The IMF

Generali

el_gringo wrote: »

Venezuela have offered several countries oil support in the past and recently, 'bust' or not. Britain is one of them. A better realationship with the UK would ease much of the tensions which are causing economic issues.
As an aside any increase in oil price makes their economy a damn sight better, ours a damn sight worse and I suspect it won't be long before the commercial media pressure topples Chavez, the oil industry is re-liberalised and Western speculators suddenly start saying how rich the country is. I'll also remind you that even anti-Chavez media reported the Venezuelan economy as growing (albeit at a very low rate) for the first quarter of this year.

Venezuela's enire GDP is less than the UK Government's national debt! According to The Economist, this rose by 0.3% in the last quarter but is expected to fall 5.5% for the whole of 2009 and 5.4% for 2010. There was a very interesting article in that magazine a month or so back about how the partial nationalisation of the Venezuelan oil industry and the subsequent milking of it has led to catestrophic underinvestment which will most likely lead to a 10%+ fall in GDP.

And the reason Venezuelans are getting angry with Chavez is because he's squandered the money from the oil price boom/bubble on giving away oil to Cubans and Londoners!

el_gringo wrote: »

I haven't speculated on why the UK govt would call in the IMF, purely mentioning that I wouldn't expect them to be one of the countries which hawks itself around to every other possible source of loan, as (for example) the Jamaicans did under the Manley government. As such they'd go sooner rather than later, and the conditionality would not be as we've seen in many of the other countries. As for gilts, its no surprise that the Chinese aren't interested if theres a better offer available elsewhere - hence why they have tied up other forms of investment in Latin America.

This paragraph seems to be essentially meaningless. Can you clarify?

Are you saying that the UK is or is not likely to get into trouble. You say you wouldn't expect the British Government 'hawking itself around' and then that the Chinese aren't interested in buying Gilts. Then you bung in a bit about a hard-left leader of Jamaca for no obvious reason.

el_gringo wrote: »

I suppose I should leave speculation to the failed mortgage brokers and bankers of this world, they seem to have done such a good job in the past. My qualifications and research interests are based around South American Political Economy (Particularly around food supply following IMF loans), and as such I wouldn't know a damn thing about what happens to countries forced to go cap in hand to the IMF.:rolleyes:

Aha! Now we get to the chase. You just wanted to play the man not the ball. Again.

Is your 'research' published? If so I'd like to short the hell out of the publisher as he's clearly on the road to ruin.

Generali

Degenerate wrote: »

But that wasn't just typical political posturing from Chavez, oh no.

It's just another idiot with nothing to say apart from ad hominem attacks. Save your keyboard mate.