Maduro to Guys who Calculate the Inflation Figures: “That’s a nice job you got there, it’d be a shame if anything happened to it…”

/ November 23, 2013

maduro2.520.360Is there any other way to read this outburst?

“En noviembre, de acuerdo a nuestro seguimiento, la inflación debería ser menos cinco por ciento (-5). ¿Se darán cuenta los técnicos del BCV y del INE de lo que está pasando más allá de la tecnocracia y la tecnología?”.

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35 thoughts on “Maduro to Guys who Calculate the Inflation Figures: “That’s a nice job you got there, it’d be a shame if anything happened to it…””

    • Sadly, a government run by technocrats would be infinitely more efficient than this one. Instead, this one deals in the realm of imaginary nubmers and is taking the real inflation rate and multiplying it by the square of i .

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  2. If only I could do something similar in my upcoming final exams…

    Pero en serio, the guy doesn’t even say ok, let’s go down from astronomical to large, or even to reasonable, or even zero, no, he goes into the negatives, considerable negatives. I ain’t no economist but whenever I’ve seen negative monthly inflation figures it’s always tenths of a percent.

    It’s like calling your bank and saying “you know that credit card debt I owe you? well, I think you that the best solution we can reach is for you to give me a yacht. and fill it up with champagne bottles.”

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    • OT, but somehow related to your comment. Seeing the comments about his birthday I checked out his wikipedia page and saw he is 1.90 m tall which shocked me! I looked for pictures of him standing next to Santos (I’ve met him so I know the reference) and coño, Nicolás is really tall, but I had never got that impression from his pictures/videos

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  5. Obviously, by dropping the prices at gunpoint, our currency is even deflating. Thats their following of the situation… they are following it in handcuffs through rifle sights trying to force addition into being substraction. The bit about technocracy and technology is simply mind-bogging.

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  6. It is possible that, given the basket and the manipulation of said goods, it could drop by 5%. I’m not saying its likely, just that it is technically possible. However, elasticity being what it is and expectations being what they are…

    Expect a rebound of 15-20% increase the following month.

    Propaganda and declarations are all well and good, but he might as well declare the sun will rise in the West on the morrow. I was always advised by a wise man that in politics, you only promise certainties, not possibilities.

    Of course, I cannot imagine a possible reason *cough*elections*cough* mandate a lie about inflation for the next month. Funny thing about that, is when it engenders shortages, which will be worse: the purported deflation, or the lack of stuff to buy?

    Putting the “Mad” back in Maduro since 2013.

    Question: If stuff hasn’t really been on the shelves since, say, July…can they calculate that price into the inflation basket since it was the last known price? No mantequilla since March? Hey, here’s some and its priced the same then as now! What a drop in prices from last month when it was unavailable!

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    • There’s something I don’t quite get, inflation numbers usually take a while to be computed and revealed (whether in Venezuela or in Norway) and that’s usually more than a week after the end of the month, which would mean after the elections. unless they’re just pulling them out of their asses…

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      • Eso es porque Ustedes, los colombianos, no tienen la “tenología” y la “tenocracia” que tenemos nosotros, los venezolanos. Maduro’s men at the BCV can calculate even the real inflation for any country in the world with six months in advance. But they just got carried away here and the Eternal President’s filius is calling them to attention in order to mind his recent, innovative changes.

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  8. More from Maduros discourse:
    “En este sentido, le pidió a los técnicos del Banco Central de Venezuela (BCV) y del Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE), que “vayan profundo y descubran los fenómenos de la ofensiva económica para que ustedes vean”.”
    In english: maduro asked the technicians at the bcv and ine to “go deep and discover the phenomena of the economic offensive”
    Wow… Deep thoughts.

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      • There been over 13,000 economic offensives from Maduro since April. Just like the 14,000 assassination attempts on his life just this week. No proof , just hype.

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  9. Dont think that Maduros off the cuff statements can be taken literally or at face value instead they simply express a generally imprecise personal impressions of what ‘ought to be’ according to his reading of recent events . Since he has coerced merchants to drop some of their prices such coercive measures should translate into lower or negative inlflation figure.. His appeal to ‘technocrats’ to look deeply and discover the phenomena of the economic offensive might actually be a indirect way of saying that his own technicians have failed to discover the existence of a so called ‘economic war’ as the result of a totally ficticious conspiracy . He doesnt put much tougth into what he says but simply blurts out what passes through his shallow uneducated mind !!

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    • I do think they mean: you better reduce the inflation rate a lot or I get you sacked and you won’t be able to travel to Walt Disney any more!

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      • Here is what happened to a government minister in Argentina who tried to criminalize bad news about inflation.Controversial Argentine Minister Steps Down. Caveat: he wasn’t booted out for his bully tactics, but for his lack of success in stopping inflation. Had his bully tactics been successful, he wouldn’t have been booted out.

