Odious Credit

I recently wrote about odious foreign public debt, that debt about which there is a current debate in the world as to whether it can be legally repudiated if it is taken on by illegitimate governments or for illegitimate ends. The other side of the coin is odious credit. Please don’t think I’m against banks—quite the opposite. But I respect the role of the financial middlemen too highly to keep quiet when they are not doing their job right. In 1981, the representative of a foreign bank in Venezuela showed me a letter in which his boss instructed him to “give credit to the INAVI, Venezuela’s National Housing Institute. It’s the worst public institution, which means that it pays us the highest rate and, as you know, in the end it’s just as public as the best of them and Venezuela will have to pay up just the same.” Odious credit, isn’t it?

The first thing a good banker should ask a client applying for a loan is what is it for and if the answer is not satisfactory he should reject the application, regardless of the guarantees offered. Simple plain-vanilla fraud of the Parmalat kind will always exist, but the asinine way all their creditors fell into the trap makes one suspect that this is only the first case of systemic risk in the banking system: tempted by the regulators in Basel, banks subordinate their own criteria to those dictated by auditors and credit raters. This development, bad in itself, is even more serious in the case of public credit, where the what it’s for is being replaced by how much can be carried, perversely derived by calculating the level of sustainable public debt.

When I call for the total elimination of foreign public debt (which is feasible and would not require huge sacrifices in an oil rich land like Venezuela) my colleagues often argue that a certain level of debt is good and necessary for the country. This does not convince me, since it makes debt sound like electricity that must be kept at a certain voltage. Because public debt must always be paid back, regardless of whether anybody ever knew what or whom it was for, I’m fighting for the day when the private sector in Venezuela can return to the markets, freely, without having to carry that huge monkey—foreign public debt—on its back.

In my opinion, the Benemérito (the dictator Juan Vicente Gómez (1864–1935) who ruled the country between 1908 and 1935) deserved great credit for ridding Venezuela of her foreign debts He certainly knew that to shake off that vice more than patches or pieces of chewing gum are needed.

From El Universal, Caracas, April 22, 2004

About bad trust and good distrust

About bad trust and good distrust 

Once again, the international financial classification agencies are speaking out about Venezuela and everyone is trembling. Its results constitute for many foreigners and, unfortunately, also for some Venezuelans, a primary source of information about the country. The debate on concepts, such as trust and international capital mobility, begins again. I take this opportunity to present again some evidence, reflections and conclusions in this regard.

Evidence 1: There is no doubt that the vast majority of actors in the short-term speculative capital market respond, to all types of events, like a stampeding herd of buffaloes, entering or leaving a country. The above causes high volatility in these funds, which are correctly called swallow capitals.

Reflection 1: As in so many other fields, in finance, the rule also governs that errors committed by many of the participants and therefore shared, are forgiven, while those, committed alone, are punished. As a result of this, the professionals who manage these funds and who wish to save their own professional prestige will be prone to go with the flow, that is, their actions will obey more to fashionable financial criteria and not to what may be indicated. your own experience or instinct.

Conclusion 1: According to the above, it is perfectly irrelevant that professionals are “geniuses”, since other reasons guide their actions.

Evidence 2: The global debt crisis of 1982 caught many bankers with their pants down, indecently exposing huge amounts of bad loans. More recently, we can name the obvious errors contained in the reports on Asia 18 months ago.

Reflection 2: I remember my astonishment at the reverence with which, in 1983, the “qualified” opinions of those same bankers, who had so recently demonstrated the limitations of their genius, were heard. The same thing happens today. Could it be that the human need to seek order in the world drives us to attribute magical knowledge to a group, which they brazenly exploit?

Conclusion 2: The truth is that the world is very naive when it places a good part of its economic destiny in the hands of people with “such a good resume” but such a “bad track record.”

Evidence 3: The volumes of swallow capital present in the market are gigantic, when compared with the economic magnitudes of many countries, which is why they can cause great havoc.

