{"id":3507,"date":"2014-12-24T13:27:13","date_gmt":"2014-12-24T18:27:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=3507"},"modified":"2014-12-24T13:27:13","modified_gmt":"2014-12-24T18:27:13","slug":"low-oil-prices-pushing-venezuela-towards-default","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=3507","title":{"rendered":"Low Oil Prices Pushing Venezuela Towards Default"},"content":{"rendered":"

Low Oil Prices Pushing Venezuela Towards Default<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Low oil prices are putting major oil producers in a squeeze. The Russian central bank has been forced to cough up foreign exchange in order to defend itself from a\u00a0currency crisis<\/a>. But it may be Venezuela that is the least prepared and most in danger of an economic freefall because of the dramatic decline in oil prices.<\/p>\n

Venezuela is particularly vulnerable as its economy\u00a0depends on oil<\/a>\u00a0for 95 percent of its export revenue. The economy was stagnant even when oil prices were in triple digit territory. In fact, the violent protests that broke out in Caracas in February 2014 occurred when oil prices were well over $100 per barrel. But mismanagement of the economy is not a new phenomenon \u2013 inflation-adjusted per capita GDP in Venezuela is 2 percent\u00a0lower<\/a>\u00a0today compared to what it was in 1970.<\/p>\n

However, the South American OPEC member saw its fortunes go from bad to worse when oil prices started to decline. In October, prominent Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoffpredicted<\/a>\u00a0that Venezuela would most likely default on its bonds as a result of oil prices. And that was when Brent crude was trading\u00a0above $80 per barrel<\/a>. Since then, it has tumbled another 25 percent to $60 per barrel.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/a>…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Low Oil Prices Pushing Venezuela Towards Default. Low oil prices are putting major oil producers in a squeeze. The Russian central bank has been forced to cough up foreign exchange in order to defend itself from a\u00a0currency crisis. But it may be Venezuela that is the least prepared and most in danger of an economic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[200,1775,851],"class_list":["post-3507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","tag-default","tag-oil-price-collapse","tag-venezuela"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3507"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3508,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3507\/revisions\/3508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}