Lies, dammed lies, and statistics! Each piece of government statistics has to be suspected a priori. Firstly for being a statistic and secondly for coming from the government (from any government), for the state, being an institution based on lie (that security cannot be provided by private non-monopolist parties), is particularly inclined to lie.

Case in point: the Venezuelan government and its unemployment statistics. Unemployment has been supposedly on decline for several months. What government statistics don't say (or at least I haven't been able to find on the INE web page) is how many of those currently "employed" are working for the government. I know that perhaps with a little more effort I can find the numbers, but for the moment I will conform myself with suspecting that a large number of currently "employed" people is working directly or indirectly for the government and its numerous "missions" (social programs), as the government is happily celebrating the drop in unemployment. But what's the problem with this? That by definition government employment is not production but welfare, and therefore represents net consumption of resources.

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Neocommunist commentators and pundits live their lives trying to convince Venezuelans and the world of two factoids about Venezuelan-Colombian relations:

1. Colombia and Álvaro Uribe are militarist and, therefore a menace to regional peace.
2. Venezuela and Hugo Chávez are peaceful and loving revolutionaries.

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Someday somebody should compile a Venezuelan Dictionary of Economic Idiocy. One of the first entries should go to the idiocy spouted by Agriculture and Land minister, Elías Jaua, in regards to one of the possible solutions to the inflation problem.

Jaua tells us that one way to fight inflation is haggling over prices:

Venezuelan Agriculture Minister Elias Jaua asked consumers to start bargaining over prices with retailers to try to curb inflation.

The most important help that people can give us (in fighting inflation) is that they defend their income. We can’t get used to buying everything at any price, Jaua told reporters . If we all start haggling over prices, speculators are going to start feeling pressured, Jaua said.

He also said that

If they sell me tomatoes at 6 BsF today and at 12 BsF tomorrow, the fault does not lie with the government, no, the government is not at fault, because it's doing all the effort in order to have more production (...)

But Mr. Jaua, the fault does lie with the government. Inflation is always an entirely monetary phenomenon and it doesn't matter how much people haggle over prices, so long as the streets continue being inundated with "monetary liquidity", prices will kee going up. And the only one with the legal power to create money is the government through its central bank.

Of course, I will not deny that you can get better relative prices if you haggle a little bit, but this is irrelevant when the absolute level of prices is rising. Any gains from haggling will be overshadowed by loses through monetary inflation.

 Venezuela, Economics

There are several reasons why, in nowadays Venezuela, money in the bank is money lost. But let talk to you briefly about one of the main reasons: inflation.

Yes, that seems to be my preferred subject of conversation. But it is not by whim. Inflation is one of the gravest problems Venezuelan face, certainly a much graver problem than that of the political "blacklist" of Clodosvaldo Russian.

The Venezuelan Central Bank, that perfectly oiled money making machine, reported last week that active interest rates dropped to 22.2%, a full 100 basis points from the week before.

Passive rates, on the other hand, dropped to 17.9%.

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So long as politicians in Venezuela are as ignorant as National Assembly's second vice-president, Saúl Ortega, the inflation problem (or for that matter, any important problem) will never be solved.

And so long as the media serves as mouthpieces of the daily mutterings of politicians, without critically examining the truthfulness of their words, the situation will continue as it is right now.

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Former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, who was held hostage by the marxist guerrilla known as FARC, acknowledged shortly after her liberation by the Colombia army the importance of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez mediation in the fratricide conflict and his work for the liberation of the remaining hostages held by FARC. At the same time she stated that any such collaboration should always be offered respecting the democratic will of the Colombian People.

In order to dispel any doubts in that regard, Betancourt reminded Hugo Chávez that the Colombian people elected Álvaro Uribe Vélez, they did not elect FARC.

Betancourt's message for Hugo Chávez is quite clear and simple: Don't try to dictate the terms by which you want to help reach a peaceful solution to the decades old armed conflict or the liberation of the FARC hostages. It's a matter of elementary logic, for a mediator cannot be a positive element in his job if one of the parties to conflict believes he's trying to impose the conditions and is acting biased in favor of one of them.

By the way, if you read the note from the official Bolivarian News Agency (in spanish) about Betancourt's declaration you would never know about this part of her words. Why would that be?

 Venezuela, Politics

The state-owned oil company PDVSA reported recently a record profit increase for Q1 2008, from 1.915 billion to 3.411 billion dollars, or an 80.2% more than the profit for the first quarter 2007.

That was the net profit for PDVSA. The profits before taxes and "social expenditures" (in Venezuela, the oil company is directly and heavily involved in social welfare projects) were 7.464 billion dollars.

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