What is a dollar worth? Depends on who you know

Venezuela today has four different prices for the dollar – three of them official, one of them not. For basic imports (chavista code for “available only to Godgiven and his cronies”) a dollar costs BsF 6.3. For not-so-basic imports and for traveling (chavista code for “let’s throw a bone to the middle classes so they won’t…

An announcement about nothing

The Expectation-Disappointment cycle around Venezuela exchange-mechanism announcements is so well established by now, we barely get our hopes up any more. Today was no different. There was little about today’s press conference that the public didn’t already know or that wasn’t already so. Much like that well-loved sitcom, today’s event with Rodolfo Marco Torres and Nelson…