Reflection 3: Given the magnitude and volatility of these funds, it is expected that the main damage will occur at the entrance and exit doors, where it would be logical to anticipate a certain crowding.

Conclusion 3: Knowing the existence of quite successful methods (Chile), to manage, in a somewhat more orderly manner, the entry and exit of these funds to the country, the fact that nothing similar has been developed in Venezuela, It is another evidence of the government's apathy that punishes us.

Evidence 4: Economic decisions made by long-term investors, both foreign and domestic, take time to execute. For example, the decision to open a factory or to build a hotel or to plant a forest is not made overnight. On the contrary, swallow capitals react in seconds, via purchase and sale orders and electronic transfers. Its economic impact is, therefore, much more immediate and explosive.

Reflection 4: I believe that the most important economic signals for a country emanate from long-term actors, such as the hotelier from Cumaná, the rice farmer from Calabozo and the industrialist from Guacara. However, the urgency and immediacy represented by the pressures of the swallow capitals probably means that the latter manage to attract too much of the attention of the economic authorities.

Conclusion 4: As long as the economy (and politics) obeys, to a greater degree, the young man with gelled hair and suspenders who rules the short term, ignoring long-term signals, the path to economic disaster will remain clear of obstacles

Evidence 5: Venezuela has received an extraordinary amount of resources over the last 25 years, in the short and long term, and they have been of no use. Venezuela, in recent years, has received important long-term funds and they have not been of much use either.

Reflection 5: If we do not know how to manage the resources granted in the long term, what are we doing trying to attract short-term resources?

Conclusion 5: As long as a viable economic development model and a government system that inspires confidence have not been established, the country should not be interested in swallow capital at all, even if it has an efficient gatekeeper to regulate the entry and exit.

Evidence 6: “Credit rating” agencies, despite being used by many diverse actors, such as banking and insurance regulatory entities, with long-term interests, in reality, work mainly for bankers and investors who wish to take liquid positions at short term.

Reflection 6: For someone interested in the long term, for example, a young citizen, the opinions of a “credit rating” agency can be quite irrelevant. Also, know that not every expression of distrust produces bad results.

Consolation 1: Venezuela, in recent years, has not been subject to an invasion of swallow capital as large as it could have been. Imagine the chaos that would occur if some $20 billion of hot money had entered the country and today they were anxiously seeking its way out. The interest rates needed to contain such a herd would have to exceed four digits.

Consolation 2: Do you remember the story of the anguished debtor who finds sleep when with “I can't pay you” he transfers his insomnia to the banker? In our case, something similar happens. When the Venezuelan score goes down, personally, I sleep better, safe in the knowledge that they will not be giving so many resources, on behalf of myself, my daughters and future descendants, to governments that insist on wasting them.

Conclusion 6: The day our governments (during non-electoral times) pay more attention to the opinion of their humble subjects, instead of the opinion of the glamorous international agencies, that day we will have a greater chance of getting out of this situation of ours. , which I can only classify and, forgive my English, as a “standard moody and poor”.

https://perkurowski.blogspot.com/1998/02/speaking-about-trust-and-distrust.html

https://radicaldelmedio.blogspot.com/1998/10/sobre-confianza-mala-y-desconfianza.html

Goldman Sachs financing of Venezuela’s corrupt human-rights violating government, shines the light on odious credits

Goldman Sachs has just provided Venezuela’s government with about $865 million in cash, against about $ 2.800 million in bonds paying an interest rate of 12.75%, for a price about 31% of their face value. That, if the bonds were duly repaid, would produce an internal rate of return of around 48%.

Google “Goldman Sachs” and Venezuela, and you will observe the public uproar this operation has caused… almost everywhere.

This is a perfect opportunity to initiate a much-needed debate on what should be considered as odious sovereign debt, so as to therefore have its right of collection entirely or partially void. I have wanted that debate to take place for a very long time.

http://unsustainabledebtsustainability.blogspot.ca/2004/04/odious-credit.html

http://unsustainabledebtsustainability.blogspot.ca/2006/05/debt-sustainability-analysis-sdl.html

http://unsustainabledebtsustainability.blogspot.ca/2015/10/we-must-not-allow-vulture-funds-to.html

Lets face it. Goldman Sachs, to avoid further embarrassment, might sell this credit in the secondary market to a vulture funds that could try to collect 100% of the face value of these bonds plus all its interest.

