Fingerprints of Venezuela

I needed a new passport, so when the DIEX official told me “nai nai, I'm sorry, we couldn't find your alphabetical file, the one that has all your data”, I felt… well, you know how. So when, after a while, that same officer told me "don't worry... we'll get it" and proceeded to take my ten fingerprints, I almost pouted... convinced that I would never get out of that Kafkaesque swamp.

Imagine then my astonishment when, in less than an hour, my potential enemy, today my friend, comes back smiling saying- “we got you… hey, in Táchira, in 1957… who would have thought?”. If he was surprised with the place and date of my ID, I was amazed that they "had gotten me" and curious I asked - "Show me how"... Harry Potter apprentice!

He took me to the Central File and Fingerprinting Directorate, a few gloomy rooms, full of dusty files… set for a wizard movie. There, between books and card holders, his boss, the Director and his assistants kindly showed me everything that happens when you get your first ID, how your fingerprints are analyzed and classified under a Galtonian magnifying glass, producing a unique morphology for each Venezuelan citizen. . With my new fingerprints (somewhat thicker/fatter...), they re-established a chain of 14 numbers, thanks to which they found in the digital archive the card with my smaller fingerprints, taken 45 years ago!, with which the DIEX was able to verify that the citizen Per Kurowski exists, that he is Venezuelan and that he deserves a passport. What an impression those impressions caused me!

In the act I remembered that five years ago I had protested a plan to modernize the identification system, because it seemed like an expensive robbery, 500 million dollars! Shutting up about such a sin, I sat down to talk with my new friends about "modernization." With modesty, they indicated to me the urgent need for new magnifying glasses, a better light to see the fingerprints better and yes, if possible, to digitize the files to speed up the identification work. They ended by saying, “we have heard that they will install a new system soon”-“What system?”- “We don't know, but they say it will cost a good money”.

AHA! I said to myself, since I also know about fingerprints, I have just identified the footprint of the public administration of Venezuela. Instead of allowing these obviously dedicated and capable officials continuous access to the few resources they would need to accomplish wonders and stay modern, for which a small portion of the annual interest would surely suffice, which would cost a $500 plan millions of dollars, there, in some ministry, there is a know-it-all politician who wants it all, generating his own solution... a real hit!

Governors of Venezuela, the day you want to modernize the DIEX, I beg you not to abuse the public servants who work there, better use them... they are true magicians!

Translated from El Universal, November 7, 2002

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Not one more case of financial engineering

Not one more case of financial engineering

 'In June 2000, when AES was buying Electricidad de Caracas (EdC), I wrote an article titled “The EdC that I want”, where I said; “From my local electrical distributor, what I am interested in seeing are some good engineers with colorful helmets, accompanied by competent accountants with simple calculators that only serve to add and subtract. Observing the presence of lawyers, financiers, brokers, publicists and other professionals unrelated to bringing light home, frankly, I don't like it." 

No sooner said than done. Today, just over two years later, the EoC is already having difficulties making the necessary investments. Its new foreign shareholders milked the company's equity accounts for 900 million dollars, when probably any national owner, much less versed in financial engineering, would surely have allocated a large part of such resources to reduce the immense foreign debt, which currently weighs on the company. company. 

I think the same with respect to public finances. Given the total mess that Venezuela's public debt presents, largely inherited, there is pressure to professionalize its management, but, if it is already difficult for us to evaluate what is happening, imagine what it will be like when such refined "artists" come performing " puts”, “calls” etc. and etc. 

No! As far as Venezuela's public liabilities are concerned, if I can't have access to a property administrator, like Juan Vicente Gómez, who can simply cancelled it and forgot about that nonsense, I would prefer a grocery store a thousand times. Suppose that the rulers of Venezuela were only allowed to issue debt up to a fixed percentage of the GNP and that this had to be contracted exclusively through the issuance of 15-year bonds, with 15 equal and consecutive annual amortizations. 

Such a measure would put an end to the pernicious tendency of “expensive credit card” type financing, which by pushing the wrinkle has led us to the current situation, where although as a country we do not owe much, however due to the large accumulation of maturities in the short term, the markets demand us and can charge us an arm and a leg. A flat amortization profile, with our modest level of debt, would surely earn us an infinitely better credit risk rating than the current one.

Furthermore, the use of a single type of instrument would give wonderful depth and liquidity to the Venezuelan debt market. Regarding the demand for different placement terms, this could be met by the market itself, with its mechanisms that assign different maturities to the different holders.

Finally, the best, TRANSPARENCY. The country would always know for sure what the real cost of any State project is, without having to resort to the financial calculator or experts, who always represent a high direct cost, as well as a very high indirect cost, for all the nonsense they invent.

PS. At that time I had really not understood how regulators (the Basel Committee) had wrestled banks out of the hands of loan officers, and placed these into the hands of dangerously creative financial engineers. Which was why our friend George Banks had to go and fly a kite.

