Venezuela Observatory: Venezuelan debt. vs US debt.
I was in conversation with @amariespeaks and we made the following observation:
- Venezuelan National debt is $141 Billion
- United States National debt is $21 Trillion http://www.usdebtclock.org
This makes you wonder how it can be that:
- Venezuela is at rock bottom and can't pay their debt's anymore
- The USA is able to wage wars all over the globe
WTF?
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All the $SBD from upvotes to this article will be donated to Venezuela as part of the Venezuela Observatory project.
As one comment has already mentioned, the size of the debts in relation to each other (US vs Venezuela), is not as important compared with the size of the economy, which has a bigger impact overall...the ratio is a lot more relevant. As for the reasons why, there are plenty!
Name a few??? For us who are not so aware.
HAHA, stop playing dumb:) You are a very clever one, you are....throwing money at my feet, bribing me to speak. Are you challenging me?
Hey! Am not politically aware duh, u saw my last post? that's what i know man!
Yeah, I read your post and it was great! If I have anything else to say, it will be in article form.
That's the way to go i think for our short-term goal ;)
Come on.
So thinking that Venezuela is just a geopolitical issue that can be compared to US deb/deficit problem is nonsense. US is putting pressure to get a political change here. I accept that. But that's not the cause of the problem. It's the consequence of years of mismanagement, corruption and human rights violation for 20 years of the Chavez/Maduro regime.
Thanks for your comment @metalmag25.
From the little news that reached Europe I understand that the oil production is far less then previous years.
A lot of the bad propaganda is fuelled by CNN 'reports' I have seen a Chavez documentary that Chavez actually did a lot of positives. I really don't trust US based mainstream media. Yet there is so little usefull news available regarding Venezuela that this topic seemed the only way to get a discussion started.
GDP is indeed an important factor BUT again, where do we find REAL GDP figures? (REAL as in NOT manipulated by CNN, not cooked by a corrupt government, but from an independent and reliable source)
https://tradingeconomics.com/venezuela/gdp i came accross that site before but as it one of the first links that searchengines spit out i'm nof going to let myself be spoon fed with whatever wins in the SEO battle.
As i know how SEO wizards play the engines to get their version of the world pushed to the masses.
Corruption of the gov is indeed a big problem but how do we fact check the figures
How did Chavez manage to boost the economy and what factors are now at play besides the state of the oil reserves.
The problem for me here in Europe is the lack of trustworthy news. So i have to start somewhere. I'm not a journalist, I'm just a regular guy who is disappointed that so many people suffer while rich people are filling their pockets. And now I need a quick way to get up to date, as many other people who are NOT receiving reliable reports.
So it would be good to find a real journalist who is able to present real facts about the situation in Venezuela.
And i hope to collect a fair amount of upvotes and resteems to make a difference to one person.
It is a long shot, but it is at least doing something and from there we can see what works and how to scale it up.
Thank you for getting this the right direction, please forgive me for being sceptic, the situation in the USA just made us all clear how bad and biassed CNN and other mainstream news outlets are.
BTW, i'm going to pull a new project of news aggregation of Venezuela in The upcoming days, pretty much like @newsagg. I'll give you guys a shout when is out!
Thank you!
GDP Figures are actually reported by central banks. Even the government accepts this, but blames this to the "lack of income due to the fall of oil prices and an economic war from the us against them".
Money lost by corruption has also being reported by government agencies that are looking to catch white collar criminals. Independient venezuelan journalists have vast reports of this, but in spanish. I could name a few independent sources for you to check:
www.armando.info
www.elestimulo.com
www.runrun.es
Twitter.com/albertorodnews
Twitter.com/alekboyd
The problem about Chavez is that he did "good" at the expense of part of Venezuela population. He used Venezuela's income to push social programs that were a mask to corruption from his military allies. That started from the 2000s, with the "Bolívar 2000" plan (And this is me telling and living the Story). Now, they (the military) have The control of the oil and mining industry. That you can find it everywhere.
Thanks a lot for this information.
I hope a few spanish speaking steemit journalists can tell the story in English, so that the rest of the world has better information to work with. I'm skimming trough news sources in my country, and it merely scratches the surface, enough to discourage investors to put money in Venezuelan companies.
Back to Chavez, was Chavez aware or part of the Military corruption?
And now Maduro what is he up against?
There is less oil produced, right?
He needs to pull the country out of the crisis.
Food, water and basic hygiene need to be back under control.
He needs to fight white collar corruption.
And then there is the USA who wants money, and who also wants to get a foot in the door (as always...)
Who needs OUR help most right now?
How do we reach those people?
Can they reach us?
What risks are involved in helping people, how do we prevent that people get hurt?
You probably can't answer all of my questions, or maybe even prefer not to answer. and that all fine.
I just put the questions out there and hope that someone has a go at it.
What is a wise approach to this situation?
Looking forward to more insight in the GDP.
