Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said on Sunday he will visit China and several unspecified OPEC countries during a week-long tour meant to improve the South American nation's finances, which have been weakened by tumbling crude prices.
Oh the possibilities...
"I'm leaving today for an international tour ... a very important tour to take on new projects, given the circumstances of falling income that our country faces," Maduro said during a televised broadcast.
Just remember you don't necessarily have to come home. Just saying...
His first stop will be China, which has become Venezuela's principal financier through oil-for-loan agreements in which Venezuela receives cash up front in exchange for future deliveries of crude and fuel.
Given the oil glut I'm not sure the Chinese need more heavy, hard to refine Venezuelan crude...
"Also, I'm going to visit other OPEC countries to continue high-level efforts (to create) a strategy for a recovery of oil prices, a strengthening of OPEC," Maduro said. He provided no other details.
What makes him think that any of the other OPEC countries are in better shape than Venezuela?
Venezuela's economy contracted during the first three quarters of 2014, and its international reserves have deteriorated sharply amid tumbling oil prices. The decline has spurred concerns that Venezuela may default on its foreign bonds, which in turn has pushed its bond yields to the highest of any emerging market nation.
Maduro denies the country will default. But he says Venezuela's government needs financing in 2015 and says borrowing on international markets is prohibitively expensive.
The Chinese, of course, will just give him money. They're generous that way...
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/05/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
Bet he don't take the great circle route, there was an awkward situation in Anchorage last time, would be worse this time since it's likely he will be on a Cuban aircraft. The Venezuelan state aircraft is still stuck in France under going ummm... "Maintenance", expensive maintenance.
#4
Ship, I'm pretty sure China's running shuttle flights for its oilfield workers working China's fields in Venezuela so they don't accidentally spend any money in the country.
#5
Don't kid yourselves, Maduro is heading to China and OPEC nations for a week-long jazz tour, Maduro is playing the part of James Brown. It should raise a lot of money for Venezuela
h/t Gates of Vienna
Prior to this, part of the stocks of Russian energetic companies belonged to the foreign investors (American and European) which meant that almost half of the profit from oil and gas companies did not went to Russian treasury, but to accounts of "financial sharks" in Europe, writes "Novosti".
Because of the situation in Crimea, ruble began to fall dramatically, but Central Bank did nothing to support the exchange rate of ruble. Rumors appeared that Russia does not have sufficient money stock in order to support the exchange rate of ruble. Those rumors and Putin’s statement that he will protect Russian speaking population in Ukraine led to a dramatic fall in value of the stocks of Russian energetic companies, and "financial sharks" suddenly started to sell the stocks on the stock market before they completely lost their value. Putin waited for an entire week and only smiled at press conferences, and when the price of the stocks completely fell, he ordered immediate purchase of all stocks which were in hands of Americans and Europeans. When "financial sharks" realized they were tricked, it was already too late. Stocks were in Russian hands and not only that Russia made more than $20 billion that day, but also recovered the stocks of its companies into Russian hands.
Now, all the profits made from oil and gas will stay in Russia and not go out of the country. Ruble will grow by itself and for its support it will not be necessary to spend golden reserves of Russia. European "financial sharks" remained with their heads bowed as fools – in a few minutes, for pennies, Russia bought stocks worth billions in profit from oil and gas. Playing chess with monkeys.
#1
Financial sharks? Grandmaster Putin? Serbian author with his head so far up Putins rear end he can't check his grammar.
Russian propaganda is getting desperate these days
Posted by: USA #1 ||
01/05/2015 5:48 Comments ||
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#2
Yeah, the "financial sharks" are investors who got Russia through some hard times. But the language of Marxism hasn't changed since it was developed.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
01/05/2015 6:16 Comments ||
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#4
With the Saudis refusing to diminish production and consequently everyone else then pumping more oil into the market while the American portion of the international market continues to shrink, Putin may be recovering Russia's own natural resources too, no or minimal oil exports. (See-Hermit Kingdom [How's that working out for North Korea]). Well at least they have the corner market on military sales for equipment good enough to keep the tyrants and kleptocracies in power.