        Though he was able to convince companies to temporarily keep prices steady on certain products, he was unable to prevent them from raising prices on others. Skirting price controls was sometimes just a matter of changing the packaging or volume of a certain item. In other cases, companies froze prices on some goods, but curtailed production.

        In the end, Mr. Moreno’s personalized approach to controlling prices didn’t prevent inflation from running in the double digits in recent years. Many economists say annual inflation likely totals about 25%. Official government data puts inflation at closer to 11%.

        In September, a court indicted Mr. Moreno for allegedly abusing his power by fining economist Jorge Todesca for publishing his own inflation estimates. A court threw out the fine, but Mr. Todesca is still fighting criminal charges filed against him by Mr. Moreno.

        In an interview Tuesday, Mr. Todesca said government persecution had cost him time, legal fees and had also scared away some clients from hiring his consulting firm, Finosport SA.

        Mr. Moreno was also responsible for making broad changes at Argentina’s national statistics agency, Indec, that his critics say undermined its credibility.

        The International Monetary Fund has warned Argentina to improve the quality of its data or face sanctions, including potential expulsion, from the fund.

        While Argentina is an ally of Venezuela, it hasn’t gone as far down the path as Venezuela has. It is rather difficult- in fact impossible- to imagine a Venezuelan court throwing out a government-imposed fine.

        The Kirchner government also resorted to criminal charges against inflation estimates in 2011 Not for nothing have Nestor and Evita III called themselves Peronistas.

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        • I still imagine all those Chavista Apparatchiki at the Central Bank now having nightmares about going to Maiquetía and hearing from the Guardia Nacional they can’t travel to Orlando and see Mickey because Maduro is mad at them.

          The Boligarchs waking up completely soaked in wet, heart pounding…
          I wouldn’t like to be a Chavista.

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        • That sort of thing happens in Venezuela too. For example there is an electrolyte solution whose price is controlled but for only one flavor. Some years after registering the first flavor, they went to register the same solution with another flavor with another price. Thus, coconut solution costs several times more than the grapefruit solution (or something like that) and the Company makes up the lost of the regulated flavor by increasing the price of the unregulated one.

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    • It does sound a tad like a veiled threat, but could just as well be another poorly thought out, off the cuff statement, kinda like “c’mon guys, i go and arrange some civil looting and you go ruin it with your “numbers” and “computers””

      These guys still don’t have their propaganda machine together

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  10. Yeah, I guess electronics & white goods represent 100% of the index.

    He should visit a supermarket where onions at Sigo Sambil on Friday were Bs.98,50/kg.
    They were Bs.35 on Jan.1. I have a photo date & GPS stamped.
    Potatoes were Bs.45/kg on Friday & Bs.22,40 on Jan.1.

    According to my unofficial numbers on about 65 varied products inflation so far this year is over 100%.

    This doesn’t include the products that have just disappeared.
    One that really irks me is orange juice.
    2 years ago the shelves were full (by Venezuelan standards) of jugs of 100% OJ by various producers.
    Then 1 day they just disappeared to be replaced by Naranjada which is 60% juice, water & sugar.
    Now the Naranjada has disappeared to be replaced by something called Refresh Naranja which according to the label has the “taste of Naranjada”. It’s water, food coloring & sugar – Tang by any other name.

    Great for the kids in the morning – like giving them a glass of pop to get their day going. There is very little milk to give them.

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    • Try to find concentrate, “Minué” is the one you can find. Fresh orange juice never appeared anymore and not even some brands of good naranjada. I guess this is because of teh CIA messing with us.

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    • That’s SUNDECOP in action. Cardboard juices went from around VEF 12 – 13 a half liter to VEF 7. !00% dissapeared right then, becuse it was more expensive to produce (it cost about 50% than naranjada). But now VEF 7 isn’t enough even for naranjada. Just for comparison rice chicha and chocolate milk cost about VEF 12 and now they sell for something like VEF 20

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    • They were selling both the OJ and the Naranjada for Bs.21 here in Margarita. When the OJ disappeared the Naranjada continued at Bs.21 and is that price today if you can find it.

      The imitation Tang is Bs.26,79 in the same style container as the Naranjada because it’s not price regulated and it’s just water & food colouring.

      Ha, ha – What a country!

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  12. I’m wondering…please bear with me.
    Since this regime underscores public announcements through selected clothing…. since previous hard-core directives saw Maduro donning an olive-green shirt with epaulets, pretending to be part of the military force … since we haven’t seen Maduro wear a red shirt, before (if memory serves) to communicate that he means bizniz … could it be that wearing an olive-green shirt by a non-military would inflame the already touchy FA?

    Or am I reading too much into this, and Maduro’s sartorial choice is simply trying to compete with Quico?

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  13. Somebody should tell Maduro about the Velocity of Money and how he has increased it and inflation depends on monetary base and the velocity of money. On the other hand, he would not understand it, bad idea. I apologize.

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    • Hahahahaha! That’s a good one. I can just see his head exploding as soon as someone finished writing MV=PQ on a blackboard.

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