So let me open this debate by asking:

Lloyd Blankfein, how much do you think someone should rightfully aspire to collect on your 2022 Venezuela bonds?

A “Public Sector Borrowing Charter”, in order to really mean something significant, needs to be matched by a “Public Sector Lending Charter”

AFRODAD “Aware that African countries face tremendous problems in loan contraction and approval processes and public debt management contributing to unsustainable debt level” is proposing: "The African Borrowing Charter" (The link is to a previous version of the one I read during World Bank and IMF Spring Meetings April 2108)

It is a great initiative and all countries could in fact need something similar. If authorities were just forced to clearly identify in any spending bill, the direct marginal consequences on its public debt levels, that should help to inspire more responsibility. Public borrowings when authorized should come with a clear recognition that a part of their nation’s strategic borrowing capacity is being consumed. As is, it is way too easy for politicians to show great generosity and understanding for today’s needs, by just pushing the repayment of it on future generations.

That said a “Public Sector Borrowing Charter” stands little chance of fulfilling its goals if there’s no parallel “Public Sector Lending Charter” to which all lenders had to sign up to and against which the citizens could hold them accountable.

Imagine if for instance in the case of all those shamefully mortgages to the subprime sector in the US that were originated and packaged into AAA rated securities we were to hold the debtors for signing “odious debt” letting the real culprits, with their “odious credits” off the hook.

US Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin referring to the humanitarian crisis going on in Venezuela recently stated: “Creditors, whether private or public, that provide new financing to the Maduro regime are lending to a government that lacks legitimacy to borrow in the name of Venezuela.”

Do not tell me that Lloyd Blankfein, and all those in Goldman Sachs, were so naïve so as to believe the Maduro regime would give good use, along the lines of a reasonable Public Sector Borrowing Charter, to the credit they awarded Venezuela just about two years ago... and for which they have yet not apologized to the Venezuelan people.

What if violating a Public Sector Lending Charter could cause the credit to be declared illegitimate, and its collection not enforceable? Would that not be of great help for our children and grandchildren?

PS. I hear that the World Bank and IMF are again to raise the issue of Debt-Sustainability-Analysis. I pray the do not mention "sustainable debt levels" but concentrate on pointing out what consideration all debt should fulfill in order to be sustainable contracted.

Next to credit ratings, or perhaps even more, we need ethic and transparency ratings!

Speaking about trust and distrust

International financial risk rating entities are once again issuing their results for Venezuela. And once again, everyone begins to tremble. There is confidence! Ooops, there is no confidence! The debate is once again on the table and I take advantage of this to share some of my reflections on this issue with the readers.

It could be that I am not exact in my appreciation, but then again, when dealing with something as subjective as confidence, it shouldn’t really make much difference. In 1982, the then Minister of Finance decided that the country should be paying interest rates well below those being required by the international banking community in order to renegotiate part of Venezuela’s foreign debt. This decision blocked the restructuring of our foreign debt and together with the crisis in Mexico and other indebted nations combined to unleash the events which resulted in the devaluation of Black Friday of February 1983.

Obviously, the Minister was severely criticized. I considered this criticism to be unjust since, as far as I was concerned, the Minister was in reality a hero of the nation; almost enough so as to merit a statue in some important plaza. In my opinion, his actions, which generated international distrust, saved the country from billions of dollars in debt, which would have bloated the amounts actually accounted for after the disaster. Few heroes can be proven to have undertaken such important deeds for the good of the nation.

In reality, to inspire confidence in others should be of no concern for the country, while it has not been able to find or generate an economic and administrative model which inspires the confidence of its own people. Trying to do so simply confuses the search for in depth solutions. 

