Venezuela’s uppermost SIMADI exchange rate closed at 249.56 bolivars per dollar on Tuesday, amounting to a 42.64 increase since the government instituted a partial float on March 10.
By Gregory Wilpert, TeleSur English , Nov 23rd 2015
Venezuelanalysis's Gregory Wilpert breaks down the causes of the current difficulties in Venezuela, arguing that they can be traced to the currency control measures implemented in 2003 - designed to defend the government against a capitalist attack on its currency.
By Z.C. Dutka - Venezuelanalysis.com , Aug 3rd 2015
VA's Z.C. Dutka analyzes the roots of the current economic crisis in Venezuela and calls on the Maduro government to assume responsibility for the acute difficulties faced by the country's popular classes, which she identifies as a crucial step for further deepening the Bolivarian Revolution.
The author argues that the current foreign exchange control regime has failed to prevent transnational and domestic capital from taking its profits out of the country and that no government policy, no matter how conciliatory towards business, will attract investment in Venezuela as long as the Revolution continues. Only the expropriation of the bourgeois-controlled means of production– the "completion of the revolution"– will solve the present crisis.
By Steve Ellner - Alborada Magazine , May 13th 2015
Historian and veteran analyst Steve Ellner argues that President Nicolas Maduro's economic strategy represents an effort to take the middle road between those demanding radical expropriations irrespective of market reality and those calling for currency devaluation, all as part of a bid to win further breathing room for renewed revolutionary advances
By Mario Villegas/Victor Alvarez- QuintoDia.Com, May 5th 2015
Leftist economist and former high-ranking government official Victor Alvarez offers a critical perspective on state economic policy under the Bolivarian Revolution, arguing that it has perpetuated a neo-rentier logic via exchange controls and other measures that must be abandoned for socialism to advance.
A South Florida man was arrested by U.S. federal authorities yesterday and charged with using his Doral-based Bank of America accounts to launder over $100 million on behalf of Colombian drug cartels and paramilitaries.
Carlos Dorado, Venezuelan entrepreneur and owner of one of the country’s longest standing currency exchange centres, ItalCambio, has launched a public plea to remove the website “Dolar Today” due to the “irreparable damage” which the website is causing to the national economy.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro made a point of downplaying his foreign exchange reforms last Wednesday, and good thing he did. The reforms are bound to do little to curb Venezuela's economic problems, despite the fact that genuine changes to the exchange system are urgently needed.
