Before we get to our Down The Rabbit Hole segment I gotta’ do this.As I was reading an article by Sputnik I couldn’t help thinking, “Man, this is a real ‘spin cycle’. I think we need to break out the BS Translator.” So…here it is.

Article : US government’s so-called ‘extradition’ of Alex Saab

BS Translator : I know we call it kidnapping but there was nothing “so-called” about this extradition

Article : …group of anti-war activists gathered to demand release of Alex Saab

 BS Translator : For a few bucks we can get people to protest anything

 Article : Saab was reportedly tapped by Nicolas Maduro to help the country’s food and housing social programs overcome the impact of deadly sanctions

 BS Translator : Saab was tapped by Nicolas Maduro to set up various complex schemes to defraud the Venezuelan people and enrich himself and it all started before the sanctions actually hit the Venezuela government

 Article : Ultimately, Saab was extradited to the US 1 day before the current Cape Verde administration, which had promised his release, took power

 BS Translator : Saab’s lawyers filed so many frivolous motions the extradition agreement almost expired due to delays

 Article : …accusations that Saab is secretly a “DEA informant” have appeared … further complicating the case… Saab’s lawyers have publicly corrected the record… any communication Saab may have had with DEA officials was simply to clear his name and would have been undertaken…with the” full knowledge and support” and with the consent of Caracas.

 BS Translator : Now that it’s public that Alex Saab was working with the DEA you know why we did everything we could to stop the extradition and as more news comes out we’ll spin that too

 Article : CODEPINK Latin America coordinator, Leo Flores, “If Saab was a DEA informant, why isn’t he being charged with drug trafficking?”

 BS Translator : We know that under Cape Verde law any extradition agreement must contain only one charge so all the others had to be dropped. We hope you don’t know this

 Article : The only charge is conspiracy to commit money laundering … a far cry from narcotics trafficking

 BS Translator : Same as above…

 Article : The idea is to pressure Saab…cracks and gives up all Venezuela’s secrets

 BS Translator : Our plan is to cut a deal so you never know our secrets

 Article : The effort to paint Saab as a DEA informant is character assassination

 BS Translator : If you only knew how bad this guy really was…and Maduro too…

 Article : …sour potential pool of jurors and nip the growing social movement in the bud

 BS Translator : Our bots have already inundated social media and our paid protesters are out there. We have legions of “useful idiots”

 Article : We’re going to keep standing up for Alex Saab until the criminal sanctions are lifted and until Alex Saab is returned to the Venezuelan people

 BS Translator : This whole Alex Saab fiasco is getting in the way of what we really care about (hint : it’s not the Venezuelan people) and that is getting the sanctions lifted…they’re cramping our style

 Our thanks to the BS Translator for clearing up such a spin-filled article. And to the Sputnik folks… What a load of BS!

 Now, let’s go Down The Rabbit Hole….

 Sounds like a big deal until you do the math. Let’s use 95 octane for example. Remember, in 2016 we were using the bsf, bolivares fuertes, not the new bolivar, nor the bolivar soberano, and certainly not the boring old bolivar. Anyway, here’s how it breaks down :

 One liter of 95 octane – 6 bsf

 approximately 55 liters for a tankful in the trusty old Toyota

 exchange rate at the time was approximately 1,200 bsf / dollar

 So you can see,even with the big bump I could still fill up my tank for a quarter! And gasoline would get much cheaper. Maduro’s economic mismanagement would eventually make the price of a liter $0.000001 ( 6 bsf/liter with the exchange rate of the next iteration…bsS, the one that lopped off 5 zeros from the bsf at 6,000 bsS/ dollar). To leave the subsidized price so low must cost a fortune…right? Yes it does.

 To get an idea of the lost revenue let’s use some low numbers so our lost revenue estimate will be on the low side, a minimum if you will.Although historic usage, on average,is much higher let’s use the low number of 200,000 bpd (barrels per day) of gasoline.In a country of 5 million cars this should be much higher but the number of cars on the road has significantly declined. People either can’t find parts or can’t afford them. So, 200,000 bpd x 55 gallons (average volume of a barrel) = 11 million gallons per day. Let’s use a really low gas price, in real world terms, of a dollar a gallon x 11 million gallons x 365 days in a year = over $4 billion a year in lost revenue! And these are the low numbers!!

 Every analyst and ally,except Cuba, advised Maduro to raise gas prices again ( not like that seemingly huge 6,000% increase in 2016 up to 25 cents per tankful). He listened to none of them, which is pretty much his reaction to any advice that requires him to change policy. He did announce a major price increase at the time of his economic overhaul and the introduction of the new “Sovereign Bolivar” currency. Tell me if this doesn’t sound typically Chavista. The new plan would involve new registration and regulation levels.Two different prices,subsidized pricing for those registered with the plan, and an international price for those not part of the plan. Of course, this would be through the ‘Carnet de la Patria’and also require that people register their cars for the plan.So the government gets more people to sign up for the corrupt “Homeland Card”, gathers information on cars and car owners, and then does nothing.Gas prices remained where they were in 2016. I almost forgot to mention that when the new bsS came into being the government had to allow the old bsf to stick around for a while because the new currency didn’t have a denomination small enough to pay for gasoline.

 More tomorrow….