In addition, the persons for whom instruments of measurement are designed do not include those foreigners whose confidence we really seek. Rating agencies rank a country’s measure, principally the latter’s ability to service its debt. As such, their market is comprised of bankers and investors who simply wish to make a short-term financial investment. Nothing of special importance to the country.

Those foreigners who could really interest us are the ones who come to the country with resources, the ones with the intention of remaining here for the long-term, to put up factories, cultivate the land, generate employment and maybe even raise a Venezuelan family. That is to say, the one whose objectives are one and the same as those of the nation. The opinions and confidence of these people are not measured at all.

In addition, both the methods and measuring instruments as well as the professionals actually doing the measuring, probably continue to be the same. They are the same ones that not very long ago argued that it was impossible for a country to be bankrupt, thereby justifying stratospheric limits for indebtedness with such enthusiasm that both bankers (who by the way proved to be unprofessional in most cases) and the common Venezuelan, upon hearing this siren song, joined forces and created the mix-up of the century.

For those of you who may have any doubts about this, I suggest you look at the ranking of six months ago. In those listings, the majority of the Asian countries looked like nothing short of marvel of creation. Haven’t you recently heard all of the crying over the Asian financial crisis?

We must evidently listen to the opinions of the credit agencies. Their measurements reflect many variables of great importance for the well being of the country. Unfortunately they also are the principal source of information about the country for many foreigners. In other words, to lie awake at night worrying about ranking doesn’t make sense.

You may remember the story about the anguished debtor who could not sleep, but found a way of finally getting a night’s rest by transferring his insomnia to his banker with the simple words “I can’t pay you”. In this case, something similar occurs. I personally sleep better when Venezuela’s ranking goes down, since I am then sure that lenders will not be making additional resources available (in my name as well as in the name of my children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and other future debtors) to governments that insist on misspending them.

The day the government, during electoral period, pays more attention to the opinions of its humble subjects than to those of the glamorous international [credit rating] agencies, we will finally stand a chance of making it out of our standard situation. The latter, according to all international norms I know of, can be objectively classified simply as “poor and moody”

Because of economic crimes against humanity, a Nuremberg type of tribunal needs to classify Venezuela’s public debts.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/02/05/venezuela-is-about-to-go-bust/
And there is little doubt of that many of those who were financing the Bolivarian Revolution, were totally aware of that the government was committing what could be deemed as economic crimes against humanity. 

And so the question now becomes, do we need a Nuremberg type of court to classify what are normal bona fide debts and what represent an odious participation in the ransacking of a country?

http://unsustainabledebtsustainability.blogspot.com/search?q=Venezuela

http://radicaldelmedio.blogspot.ca/2014/09/dos-irresponsables-bailan-el-tango-del.html

http://radicaldelmedio.blogspot.com/2014/04/acreedor-lease-nuestra-constitucion.html

Odious Debt

One of my recent articles, which focused on the need to protect the environment, concluded by recalling the ancient proverb, “We have not inherited the world from our parents; we have borrowed it from our children.” On that occasion, as always, I thought about Venezuela and I knew that, as borrowers from our children, we have acted like veritable pigs. Not only have we extracted our country’s oil without putting it to much good use, we’ve even mortgaged its future in the process.

Some countries may be in need of foreign loans to get on their feet, but here in Venezuela we ought to know by now that our foreign public debt, be it the debt of yesterday, today, or tomorrow, only serves to fasten us all the more securely to a sinking ship. Foreign public debt is a monstrous obstacle. It keeps our citizens from getting loans (or at least makes loans much more expensive) that could indeed lead to growth in the country and allow the government to satisfy social needs through taxation.

Our only salvation is to learn how to resist the lure of the eternal sirens’ song, which goes “foreign debt taken on by the previous administrations is evil and good for nothing, but rest assured, with us, everything’s going to be different.” How do we—like the ancient Odysseus—tie ourselves to the mast?