The riskiness of country risk

How horrible it must be to work as an air-traffic controller! Any slight error can provoke an unimaginable human tragedy. No wonder these professionals burn out so rapidly. I “suppose” the same must happen with the country-risk assessors, those people who carefully pass judgment as to what the country risk is for any given nation.

The all-important mission of these risk evaluators is twofold. The first that for which they are actually paid consists of analyzing whether or not the debtor nation will ultimately be able to honor its obligations. This determines whether or not pension funds, banks, and insurance companies will be willing, or even allowed, to invest in that country’s sovereign debt instruments. The second, even more important than the first, is to send subtle signals to the governments of these nations in order to help them improve their performance.

What a difficult job this is! If they overdo it and underestimate the risk of a given country, the latter will most assuredly be inundated with fresh loans and will be leveraged to the hilt. The result will be a serious wave of adjustments sometime down the line. If on the contrary, they exaggerate the country’s risk level, it can only result in a reduction in the market value of the national debt, increasing interest expense and making access to international financial markets difficult. The initial mistake will unfortunately turn out to be true, a self-fulfilling prophecy. Any which way, either extreme will cause hunger and human misery.

What a nightmare it must be to be risk evaluator! Imagine trying to get some shuteye while lying awake in bed thinking that any moment one of those judges, those with the global reach that have a say in anything and everything, determinates that a country has become essentially bankrupt due to your mistake, and then drags you kicking and screaming before an International Court, accused of violating human rights. If I were to be in the position of evaluating country risk, I would insure that the process is totally transparent, even though this takes away some of the shine of the profession and obligates me to sacrifice some of my personal market value.

How lucky we are that we are neither air-traffic controllers nor sovereign-risk evaluators! However, since we can easily become victims of their missteps, it behooves us, if only because of our survival instinct, to make sure that both do their jobs correctly.

We have seen in recent Country Reports how, after having introduced a myriad of information into the black box of methodology, as if by magic, a credit qualification is produced. Many of these reports seem to me like the pronouncements of film critics. It would seem that, more often than not, the individual evaluator is determining more how much he likes the ways or forms the Directors of a nation try to honor its obligations than on producing an honest and profound financial analysis of the country’s capacity for servicing its debt correctly.

In his book The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World (New York: Random House, 2001), Lawrence Lessig maintains that an era is identified not so much by what is debated, but by what is actually accepted as true and so is not debated at all. In this sense, given the risk that the perceived country risk actually becomes the real country risk, it is best not to assign an AAA rating blithely to the risk qualifiers—perhaps not even a two-thumbs-up.

El Universal, Caracas, September 26, 2002

Daily Journal, Caracas, September 27, 2002

Included in "Voice and Noise" May 2006.'

Hardships

Hardships

HOW MUCH easier it is to give recommendations to companies about what to do during an economic crisis, than, as I have been asked, to people of flesh, blood and unseasoned hearts!

What's more, I think it would even be disrespectful to try to give her information on how to find a solution or how to make more money, like an ingenious housewife. Everyone knows what is within their reach and I can only wish them the best. Much less would I dare to give any recommendation to a desperate father, who does not have the resources for the medicines his sick son needs, other than praying to God, if he is a believer.

What I would dare to talk about is how to face the emotional pressure, which naturally arises in a crisis like the current one. Ah...Kurowski became a psychologist! They will say... Noooo, what's up! My recommendations have no other foundation than my intuition and if someone has the audacity to publish them, it's just my luck.

Perhaps, because I am a financial consultant, I get the image of the overwhelmed debtor, who tosses and turns in bed unable to sleep, until he opens the window and yells at his neighbor, the banker, "Friend, I can't pay you!" thus shedding an immense weight after having screwed his friend over. The above shows that it is not advisable to swallow our anxieties, but that we should share them openly with our wife, children and friends and not just with our pillows.

Perhaps, because you are an economist, you understand that individual shame should not cause any shame, since unemployment of the magnitude that exists in Venezuela suggests a state of war and, in war, no one has to feel ashamed that a crazy missile Just reach your house.

Perhaps, because you are a father, you see the urgent need to seek to learn from difficulties, that we must learn to enjoy the little things in life as much as possible, which are also free.

However, as a Venezuelan, overcome by deep anger at the ridiculous and unjustified situation in which we find ourselves, I am sure that the solution is in our hands and not in that of imported healers. Colleagues, let's stop looking for an escape door. That's depressing! Let's dedicate ourselves to finding the gateway to a better Venezuela, through which we can all pass.

P.S. To my compatriots who are not fighting, I remind them of the superhuman challenge of being human and avoiding ostentation.

https://radicaldelmedio.blogspot.com/2002/07/pelando.html

Translated by Google