#5
Chess has long been popular in Russia—Czar Ivan IV is thought to have died while playing a match in 1584. After the Bolsheviks took power in 1917, it became a national pastime. Soon after the revolution, Vladimir Lenin's supreme commander of the Soviet army, Nikolay Krylenko, laid the foundations for state-sponsored chess: He opened chess schools, hosted tournaments, and promoted the game as a vehicle for international dominance. Why are the Russians so good at chess? Chess and checkers have been used as metaphors for Putin and Obama. Business has long been the province of the U.S.--well maybe not so much lately. Ideology seems to blind Obama to the strategic aspects of business and its potential as a weapon. Russia and the Marxist system don't seem to be so good at business in the long run although they did seem to catch on to mass production during WWII when producing weapons.
A soccer player for Russian club Anzhi Makhachkala has been gunned down near his home in the North Caucasus region. Gasan Magomedov, 20, died on Saturday after his car was sprayed with bullets fired from a machine gun as he was driving home.
Anzhi said the motive for the attack is not clear,
It's the North Caucasus. How many reasons could there be? Round to the nearest hundred...
and no arrests have been made.
Arrests are optional, revenge is mandatory...
Sergey Korablev, chief executive of the club, said, "We grieve together with everyone who was dear to Gasan. I hope the police quickly find the killers and they suffer just punishment."
"But if the police don't find them, me and the boys will take care of it ourselves."
PORTLAND, Ore. -- The U.S. Navy could significantly increase the number of sonobuoys it plans to deploy off the Pacific Coast.
The floating, acoustic surveillance devices are used in anti-submarine warfare. The Oregonian reports that in a modified environmental assessment for Northwest training and testing, the Navy increased the number of planned sonobuoys from 20 to 720. They would be in areas at least 12 miles offshore from Alaska, Washington, Oregon and Northern California.
The Navy acknowledges that deploying more of them is likely to harm endangered leatherneck turtles. It's accepting public comments until Feb. 2.
In addition to more buoys, the document also details additional "maritime security operations" that weren't reviewed in the earlier environmental assessment, possibly including escorts for submarines, search-and-seizure exercises, and anti-piracy missions.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/05/2015 00:00 ||
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[AnNahar] Iraq's oil exports reached their highest level in decades in December,
...after the Kurds and the Iraqi government came to an agreement on revenue sharing...
the oil ministry's front man said on Saturday, but vital revenues were being hit by the plummeting prices of crude.
Iraq exported 91.141 million barrels of oil in December for an average of 2.94 million barrels per day, the highest daily average since 1980, Assem Jihad told Agence La Belle France Presse, citing initial figures. December exports were far and away the highest in 2014, eclipsing the previous best month by more than 11 million barrels, according to ministry figures.
But revenues were $5.247 billion, only up slightly on November and much lower than the early months of 2014 because of sharply declining oil prices.
Jihad said prices averaged $57 a barrel in December, down from $100 or more during the first half of the year. The average December price was even lower than the $60 per barrel used to calculate Iraq's 2015 budget, which already includes a more than $19 billion deficit.
Oil producing cartel "OPEC must move to address this issue," Jihad said.
"Prices are falling now to abnormal levels, and it is up to the organization to move instead of watching prices collapse to illogical levels," he said, adding that this was his personal opinion rather than that of the ministry.
The dramatic decline in oil prices poses a major problem for Iraq, which depends on oil revenues for the vast majority of government funds. The oil ministry said in November that Baghdad lost more than 27 percent of its projected revenues for 2014 because of the fall in prices.
Maybe you guys could diversify your economy...
It comes at a time when expenditures are higher than usual, with the country battling to regain ground from the Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... jihadist group, which spearheaded a sweeping offensive that overran swathes of territory in June.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
01/05/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
Making it up with volume. [Wait till they start employing the US Treasury's program of minting pennies at a cost that exceeds the face value of the specie.]
