Yeah I just don’t see how China or especially Russia have any influence here at all.

Hispanic is the new black.

You could google it.

Nah I’ll just use common sense. Unless China is willing to just pump money into Venezuela they can do nothing. They have zero force projection here. And what the **** is Russia going to do? Not even a player here.

I think using google is always a better idea than using common sense.

If you had done that, you would know that China has invested $65 billion in Venezuela over the past decade.

Personally, I didn't think Russia would be much of a factor either. I changed my opinion this morning based on a conversation that took place with someone who knows a lot more about this situation than I do.

There's a lesson in there for you.

No idea about China, but iirc Russia was in talks to join OPEC as recently as last year and I think they even coordinate with OPEC on production quotas? Anyway there's some connection there, just a question of whether that connection matters and to what degree I suppose.

Anyhow this is all an education for me, I know almost nothing about Venezuela aside from that time Hugo Chavez called Dubya the devil and said he smelled sulfur and then he got cancer and died, assumed the CIA gave him the cancer but that's just an assumption idk

Russia is a player on Pennsylvania Avenue.

ITT: Posters who have been pearl clutching that Russian social media troll bots are the greatest attack on our country since 9/11 , yet who are also advocating for USA-backed regime change in Venezuela.

Inflation is about to hit 10 million %.

Its a failed country at this point.

That GDP chart is completely meaningless.


The opening post of this thread couldn't be more wrong. Well done Valuenza.

hahhahaha 8 years later.

Poverty is erased and the last election was completely legitimate!

Hugo Chavez came to power when he was 17?

indeed, the irony is not lost on all however.
The US has shafted Venezuela via sanctions as punishment for the country a) circumventing the dollar and b) progressive social reforms. The reason the Maduro government is labelled dictatorial is because the US backed opposition has boycotted elections, preferring a takeover by force (which seems unlikely to succeed as pointed out above. Perhaps the Brazilian fascists will support a US invasion?)

"Progressive social reforms" - > 90% of people are starving.

"Maduro is not a dictator, elections are legitimate".

DrRobotnit

Inflation is about to hit 10 million % this year, 80 000% last year. Do you agree with Maduro that inflation is just the work of the American devil?

How about now? Do you still believe the things you wrote in op?

Much of terrible conditions in Venezuela are due to US-led sanctions. The sanctions deteriorating conditions to the point where the regular population is ready for overthrow is a feature, not a bug. The US has quite a track record of overthrowing socialist governments in Latin America for pro-US business/oil governments, this is no different.

Regardless, why is it our business to forcefully support who we want as their president? The US has high amounts of poverty, a hugely unpopular President (whom many claim was not elected democratically and is there due to Russian influence)... how would we feel if China started exerting pressure for a coup? What gives them the right?

I mean US sanctions are stupid but they're not what f*cked up the Venezuelan economy so bad.

https://www.scmp.com/news/world/amer...s-debt-default

Article from late 2017

Imagine during the great recession other countries would not longer allow the US to take on debt. We would have been in complete collapse in a matter of years. Maybe Maduro sucks, maybe Chavez sucked, but this situation is substantially the making of Western governments who do not want a socialist president leading the county with the world's greatest oil reserves.

Principled leftism

Yeah, I'd like to hear what people think caused the hyper-inflation. A lot of countries have had a lot of corruption without it. Seems like they were overdependent on oil (not something that a free market would have prevented), oil prices went down leaving them with a big trade deficit and unable to fund government, and because of sanctions they weren't allowed to borrow money (like we do to fund our deficits - trade or otherwise).

Government spending as a percent of GDP was pretty normal up through 2015 when it stopped being reported by the World Bank. It was usually lower than average either for any country or for the region. Total public debt as a percent of GDP has been quite low - a third of the US's.

https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/ran...vernment_size/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...by_public_debt

I get they have a ****ty government that recently stopped being democratic (like ours is trying to), but the world is full of that. Russia, Hungary, Turkey...

It's blowing up. US diplos being ordered out

Russia was/is also dependent on oil and was/is sanctioned by the U.S (and EU) but because they believe in the free market (somewhat) their economy was relatively OK. Like there's a pretty damn good natural experiment that happened and the free market klpetocracy came out OK while the command economy kleptocracy went to absolute ****.

Oil is 7% of GDP in Russia.

The sanctions against Russia have mostly been of the nature of bans on travel or of doing business in the US (or EU) for handfuls of specific individuals. The US has sanctioned 2 Russian banks, one of which is their 3rd largest. Looks like only Norway has flat out sanctioned Russian (state owned only) banks altogether.

Venezuela is pretty unique for being so dependent on oil and so heavily sanctioned.

Maybe you're right, but propose a mechanism that doesn't primarily implicate oil dependency and sanctions.

So can I, like, buy 100 trillion Venezuelan bank notes on ebay? I still have my 50 trillion and 100 trillion zimbabwe bank notes that I bought for $4. Those were cool.

I'm not sure what you mean but Russia is/was greatly helped by having a floating exchange rate which greatly smooths oil price shocks. And allowing the market to set the price for toilet paper and the like.

The U.S didn't even sanction the Venezuelan oil market during the downturn. The U.S bought Venezuelan oil!