Satan's Poop Inc. Paila Master: PicturesPictures tell a story much better than words. I can tell you about marches, demonstrations and events, but nothing beats accompanying what I am saying with pictures to show the truth. In this section I include all pictures from other sections, except the orchids......A picture is worth 10,000 words 24: Volume sales of food at Mercal- January 28, 2007 This one is somewhat of a puzzle. In two articles yesterday and today in El Universal, we are told that the Government's chain of popular supermarkets Mercal has not imported any food for a month and a half. Moreover, the graph below taken from El Universal shows how since June sales of food (in thousands of Tons) have dropped significantly. 70% of the food sold at Mercal is imported, so either funds for Mercal have been reduced, people are buying less there due to either prices being less...http://blogs.salon.com/0001330/categories/pictures/2007/01/27.html#a3302 A picture is worth 10,000 words 23: How relevant is the parallel market- January 26, 2007 Government officials, from the new Minister of Finance to members of the Financial Commission of the National Assembly have been arguing that the "parallel" or "swap" rate is irrelevant for setting the price of imports because 95% of all imports are made at the official rate of Bs. 2,150 per US$.Is this true The answer is no and it comes from official sources.Unfortunately for the Government control is not yet total over information, so you can find the plot below in the CADIVI (the Foreign...http://blogs.salon.com/0001330/categories/pictures/2007/01/25.html#a3300 A picture is worth 10,000 words 22: The price of Venezuela's oil basket- January 21, 2007 Below is the evolution of the average price of a barrel of the Venezuelan oil basket for the last 52 weeks. A good rule of thumb is that one dollar up or down represents US$ 1 billion more or less in revenues for the country.Source: BloombergYou can now find all of the graphs I have posted since the election in the Pictures sectionhttp://blogs.salon.com/0001330/categories/pictures/2007/01/21.html#a3291 A picture is worth 10,000 words 21: Another view of the gasoline subsidy- January 18, 2007 And obviously I had to go and steal this plot for my collection from Daniel's blog. This shows the budget as a percentage of the amount of money the Government spends on the gasoline subsidy which largely benefits the well off who own cars (also generously subsidized at the official exchange rate by the Government). Note in particular that the total amount spent in healthcare is barely 23% of the subsidy. This is clearly the irrational revolution or the revolution without rationality.http://blogs.salon.com/0001330/categories/pictures/2007/01/18.html#a3285 A picture is worth 10,000 words 20: A long term view of private investment- January 17, 2007 Earlier I showed a plot of net foreign investment in US$ in recent years. The following plot shows a long term view of private investment per inhabitant in constant 1984 Bolivars since 1920 (This means that the Bolivars are adjusted for inflation taking as reference 1984). Notice the dramatic drop since the peak in the 70's (When coincidentally the low in poverty occurred), Notice we are down to the 1940's. Even if you include Government investment, the total in recent years barely rises to...http://blogs.salon.com/0001330/categories/pictures/2007/01/17.html#a3281 A picture is worth 10,000 words 19: A long term view of poverty- January 14, 2007 A longer term view of poverty levels in Venezuela to give readers more of a historical perspective than the previous graph from 1998 shown earlier. I could not find a table with these numbers earlier than 1998, but there is a graph in the source below. Thus I took a picture of the graph and blew it up to get the points year by year using the data from the UCAB. (The data seemed to be plotted twice a year in the graph). Notice how poverty went down with the oil boom in the mid-seventies, but...http://blogs.salon.com/0001330/categories/pictures/2007/01/14.html#a3275 |