There are those, in similar desperation, who argue that since our creditors were accomplices of those administrations, we shouldn’t pay our debts to them. I accept the theory of complicity, at least on the part of the intermediaries, but I think we should punish them much more harshly, by canceling the entire debt and never again taking out another loan.

What can ordinary citizens do who want to and have to go about their daily lives and can’t be continually overseeing the government? The same as any company: they can refuse to provide their management with authorization for contracting debts. Along these lines, a doctrine is now being discussed in the world according to which, if the debt was contracted by an illegitimate government, or for uses that were clearly of no benefit to the country said debt could be declared odious and, as such, would not be legally demandable.

Dear friends, if we are going to do right by our children, our grandchildren, and our great grandchildren, and return the country we borrowed from them in good shape, maybe we should take advantage of such a possibility and declare our foreign public debt eternally odious. Given that threat: Would creditors dare provide us with loans? What would the credit-rating agencies say? Or let us be even more clear about the message and amend our constitution to say that the government of Venezuela has no authority to borrow from foreign sources, that any attempt to do so is illegal, and hence that all such illegal debts will not be repaid. That should stop foreigners from lending us money!

From El Universal, Caracas, March 25, 2004

The Bad Habit Of External Public Debt

I am amongst those who believe that one of the most important reforms we can bequeath to future generations of Venezuelans would be that of forcing the country to begin a gradual but real amortization of its external public debt. When the latter reaches zero, we should then constitutionally prohibit new indebtedness.

I consider this perfectly justifiable due to a) the dreadful experience we have had in the past with our public debt; b) the fact that even the slightest improvement in the country’s economic climate incites the international financial sector to press more loans into our hands; and c) the fact that it must be very difficult for our leaders to resist the temptation of reaching out for those new resources.

The arguments are simple and unsophisticated. As such, they are of little help in the battle against the thesis, universally accepted, that foreign debt is absolutely necessary in order to maximize the development of a nation. This thesis is even considered applicable in countries like Venezuela, which receive resources from sources other than debt that amply surpass its capacity to digest them efficiently.

I obviously believe in access by the private sector to the international capital markets. If there were no public external debt, the market conditions in Venezuela would be very different from those we have today. Today’s conditions could be summarized as being 3% over a country risk factor of 20%. It is difficult to take on debt in Bolívares at 70% interest even when there is the “hope” that inflation or devaluation will erode the real cost of the debt. It is virtually impossible to contemplate debt in Dollars at 23% interest when taking into account that inflation in the United States is somewhere around 2% per annum and the world threatens to hit us with recession.

Today, every politician agrees with the thesis that we should shrink the size of the public sector and reduce the number of public employees. The majority of them are in favor of the “bit-by-bit” method, arguing that these layoffs should be implemented only when the private sector creates the offsetting job opportunities. The classic case of the chicken or the egg!

The private sector will only be able to be the motor of development when the mortgage of the external private debt that indirectly taxes its activities is removed. We cannot expect the help of banks and the international financial entities with this task. For decades, we have heard their calls for the reduction of the public sector while, with the same breath, they request the Republic’s guarantees in order to lend resources to the private sector.

One of the main worries the common Venezuelan citizen harbors is that solutions to the mismanagement of our current public debt, such as the partial sale of PDVSA or Citgo, will only contribute to the continuation of the orgy of bad administration of the State. I am sure that if we managed to implement a credible constitutional prohibition that will assure the population that our national debt crisis will not be repeated, it would be possible to reach a consensus.

The key word, of course, is “credible”. If we have learned anything from our past experience with modern democracies, it is that they have an immense capacity of altering their course in order to satisfy short term aims. Today we may applaud the prohibition mentioned above. Tomorrow they would probably look for our applause to lift the same prohibition.

A proposal such as this one, evidently has many natural enemies. On top of our leaders that like to win votes by using easy money, we also find the bankers that wish to place their resources, easily, with high yields and with “safety”.

When we say “safety” we mean that in our unreal world, a banker that lends funds to a private sector company that then goes broke due to the government’s erroneous policies puts his job at risk while the banker that only lends to the government, thereby abetting those very same policies, normally does so without risking his personal hide.