#1
The Sea of Galilee rose a centimeter, reaching 212.83 meters below sea level The Sea of Galilee did not rise because of GW. There are no icebergs in the Sea of Galilee. No, it's not global warming! Let it go leftists--that theory belongs with the flat earth theory. The Sea of Galilee, also said, in the Bible, to be the sea that Jesus walked across.
#2
I predict the outside temp in Jerusalem will not reach a low of our current high outside in Chicagoland. Currently 3F in the burbs. Going down to -11 or so tonight. For the Celsius oriented that's -16 to -24C. Its worse in the Great Plains and Alaska.
#1
If the Air Force is still requiring all drones to be flown by commissioned officers on flight status, then they could easily solve the problem by allowing enlisted airmen not on flight status to handle many of the flights - as does the Army - I'm not sure about the other services.
Or - if the Air Force cries loud enough - strip that service of involvement with drones - and let the other services handle all drone missions.
But it takes more than just pilots to operate the drone fleet. In addition to the pilots who “fly” the MQ-1s and MQ-9s, there are sensor operators who work the cameras and other intelligence-gathering hardware onboard the unmanned aircraft. Further, there are maintenance crews who have to fix those drones. Perhaps most crucially, drones require hundreds of intelligence analysts who have to comb through thousands of hours of video surveillance footage to understand what the flight crews are watching.
“Some have looked at this as a problem with just RPA pilots and the number of them required for these CAPs, but that ignores the tail required for supporting RPA operations,” a senior Air Force official said. “This tail requires hundreds of man-hours to support every hour of flight in forward operations, maintenance, and most starkly in the processing, exploitation, and dissemination of the intelligence that RPAs create.”
The problem for the Air Force is that even as the demand increases on the drone fleet, fewer new troops enter the ranks while more and more veteran operators vote with their feet.
#5
The USAF will disband itself before they ever let an NCO fly a drone. Trust me on this. During the 'pilot shortage' of the 80s and 90s, there was a learned report which suggested letting NCOs fly transports, tankers and helos, or bringing back WOs. They shied away from that like the Devil from holy water.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
01/05/2015 17:06 Comments ||
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#6
Smallish airplanes without pilots has never really caught on with the USAF. Can't imagine why.
A Predator costs more than an A-10 and is a lot less survivable than an A-10 in hostile airspace. Pakistan only lets us fly them in their territory because it lets them pretend they're cooperating with us in the War On Terror, charging us exorbiant fees for the right and opportunity to blow up low-level flunkies with Hellfire missiles at a couple hundred thousand dollars a shot.
#7
Checking Wikipedia... We built a hundred and four mq-9 airframes at a cost of 12 billion dollars... they also claim a flyaway cost of 17 million dollars.
The program-cost-per-airframe is about the same as the flyaway cost of an airplane that can actually survive in contested airspace. If we called it an MQ-35 Lightning IV people would be outraged at the lack of cost effectiveness.
#8
There are probably lots of pilot wannabes who may not be physically qualified to be pilots, but would make excellent drone pilots. Me, for example. With 20/200 eyesight, the Naval Aviation recruiters practically laughed at me when I talked to them. (I also don't have the obnoxious macho jock personality that a lot of pilots have).
My Air Force son has a good friend who flunked out of flight school because he had severe motion sickness. Not at all good in a plane, but unless they put the drone pilot's seat on gimbals, motion sickness should not be a problem flying a drone.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
01/05/2015 17:53 Comments ||
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#9
Simple. Force the idiot Zoomies to accept Warrants as pilots for Drones and rotary wing. Works for the Army. And if the USAF cant bring itself to that, then give THOSE assets to the Army and Marine Corps, which *will* fly them. A-10s included.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
A soccer player for Russian club Anzhi Makhachkala has been gunned down near his home in the North Caucasus region. Gasan Magomedov, 20, died on Saturday after his car was sprayed with bullets fired from a machine gun as he was driving home.
