Venezuela Refuses to Default, and Few People Seem to Understand Why

Post by ptaipale » Sat, Jul 09, 2016, 7:02 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #83

rmsaksida wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if you put it that way, the chavista governments have been doing a tremendous job at looting the country. If defaulting means having the country looted by the IMF and friends, I'm pretty sure the citizens would rather default; I can't recall the last time the IMF ran a country down to food and medicine shortages, so they're not nearly as good at this looting thing as Maduro and his lackeys have proven to be.

> I can't recall the last time the IMF ran a country down to food and medicine shortages Among the cases where it has been argued that IMF-driven austerity measures did that are Romania in the mid 1980s, Malawi in the early 2000s, and, most recently, Egypt earlier this decade. There are probably others.

Post by ptaipale » Sat, Jul 09, 2016, 7:36 AM UTC

wahern wrote: post #101

krapp wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US government could have done something about the banks after having bailed them out without wreaking havoc, but they didn't. Not because the government didn't have the power to, but because it apparently didn't have the will. Simply letting the US banking industry collapse and take the country with it as a power play of refusal to give in to "extortion" would have been insane.

Less than 10 years out and people have already forgotten their history. That's so disheartening.... First, Lehman Brothers was allowed to collapse. That was huge and directly contradicts the revisionist history we hear about today. But it immediately became apparent that the system couldn't sustain another collapse like that. Second, nonetheless Washington Mutual was allowed to collapse a week later. Third, the Feds…

Post by msh » Sat, Jul 09, 2016, 7:54 AM UTC

redstripe wrote: post #6

Alupis wrote: post #2

If Venezuela defaulted on foreign debts, it will be very difficult (and/or expensive) to borrow again in the future. Venezuela is essentially hedging their situation is temporary (however temporary, temporary is), and having a good economic standing in the future may depend heavily on foreign investments (particularly since Venezuela is a petroleum based economy). Burning those bridges now could cripple Venezuela per…

Can you give some examples of where a country defaulted and was worse off? I think most recently Iceland defaulted and they seem to be doing alright - but maybe given it's size it doesn't really count.

Post by vegabook » Sat, Jul 09, 2016, 8:03 AM UTC

roymurdock wrote: post #25

The second "conspiracy theory" explanation presented in the article seems the simplest and most plausible: Close associates of the administration are major holders of the country’s bonds and...the government fears it’d lose their much-needed support if the payments stopped coming in. Efforts to obtain comment from government press officials on this and other aspects of the story were unsuccessful. Either that, or deb…

Post by patrickaljord » Sat, Jul 09, 2016, 8:07 AM UTC

abpavel wrote: post #108

T0T0R0 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? More than two millenia of that sort of thing preceeds the previous five decades of post-nuclear-age politics, no?

Because once you're corrupt, there is no honor.