin, has fallen into chaos as leaders replaced expert managers with loyalists, padded the payroll and channeled revenue to social programs — and to epic corruption. Production fell by half in the past 16 years. Daily output dropped to 1.77 million barrels in January from a peak of 3.34 million in 2001.
Much of the decline is due to lack of money for maintenance and exploration. Recently, though, hunger is also to blame. A survey by three Venezuelan universities released Wednesday found that that more than 64 percent of residents lost weight in 2017, on average 25 pounds. More than 61 percent of respondents said they had gone to bed hungry over the past three months.
Ivan Freitas, a PDVSA union leader and critic of President Nicolas Maduro’s regime, said Wednesday that in Zulia State 12 malnourished workers collapsed in November and December and had to be taken off drilling platforms for treatment. More go down each day, he said.
Alirio Villasmil, a diver, does underwater maintenance on ships transporting oil in Lake Maracaibo, in western Venezuela. He said in an interview that three people he supervises fainted while working, and he had to rush them from rig platforms to the hospital. He has sent home others too weak to dive.
Starting in late 2017 Venezuela’s President Nikolas Maduro began expanding heavily into media space in an attempt to promote a new payment instrument– the government-issued cryptocurrency Petro. On Feb. 20 the pre-sale of Petro was launched and has already raised $735 mln, according to Maduro’s Twitter. Total amount of PTR issued for sale is 100 mln and is worth $6 bln. The pre-sale will end on March 19. The following questions are raised by this controversial project: what is Petro in an economic context and what would be its possible real use in the global economy? Is it a cryptocurrency, a stable coin, oil futures, new government debt instrument or something else? What is its possible economic impact? Which legal issues could follow? image courtesy of CoinTelegraph Having carefully studied the Petro white paper and other data available, we present below the results of the
Alejandro Manuel Mago Coraspe is an inmate at the Vista Hermosa prison in Bolivar, a city in northern Venezuela. The 41-year-old is serving a nine-month sentence for vehicle theft. He was hospitalised recently for complications from food poisoning. Coraspe was so hungry that he ate dead rats found in the prison's garbage dump, and the bones and cartilages of the rats obstructed his intestine. After he collapsed in his cell, he was taken to a hospital and it is a miracle that he survived. Welcome to the new Venezuela, where staying alive is a luxury today. It is very difficult to associate Venezuela with poverty, which was once a poster child of prosperity in Latin America. The country is blessed with the world's largest proven oil reserves. At 297.6 billion barrels, it is ahead of even Saudi Arabia, which has reserves
The Collapse Of Venezuela's Imaginary Oil CurrencyMaduro’s cryptocurrency, supposedly backed by Venezuela’s oil reserves, is a very hollow promise. To be sure, few analysts expected much from the “petro,” Maduro’s hastily launched cryptocurrency. The new cryptocurrency has unsurprisingly failed to catch on.
The petro is supposed to be backed by 5 billion barrels of oil located in Atapirire, a small town in Venezuela’s remote savanna in the middle of the country. Reserves in this region are the lynchpin of the petro, and as such, they are intended to underwrite the regime’s plan for economic recovery. But as Reuters details in a special report, the region is not only lacking in oil production, but there is no visible effort at developing oil in this area at all. The only evidence of an oil presence were old rigs that have clearly been inoperable for a long time, as they are rusted out and covered in weeds. “There is no sign of that petro here,” a local resident told Reuters. Worse, the town suffers from blackouts, hunger, poverty and decrepit infrastructure, an increasingly common plight for the country on the whole. A cabinet minister involved in the project told Reuters that “nobody has been able to make use of the petro...nor have any resources been received.”
Meanwhile, Venezuela’s oil production continues to erode at a rapid rate. Output fell to just 1.278 million barrels per day in July, down roughly 50,000 bpd from a month earlier and down more than 500,000 bpd since the fourth quarter of 2017. There is almost no chance of improvement for the foreseeable future.
Thus, the meltdown continues. Maduro is going to need to come up with something better than a hapless and inept attempt at a new cryptocurrency to resolve the country’s deep depression.