There are other enemies, not necessarily natural ones. These maintain that is in unpatriotic to limit the State’s attributions. These enemies can be recognized by the ease with which they maintain in the same breath that the actual debt is bad but that future debt is good. We remind these people that to govern while recognizing human failings and thereby avoiding further damage cannot possibly be unpatriotic.

To continue to believe egoistically that the next government, or the one after that, will not repeat the same errors is surely treason. If there is one nation in the world that can attest to this fact, it is Venezuela. The immense resources from the country’s oil production has not contributed much to the country. Certainly, the debt it has contracted has not contributed at all.

We must not allow vulture funds to be able to collect rotten odious credits

It would be irresponsible of anyone knowledgable of its economy not to be thinking about the possibility that Venezuela needs to talk with the IMF, to soon begin a process of renegotiating its debt, as well as PDVSA's, which both seem imposible to duly serve in the short term, if the country is not to suffer biafran hunger.

But during the week the Financial Times columnist, Martin Wolf, in an article entitled "Resist Russian blackmail over Ukraine's debt", recalled how the influences of some sovereign creditors could block the constructive actions of the IMF to reach an acceptable solution.

In this regard it may be desirable to first pass before the International Criminal Court in The Hague. I say this because the massive waste of economic resources in a country, for reasons of incompetence, corruption or simply ideological, notoriously verifiable, should qualify as an economic crime against humanity. And the financing of an economic crime against humanity, should not count on any institutional support, like of the IMF type.

Currently there is also much discussion in the world about the need to establish a mechanism for Sovereign Debt Restructuring (SDRM). I agree with this need but, for the results of an SDRM to be acceptable to us citizens, it must:

Remove all incentives that may encourage governments to contract excessive debts.

And make sure it does not provide any benefit, much rather the contrary, to any debt that could be considered as derived from an odious credit.

A loan granted with a lack of transparency, in which an act of corruption might be involved, or that it was originally granted when it was clear that the resulting debt was not sustainable, and therefore it was purely of speculative nature, should not receive the same treatment by the SDRM, as a regular loan to the public sector awarded transparently, and when there were no major doubts about the ability to serve the sovereign credit.

To identify the speculative nature of a loan, one could use for example that the interest rate exceeds 5 percent the rate charged to an AAA rated sovereign.

We must never forget that the best SDRM is the one that reduces the need for it, and thus lowers the risk premiums to be paid to the sovereign.

And we read that investment funds dedicated to capitalize on the opportunities offered by troubled loans, so-called vulture funds, are growing much. These, an even when we like with vultures and buzzards do not like them much, they do in some cases provide important liquidity to the financial and credit markets... and should be duly rewarded for it.

But, since Venezuela already faces major challenges canceling debts duly owed, the last thing we need is that vulture funds also end up collecting rotten credits from us.

Translated from Noticiero Digital

An odious method of contracting sovereign debt in a non-transparent way that needs to be banned

Ricardo Hausmann and Miguel Angel Santos, in their “Should Venezuela default?” refer to a “$5 billion private placement of ten-year bonds with a 6% coupon, it effectively had to give a 40% discount, leaving it with barely $3 billion”

That in cost represents approximately the same as a $3 billion ten-year bond issue with a 13.5% coupon. 

That type of financing of a sovereign should be prohibited for two reasons: 

First, that is, as you can understand, especially when the exact placement price of the issue is rarely reported, a completely non-transparent way of financing. 

Second, in the 2nd alternative, any new government who could obtain access to better credit terms, could much easier offer to repay the $3 billion issue, and thereby free the nation from those usury rates. As is, unless it enters into a default, it has to repay the full usury interests that are hidden away in the repayment of the $ 2bn in principal not received. 

And I would also like to know… who arranged that private placement, and who bought it… so that I could express my contempt for it. Do they not know that Human Right’s Watch has clearly established that in Venezuela human rights are being violated? I mean where does the limit go? Would it be right to buy bonds to finance the building of concentration camps... if the price, the risk premium, is right?