Lots of questions, needs a long discussion about it.
There was a discussion about how steemians could help us just a few days ago in the PAL Discord server. And I wrote a post about a complaint i had about it. The ways to help people here in Venezuela are being discussed about how to help people in need, and how to change the economic landscape with the use of STEEM/SBD as liquid currency in our daily life. That's achievable, of course. But, the main problem here is political, not economic. Every policy decision made by the government affects us directly in our pockets. Then, any economic strategy could backfire for us because of government intervention. So, I complained about us Venezuelan steemians not being clear enough about telling you guys out there the main reasons of the crisis here.
Just checked the GDP report from the Central Bank of Venezuela.
http://www.bcv.org.ve/estadisticas/producto-interno-bruto
It has not been updated since 2014, but it clearly shows the decline of 2013-2014. You could compare it to the rates shown by https://tradingeconomics.com/venezuela/gdp on those years to look for accurate info.
I asked a lot of questions so that others can get an idea how little I, or we, know about Venezuela.
And how important it is to get real information even it it is not written by professional journalists.
So the questions are not directly to you but to anyone who can provide an answer.
people who can write about this can get upvotes if the write good articles.
Yet we also need to figure out the risk involved. We try to help, but the situation is bad enough to really consider how to keep people safe as well.
bcv,org.ve appears to be blocked for me. Server not found.
I'm trying to find if there is data available fron the ABC islands Aruba Bonaire Curacao and also Suriname. As those where Dutch colonies and i may eventually find news from these neighbouring countries in my own language, to get an idea how they perceive the situation in Venezuela
Well, I just launched @primeraplana, my Venezuela news aggregation project. I hope you can use it as a resource to look for information about the situation in Venezuela.
WOW, Thank you @metalmag25,
I'll make a post-promotion section for Venezuela related posts.
bcv.org.ve appears to be blocked for me. Server not found.
I'm trying to find if there is data available fron the ABC islands Aruba Bonaire Curacaoand also Suriname As those where Dutch colonies and i may eventually find usefull reports from the region and in my own language with a bit of luck
https://discord.gg/UGBF6s this is our discord channel.
Debt to whom?
It is national debt to other countries.
(i added the word National now, thanks)
Which country doesn't have any?
the point is the people of Venezuela are crippled from this debt, this is global news so I won't go into what is happening there right here but the US is feeling no such heat.. in fact it's spending as usual here - question is why?
Does Venezuela have oil? Or other natural resources that the US might want? All it does is manipulate its' government and voila!
oh yes - exactly! it's all about their oil (unfortunately)
~from a CNN article hah
CNN🤣😂🤣
@gabyoraa @cryptosharon
Well, in this case the information is accurate. Maduro does blame the US and Western institutions for waging the "Economic War" (which is ultimately the justification the government has for every bad thing that happens in the country).
And they do call it a dictatorship, and we call it a dictatorship, and even Maduro has called it a dictatorship at some time in his government, although nowadays they try to paint it as a democracy (not very successfully).
The debt is a minor thing compared to the rest of the situation. Venezuela is completely destroyed in many ways. There is no safety from crime on the streets due to police corruption and lack of resources. The water services are all broken and lack maintenance (same with the energy services; there are many towns where there is only energy on certain days of the week or certain times of the day).
Political corruption, school desertion, over-regulation of prices, etc., I can't go into all of it, but it's not just the debt.
What do Venezuelans do to keep the spirits up?
Hmm, you have to take into account that Venezuela has almost no income right now and that the US has the biggest enterprises in the world. I'd dare to say that despite their image and motives, the US is the biggest economy in the world. They can thus sustain a big debt because they have a big income. Venezuela's income is little and it's diminishing every day.
I'll give some answers (though I'll provide the disclaimer that I'm not saying I support all of this). There are many reasons, but here are a few:
Thanks @malloryblythe, for the extra input!
Still the $21 Trillion vs $141 Billion is a strange balance. According to fake news inc. (CNN) there is a 'what if' question. What if Venezuela fails to pay it's debt. Yet CNN conveniently fails to ask the same question about the USA.
So what if the USA would 'just' would pay it's debt to the rest of the world before asking Venezuela to do the same?
It is a lot more complicated then that, but the USA seems to be pushing Venezuela into deeper debts. while the Venezuelan currency is plumbing ever deeper, making the Venezuelan oil cheaper FOR the US.
Yet Venezuela produces far less OIL due to dried up wells and that make it even more problematic.
The problem with the USA is that it behaves like a mobster, asking for 'protection money'. And that is why the rest of the world 'loves' to criticize the Bully Empire. for being... a bully.
