Posted on 07/29/2018 10:27:50 AM PDT by ameribbean expat
CARACAS, July 18 (Reuters) - Venezuela’s central bank this year began refining gold in Turkey following a wave of international sanctions that have left it unwilling to carry out such operations in Switzerland, the country’s mining minister said on Wednesday.
The central bank for several years has been buying gold from small miners in the south of the country and refining it to be used as monetary gold to shore up its international reserves that have tumbled as the country’s socialist economy implodes.
“This is an agreement established with Turkey and the Venezuelan central bank,” said Victor Cano in a press conference. “It’s being done by allied countries because imagine (what would happen) if we sent gold to Switzerland and we are told that it has to stay there because of sanctions.”
He did not say which Turkish companies were involved or how much had been refined there, but said the government had purchased 9.1 tonnes of gold from small miners this year.
The gold is returned to Venezuela after being refined in Turkey and becomes part of the central bank’s portfolio of assets, he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
What’s th punch? I don’t get it.
Uh oh. The word “socialist” got by the editors at Reuters.
Two possibilities:
1) Gold standard for Maduro’s “Escape from Caracas.”
or
2) Hard backing for the new Venezuelan crypto currency.
Ask the small miners how much below spot they had to sell their gold for. That went into the pockets of the people who keep Maduro in power.
I’m confused. Why would a Socialist Paradise need gold in the first place? Gold is a filthy capitalist tool for hoarding wealth.
Karl Marx said “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” There’s no mention of gold anywhere in that saying.
“Two possibilities:
1) Gold standard for Maduro’s “Escape from Caracas.”
or
2) Hard backing for the new Venezuelan crypto currency.”
I vote for 1. Who tracks the gold weight exported against the gold weight returned? A cut for Erdogan, a cut for Maduro.
Venezuelan professionals are abandoning hospitals and universities to scrounge livings as street vendors in Peru and janitors in Ecuador. Here in Trinidad and Tobago — a petroleum-producing Caribbean nation off Venezuela’s northern coast — Venezuelan lawyers are working as day laborers and sex workers. A former well-to-do bureaucrat who once spent a summer eating traditional shark sandwiches and drinking whisky on Trinidad’s Maracas Bay is now working as a maid.
Doesn’t make sense
Refining gold is not very difficult. Hell, I know a large coin-and precious metals dealer who does it in the basement of his nondescript urban office building
Thanks for the info there. That’s one thing about Free Republic. Lots of people here know lots of things.
By the way, care to make a prediction? Will there be any coup attempts in Venezuela’s near future?
Ironic- Venezuelans are eating democrat mascot( donkeys) to avoid starvation.
Link: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/venezuela/article215644840.htm
Remember when Hugo Chavez made a big show of bringing all Venezuela’s gold home, from all over the world? I think when he brought the last of it back from Germany he had a huge parade.
You would think they’d have confiscated a gold refinery from one of the mines they nationalized from Russia.
None of that gold is coming back. What Erdogan doesn’t keep will go into off-shore Moros accounts. Some gold plated tungsten bricks may wind up back in Venezuela.
“That’s one thing about Free Republic. Lots of people here know lots of things.”
Only thing I’d add would be most of them share my idea that limited government is best. Keeps me coming back.
Hard to say about Vz. It has the single largest proven oil reserves in the world. 297b barrels. This has attracted the Russians interest as well as Chinese. China needs oil, Russia has already has it. Should be a natural fault line between the two which the US State Dept could exploit, but they are too busy with civil war 2. In my opinion, the reason the Chinese have been so aggressive about controlling the Panama Canal is access to VZ oil.
Iran has been in VZ, and South America, for a long time. I spent the summer of 1990 at Fuerte Tiuna outside Caracas, as part of the first MAT team to make contact with the VZ army since WW2. We finished up with R+R at an island off coast from the province of La Guaiara. Billfish capital of the world. https://www.fishinginternational.com/destination/la-guaira/
A couple years later, I took my brother and his friends there for his bachelor party. Place was overrun by muslims, cocaine and hookers, up from the tri-border area. https://financialtransparency.org/the-tri-borderi-area-a-profile-of-the-largest-illicit-economy-in-the-western-hemisphere/
Trump ignores the Latin American capacity to cause problems in US domestic politics at his own peril. There’s a lot of good people down there, but we don’t help them — and by extension ourselves — for whatever reason.
Lithium salt flats in Argentina, copper and gold in Chile and Peru, natural gas in Bolivia. US should be paying more attention.
Distinct possibility.
Ask the small miners how much below spot they had to sell their gold for.
Oh no, they were given the exact value in bolívars at the official exchange rate. ( that may not have been indexed to inflation in a month or two).
The good news, that pile of bolívars makes a passable replacement for toilet paper.
The bad news, nothing to eat for weeks and no need for TP.
The Erdogan Crime Family in Turkey made big money laundering sanctions busting oil and gold shipments for the Iranian regime. His cronies also laundered oil exports for ISIS, as well as oil exports from the KRG in Iraq which needed to get around Baghdad’s taking of all the profits. He has his son Bilal in charge of oil exports, and his son-in-law in charge of all domestic oil activities.
Erdogan is highly corrupt, and is probably just partnering with Venezuelan socialists to get a cut. His regime has increasingly become a bad actor on many fronts (main sponsor of jihadis in Northern Syria). President Trump and VP Pence both begin openly discussing sanctions on Turkey last week.
Excellent points. I live part time in Colombia and most there are very pro American. Peru, Colombia and Chile could become very strong allies. We now have goid trade deals but need to strengthen our alliances
Both Maduro and Erdogan are serial liars and total Dictators. No one will believe gold backing for their crypto currency. If it was that easy, they would long ago fixed their exchange problem.
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