If financiers need credit ratings to base their decisions on, we citizens need governance ratings and ethic ratings to base the permission for our sovereigns to take on debt.

Also… speculative investors should not have the right in any restructuring to have the cake and eat it too, meaning collecting their high-risk premiums and the full principal.

The financial handicap

In horse racing, to try to equalize the chances of victory among the competitors, the handicap system is frequently used, which implies putting a greater weight on the horses, which have shown a greater ability to win. The world of finance is not so benevolent, there more weight is imposed on those who, according to the market, have fewer prospects... present greater risk.

Every morning when a Venezuelan goes out to build his future and that of his Homeland, whether he is a public or private servant, he carries on his shoulders the weight of the country risk (CR) that the financial markets have set that day. That CR, which in principle is calculated based on how much more interest the market requires for Venezuela's external public debt, compared to a similar one in the United States, is currently located at 11% - 14%.

CR affects not only the public sector, but permeates the entire economy. Effectively, we see, for example, a private person who wishes to contract external debt and if he does not have external guarantees to offer, he must pay his normal interest rate, plus the CR. In terms of public service rates, the models indicate the need to reward the investor with a normal profit margin, plus the CR.

A high CR is economic contamination, which covers everything and prevents breathing normally. If Venezuela wants to recover from this economic emphysema, there is no better way than to reduce the CR fast and considerably.

Obviously, CR has many causes and many origins, but the main one is generally related to the ability to service the country's public debt.

In this sense, I guarantee you that if we only manage to spread the amortization of our public debt over a much longer term and guarantee to the market that this is not done to increase it later, due to its relatively modest size, we could quickly achieve that our debt was classified as investment grade, which would reduce the CR considerably.

All it takes is a little will and drive. If the discordant parties insist on preferring to fight suffocated and short of breath, then so be it. However, I am convinced that the oxygen that reducing the CR would produce would benefit both the Government and the opposition, not to mention the rest of our country, which needs and deserves it so much.

Translated from El Universal

An Unsustainable Sustainability

The latest fashion in the academic world of international finance is to calculate what is known as the Sustainable Debt Level (SDL). As you may have guessed, it has to do with the level of public debt a country can sustain without entering into a crisis. Normally the SDL is calculated based on the size of the economy (GNP) or on a country’s exports.

Whatever scientific approach is given to the SDL issue, it sure seems somewhat obscene to the citizenry of countries where it is evident that public debt engenders low or even no productivity.

If a credit is granted properly, the credit is repaid and then debt levels never become a problem. It is only the bad or mediocre loans that accumulate—those that do not generate their own repayment. So it could be said that what is really being calculated with the SDL is the level of bad debt that a country can get saddled with. Quite frankly, a developing country with real needs cannot afford the luxury of canceling even one cent in interest on a debt level arising from a series of credits that are nonproductive on the average.

From this perspective and since what we really mean is sustaining something that is unsustainable, this question remains: wouldn’t it be better to skip calculating this debt level and try to free ourselves once and for all from these mortgages, instead of condemning future generations to live forever under the weight of an SDL that has been perfectly calculated? How much torture can the torture victim take before passing out?

And who encouraged these countries to go into debt? Ask those who are well-acquainted with the temptation that credits pose to politicians. In China, they say that you wish for your enemies to live in interesting times. In Argentina, because of the suffering provoked by excessive debt, it would seem that what their enemies could have wished upon them was the trust and confidence of international markets.

On the day that our country Venezuela firmly and irrevocably sets upon the path of totally canceling its debt, on this day an enormous opportunity will open for all those private and collective initiatives that need financial oxygen. Unfortunately it will not be easy, since our politicians, while condemning past debts, have mastered the magic of simultaneously preaching the benefits of new credits.

From El Universal, Caracas, June 5, 2003
As translated in my "Voice and Noise" of 2006

And this article lead me here:

If a country was a de-facto concentration camp, could its guards be accused of economic crimes against humanity?