Venezuela's Oil Exports Are Headed Toward Zero"Crude oil production in Venezuela is practically falling at an average of 10% every quarter and has been since mid-2017. A scenario with oil production in the country losing at least another 500,000 barrels per day by the end of the year is not unrealistic." GlobalData also forecast that Venezuelan crude oil production would fall to around one million barrels per day by the end of 2018. This is a steep decline from the three million barrels per day that Venezuela produced in 2011.
Platts reported this week that Venezuela has already warned eight international customers that it wouldn't be able to meet its crude oil commitments to them in June. Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA is contractually obligated to supply 1.495 million barrels per day to those customers in June, but only has 694,000 barrels per day available for export.
If the GlobalData forecast is correct, then the temporary interruption of Venezuela's exports may be permanent, as they will be plunging toward zero by the end of the year.
Latin America Gets Its Own Migrant Crisis
“Venezuela is no longer a pressure cooker. It’s a time bomb waiting to explode.”
Newfie wrote:Bored much Cog?
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Two Russian strategic bomber aircraft capable of carrying nuclear weapons have landed in ally Venezuela, a show of support for Venezuela’s socialist government that has infuriated Washington.
The TU-160 supersonic bombers, known as “White Swans” by Russian pilots, landed at Maiquetia airport near capital Caracas on Monday after covering more than 10,000 km (6,200 miles), the Russian and Venezuelan governments said.
Their deployment came days after Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whose left-wing administration is the most significant U.S. foe in Latin America, held talks with President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.
As OPEC member Venezuela’s socialist-run economy implodes, Russia has become a key lender of last resort, investing in its oil industry and providing support to its military.
Capable of carrying short-range nuclear missiles, the planes can fly over 12,000 km (7,500 miles) without re-fuelling and have landed in Venezuela twice before in the last decade.
“Russia’s government has sent bombers halfway around the world to Venezuela,” fumed U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Twitter.
“The Russian and Venezuelan people should see this for what it is: two corrupt governments squandering public funds, and squelching liberty and freedom while their people suffer.”
‘HIGHLY UNDIPLOMATIC’
The Kremlin on Tuesday rejected Pompeo’s criticism, saying it was “highly undiplomatic” and “completely inappropriate.”
“As for the idea that we are squandering money, we do not agree. It’s not really appropriate for a country half of whose defense budget could feed the whole of Africa to be making such statements,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.
Russia’s Defence Ministry, which said the bombers had been accompanied by two other Russian military planes, did not say if the planes were carrying missiles, how long they would stay for, or what their mission was.
Russia has used them in the past to flex its military muscles under the nose of the United States, delighting Venezuelan officials who have cast such flights as evidence it is able to defend itself, with allies’ help, from any attack.
Maduro frequently invokes the possibility of a U.S. invasion in the South American nation, a notion U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration denies.
Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza called Pompeo’s comments “not only disrespectful, but cynical,” highlighting the number of military bases the United States owns abroad.
“It’s strange the U.S. government questions our right to cooperate on defense and security with other countries, when @realDonaldTrump publicly threatens us with a military invasion,” Arreaza tweeted, referring to Trump’s Twitter handle.
Venezuela’s Information Ministry did not respond to a request for details on the bombers.
Maduro said the talks with Putin in Moscow this month yielded Russian investment in Venezuela’s oil and gold sectors.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu told his Venezuelan counterpart at the time that such long-range flights provided pilots with excellent experience and helped maintain the planes’ combat readiness.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
CNN - Nicolás Maduro spoke from the balcony of Venezuela’s presidential palace Wednesday, where he announced he was officially breaking political and diplomatic relations with the US and ordered all consular staff to leave the country within the next 72 hours.
“The imperial government of the United States is leading a coup attempt against us in order to install a puppet presidency that they can control in Venezuela,” Maduro said during the speech, which was live on state broadcaster VTV.
“I have decided to break all political and diplomatic relations with the US. Get out! Leave Venezuela. We have (our) dignity dammit!” he said.
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