Luis Alberto López Rafaschieri and José Alberto López Rafaschieri
www.morochos.net
Beginning 2010, Chavez surprised Venezuela enacting a maxi-devaluation of 100% against the bolivar, even though, according to his words of 2008 and 2009, the international financial crisis would affect only the capitalist countries.
However, problems remain, so this year, in May, Chavez proposes a new exchange rate system -SITME- as a formula that supposedly would stabilize the value of the bolivar by reducing the speculation. But this only succeeds in creating a new business for entrepreneurs linked to the revolutionary process and making even harder the Venezuela's international trade, which ends up generating more questions about the true value of the Venezuelan currency and promotes the scarcity of other primary commodities.
Seven months since the creation of the SITME, the same president who mocked the bailout of Greece was forced to order another maxi-devaluation, this time of 65%, due to the deterioration of public finances in Venezuela, and despite the recovery of oil prices in international markets. A movement that not only shows the inefficiency of the SITME-dollar system, but also means more inflation for the country with the world's worst annual change in prices.
Definitely, 2010 was not a good year for ALBA countries in budgetary matters: To balance the accounts of their governments, Rafael Correa, in Ecuador, had to reduce employment benefits of many public workers; Evo Morales caused a severe social unrest in Bolivia when tried to increase fuel prices in near 100%; Raul Castro, in Cuba, is moving forward in his plan to dismantle socialism by the lack of results in 50 years; and Chavez was not able to think something less unpopular than launching two maxi-devaluations in the same year. Maybe in 2005, Chavez would have solved with great pleasure the financial problems of his ideological comrades, but this is another Venezuela, one that no longer have the funds to support the mismanagement of public money, even as the world continues to witness the biggest oil boom of all time.
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