Venezuela is Taking Another Step Closer to Dictatorship
If you have any monies in Venezuela I would think very very hard about it taking those monies out. Venezuela is taking another step closer to becoming a dictatorship. As I commented earlier it looked like Venezuela was moving in this direction.
President Hugo Chavez was granted free rein Wednesday to accelerate changes in broad areas of society by presidential decree — a move critics said propels Venezuela toward dictatorship.
Jason talked about KRY and I think he should become concerned.
Venezuela’s foreign minister on Thursday said the country is considering nationalizing its mining industry, a week after President Hugo Chavez announced plans to bring the electricity and telecommunications sectors under state control.
I am lucky in that my sister lives in Ecuador and I get insight into South America. I have been watching Chavez for a very long time now and what he has done is slick. About a year ago my sister thought he was great and doing good things. Now he scares the bezeers out of her. (NOTE: Chavez and Correa have become buddy buddy and that concerns her)
In the book Pragmatic Programmers they illustrated that there are two ways to boil a live frog. The first is to throw the frog into boiling hot water which causes the frog to immediately jump out. The other way is the clever way is to put the frog into cold water and then slowly increase the temperature. By the time the water temperature becomes too hot the frog will be boiled. This is what Chavez is doing/did with Venezuela.
Chavez is doing/did a slow switch from democracy into a communist dictatorship. Granted the transform is not quite complete, but he is already discussing the scrapping of term limits.
Opposition leader Julio Borges called for the 4 million Venezuelans who voted against Chavez not to be left out of decision-making, particularly as he pushes for constitutional changes including scrapping the term limits that would end his presidency in 2013.
When people thought, oh gee soon Chavez will be out due to term limits. Ha! I knew Chavez would stay because power has consumed him. Now people are supporting Chavez because Chavez is giving out money. But one day this will end and then he needs to use force. It is on that day Chavez has officially become a dictator!
Hello There Mr Roboto!
(the song and era says it all... http://www.devspace.com)
9 Comments Add your ownSubscribe
1. sam | February 1st, 2007 at 10:39 pm
chris:
do you how to get the chart on options…say mar 07 qqqq puts:
no where i can find this
even the historical price will do.
thx
2. Christian | February 2nd, 2007 at 9:23 am
Hi
Ok I looked for you Mar 7 qqqq and its at the following URL.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/op?s=QQQQ&m=2007-03
Though remember for Yahoo its end of day option pricing. If you have a broker you can get real time options. For the most part CBOE is the exchange that clears options and you could get more information at www.cboe.com. The CBOE website has quite a bit of information about options.
If you want to know which exchange clears which product in North America look at the following URL
http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/trading/products.php?ib_entity=llc#america
NOTE: If you want option price history you will be hard pressed to get it. The reason is that it would be a huge amount of data. About a factor of 100 more. Thus if you want to do some calculations you will need to track the option prices yourself.
You could calculate the option price using Black-Sholes, or Binomial Pricing, though the problem is that you cannot get the implied volatility and thus any price you calculate is imaginary.
Helps?
Christian
3. sam | February 2nd, 2007 at 9:28 am
i meant price history…see trader tim’s website
tradertim.blogspot.com..he has a chart for the option for NTRI (drool drool)..even a historical set of numbers will do..
any ideas?
4. sam | February 2nd, 2007 at 9:34 am
chris:
also about IB, anytime you sell the securities, it auto rolls to money market (now yields @~5%)..am i right?
or there is something you need to do
5. Christian Gross | February 2nd, 2007 at 11:34 am
sam: I looked at the URL you mentioned. Equity price history you should be able to get with most brokerages. IB gives you 1 sec tic history for a year. IT’s a HUGE download…
Options IB limites its history to about a month, which is not that great. I download option histories every week or so and thus a have a few months of history. You could buy option histories at the URL http://www.cboe.com, but it is bleeden expensive. There is the website http://www.historicaloptiondata.com, but it only offers end of day historical option price information.
Yes, IB automatically will roll you cash into a money market. IB calculates interest on a daily basis. What I find interesting is that IB has a higher interest rate than most savings accounts. You get more money dumping your money into an IB “savings” account… Ironic, no?
6. PJ6 | February 6th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
There’s been a lot of one-sided coverage of this in the US. I recommend you read “Profit Over People” by Noam Chomsky; you may find that the situation a lot more complex and interesting than you had first thought.
7. Christian Gross | February 6th, 2007 at 5:26 pm
PJ6:
Hi, thanks for your comment. Though note the following disclaimers:
1) I don’t’ live in the US, but live in “socialist” Europe.
2) I have lived most of my life in “socialist” countries in addition to “capitalist” America.
3) My sister lives in Ecuador and we talk regularly about South America and the leaders of South America. My sister is not part of the elite ruling class in Ecuador, but part of middle class.
While the initial intention of Chavez was interesting, he is becoming a dictator. What do you call nationalization of resources, and companies without regard of the corporation? What about censorship? http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/world/16594559.htm
What makes Chavez different is that he took the slow frog boiling approach, but he is more dictator than free democracy person.
I looked at Noam Chomsky and his articles and what I see is a recurring theme by many, “USA = evil because it is a hegmony and does bad things.”
This is not true and is cherry picking of the facts. Sure there are American governments I am not crazy about, but one has to remember that until the Euro the US was the only semi-coherent single country with 300 million people. Be that as it may, the cherry picking is on the bad sides of America, and not the good sides.
So let’s be fair and compare the “evil” US with other socialist states that Chavez is trying to emulate (eg Cuba)
Corporations US: Many critique the US for its corporations that are dominating and taking over the world. That is incorrect because it would mean that the same corporations in 70’s would be around today. Yet as we clearly see those that were big in the 70’s are not the big corporations in the 00’s. Sure some companies are still around, but these days its about Cisco, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, etc. All of these companies were tiny or non-existent in the 70’s.
Corporations Socialist Countries: Cuba, well that is a mess of country. Russia, none of the companies survived when the wall went down. China interestingly is moving forward, but only due to the acceptance of a market economy.
America Free-Speech: Many say that free-speech in America is being curtailed. Yet that is completely false. There is CSPAN, PBS, and other outlets where people can express their views. Americans will tell me that they either hate or love their government. What people misconstrue with free speech is when they feel private corporations have to publish certain opinions. The reality is that private corporations are not subject to free speech. Free speech only affects the right of the government to control what you can or cannot say.
Socialist Free Speech: Cuba? Yeah right, let’s laugh. Soviet Union? Ha ha ha ha… And now Venezuela with not renewing the permits of media that are critical of Chavez. Yeah that’s free speech allright!
The irony of this situation is that Noam Chomsky lives in the US and is critical of the US. Is that not an illustration of the diversity and opportunities of America?
I am exposed to the complex situation of South America and understand the problems, but at the end of the day Chavez is thug plain and simple.
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