FWIS3

One thing is for sure: keep walking down this path and you can only reach its logical llegadero: dollar expenditures far outstripping income, no liquid dollars left in reserves, no one willing to lend you more. February 1989.

Chavismo has always sustained itself on the fiction that the adjustment package of 1989 was an ideological choice rather than an arithmetic imperative. Welcome to the bajadita, bitches.

"Venezuela’s international reserves have fallen 23% [year-to-date] to their lowest level since 2004," writes Rodriguez in a note to clients. "A close look at the data reveals that almost the totality of the decline in reserves can be explained by gold prices falling from their peak in [the third quarter of 2012]."