The Netherlands (where I live) was foolish enough to do away with drafted Military (not sure how to name it in English) We still have a 'professional Army' but no drafted force. It was just too expensive for such a small country. Yet we bought very expensive Joint Strike Fighters in the US. (as good slaves to the mobsters) While it would have been cheaper to buy a far better Eurofighter. And ironically the Eurofighter would have given us jobs on top. Now we have crap JSF, that cost a fortune to keep flying, while havingSo that we have to pay big sums to the USA to keep the things airborne, while NOT creating jobs.
Stupid move by our politicians to give in to US lobby mobsters. While we could have had jobs and superior defence aircrafts. But it is stuff like this that makes the USA look silly.
The USA as in US gov. I have many good friends in the USA who all work hard and suffer under the corruption of their leaders. However the ones working in Government Bureaucracy, Banking, Pharma or in big multinational corporations don't appear to suffer as much, and they seem to live in the illusion that everything is just fine. But I don't have THAT many friends over there to make this claim stick.
It's just an observation amongst the ones that happen to be my friends. And yes, this leads to interesting discussions. A discussion with a concierge of a hotel in downtown Chicago, is different to one with a DJ in Washington DC, someone who works in insurance in NYC or a music promotor in Miami.
I find the USA not all that culturally influential eventhough the house music scene originates in Chicago and NYC (a bit of my personal background) The biggest export product of the Netherlands IS House music. And in that sense we tend to have a far greater cultural influence. On the dance scene in the USA.
Hollywood however has indeed a big influence on the rest of the world but that's industrial influence. But thats different discussion alltogether.
The current Venezuelan government has a tendency not to pay its debts. In fact, they issued some bonds (IOUs that are sold to other countries, and are supposed to be paid later) and kept issuing them for a few years. Then, last year, they suddenly "went bankrupt" and the IOUs became useless.
No government in its right mind would keep lending Venezuela because it is not likely that they will be paying any debt off any time soon. Especially since they killed all the means of production and have no way to re-fill the vaults, and are too busy stealing any income that comes into the country.
So that 'What if' is a direct thread to Venezuela?
But the USA with it's 21trillion of debt to other nations i don't see them pay any of that anytime soon either.
So why can the USA threaten Venezuela, and get away with it's own 21trillon debt.
Sure the USA has a GDP that on paper balances things out, yet the debt is growing at a breeathtaking rate.
Sums per second that will take an average person an entire YEAR to earn. So the USA is destroying the life of 1 person per second.
What would it take to make Venezuela produce things again.
Or to let people produce food and build their own food based economy?
Is that even an option?
Debts are not meant to be held forever. They might even take a few generations to be paid out. Some governments decide to lend to other governments by judging the overall potential that other country has not only to pay back but to help in return, to bring things of value through the relationship that these lendings bring.
Imagine you have 5 million dollars in your bank account, and you also have a credit card. You buy a $500 purse with it. You have 5 million dollars and a $500 debt. If I, on the other hand, have $500 dollars in my bank account and don't have a job, perhaps I cannot find a bank to give me a credit card that would even allow me to buy a $500 purse with it. In fact, if I did have that debt, for three years, and had the bank come to my house to try to foreclose me or something, nobody would say "but why can a millionaire have $500 dollar debt for 3 months while I can't?". Because you have less of a reputation, less money to back your claims of value up, etc.
The Venezuelan government has many measures up that go against this.
These, and other things, sum up to a pretty bad result of it being impossible to seriously invest when you're in Venezuela. This has made most major enterprises to leave, and also 10% or more of the population to leave (millions).
This has been proposed by the government numerous times as an alternative, but it has never been viable. Some can do it, and do do it, but this practice hasn't been able to take off for various reasons, including my case, where I have no lands where I can grow food, and I earn much more by working online than I would by growing carrots in my tiny garden and selling them for almost nothing.
I would really like to do it, though, since I love, really love working on my garden, but it's not feasible for me or most people.
Finally got to reply to this...
the ever growing 21 trillion US debt doe not look it is being pay off anytime soon. As it is growing FAST.
Karl Marx, I don't like Marx, yet i see Socialism also having some positives, that seem to be better then our democratic 'solutions'
In a way it makes me curious how a world would look like if we would be able to use the positives of both systems. I don't think anyone can change politics overnight. As that brings even more chaos.
I digress.. I have to look into this proletariat 'solution'. The problem you already described of not being qualified to run industries that they take over is not surprising, and seems VERY problematic. As that will cost even more money. Yet when they need to take over a company that already was corrupt then it may be the better solution after all? This needs people with brains and courage.
And the bigger the company they take over the bigger the challenge.
And it is virtually impossible to gain the goodwill of the people, when the people struggle to get food on the table. It needs to give both ways.
Whould it make sense to do urban gardening? Just turn a plot of land in the neighborhood into a gardening plot where a few people of that neighborhood take care of it.
Land is land, if there grows grass or lettuce it does not harm anyone. Thats the simple approach, though i'm sure it will never be that easy.
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Have a look at this, and get some insight in the propaganda.
Keep in mind that this was recorded10 months ago, and that the situation is far worse right now.