I refer to Bello’s “The endgame in Venezuela” The Economist, February 6.

It states: “A mishmash of indiscriminate subsidies, prices and exchange controls, social programs, expropriations and grand larceny by official [and] the collapse in the oil price has exposed the Bolivarian Revolution as a monumental swindle…[and leading to] the supply of medicines fallen to a fifth of their normal level. Many pills are unavailable; patients die as a result…food queues at government stores grow longer by the week…Violent crime is out of control.”

So let me ask, if a country was a de facto concentration camp for many of its citizens who had no opportunities of leaving it, and the guards of the camp had behaved like what has been described above, including the fact that petrol is given away at less that 1/300th of the price of milk; should it not be possible to bring the guards in front of the International Criminal Court, accused of economic crimes against humanity?

And, if knowing the conditions in the concentration camp, financiers had anyhow, because of ultra-high interest rates, given the guards even more resources to waste, and to later be repaid by the prisoners, could not these participations in the bleeding be declared as having no value by that same International Criminal Court?

The world no doubt needs a Sovereign Debt Restructuring Mechanism but, if that is going to help the citizen-prisoners of the world, which it primarily should do, it must begin by making clear the difference between bona-fide normal credits and borrowings and odious credits and borrowings.

If you know you’re heading straight into debt unsustainability, is it not best to get there as early as possible?

I started decades ago thinking about the theme of (public) debt sustainability, with my homeland Venezuela in mind. Then, when I arrived to the World Bank as an Executive Director in 2002, I widened my perspective to include the public debts of developing countries in general. 

And so I started this my unsustainable debt sustainability blog.

But now, because of my concerns with the distortions in the allocation of credit to the real economy, produced by the risk weighted capital requirements for banks, almost in shock, I find myself thinking on the debt sustainability of developed countries; including that of the US. And of course, that is scary.

Here are some of my uncoordinated recent thoughts (some tweets) on this whole issue.

Statist ultra low risk weights that for the purpose of capital requirements for banks are assigned to the sovereign, guarantees excessive public debt and places a reverse mortgage on its economy which is going to burden future generations.

In 1988, when statist regulators assigned it a 0% risk weight the US debt was $2.6 trillion. At the end of 2017 it was US$20.2 trillion, and still 0% risk weighted. 

If it keeps on being 0% risk weighted, it is doomed to become 100% risky, just like what happened to Greece. But, any increase of that weight will scare markets out of their mind. 

Very high US debt might hinder investments needed to assure its military superiority, and so, at the end of the day, it could come down to the question of: What is more important, having the strongest military forces in the world, or an AAA rating?

What if so many Americans with too much mortgage debt, car debt, student debt, credit card debt and whatever other debt, intuitively picked Trump because he is a guy who has gone through six bankruptcy processes, and has still ended on his feet, and on top?

What if Trump tweets: “They tell me US already has too much debt. With that debt we have written a reverse mortgage on our economy, which will burden too heavily the next generations of Americans. So, OK, I know a bit ‘bout that. I’ve been there, about six times. I'll get down to some good (Great) negotiations... right away!”

Would that be end of the world, or a much needed cleaning?

It would sure be a dangerous mess... but would not the mess be worse if waiting longer for it to mess itself up even more?

Who did you vote for?

Someone asked me who I would vote for as President of the USA among the current republican and democrat candidate. I replied that as foreigner I have no need to torture myself trying to choose, and so I would not answer it. Nonetheless that got me thinking on that indeed your record as a voter should be made public because, as is, it is too easy for the voter to distance himself from his responsibility of a poor choice.

Coming as I do from a country like Venezuela and where the votes were made public and people were fired from their jobs just because they opposed Hugo Chávez, obviously your vote needs to be classified material, for a period, but, sooner or later, you should have to face your grandchild question "Grandpa, did you really vote this way? What were you thinking of?

PS. Just in case, I never ever voted for Chávez, and that is obviously why I dare to make this suggestion. In fact I have a spotless record. I have never voted for a candidate that was elected president.