We’ll be heading Down The Rabbit Hole shortly but first…Translating Cuba tells us that despite the 8% drop in Venezuela oil exports last month the amount that Nicolas Maduro sent to Cuba was up 34%.

 While exports to Cuba have been unstable recently, ranging from 38,000 – 57,000 barrels, they are still a priority alongside China, which accounts for 70% of Venezuela’s exports, still paying off past oil for loan deals. This is the reality of of Venezuela’s oil industry that we’ve been telling you about, which makes us question any deals for Venezuela crude going forward.

 The Maduro regime receives no revenue from the 70% of it’s exports that it sends to China. It receives no revenue for it’s exports to Cuba (paying for medical doctors and “military and security advisors”). It receives almost no revenue from domestic oil sales. It’s not supposed to receive any revenue, debt repayment only, for exports to the US and Europe, according to the sanctions-easing agreements.

 The only cash Venezuela receives for oil is for the few shipments to buyers willing to risk running afoul of sanctions and after the expensive practice of ship to ship transfers to avoid detection and the extra discounts that have to be offered due to quality and contamination issues the Chavistas make almost no profit.

 The Maduro regime is, for all intents and purposes, out of the oil business. It makes a lot more money through it’s illegal gold and drug trafficking operations than it does from oil. That is the real reality.

 Then we have Court House News telling us that an attorney for PDVSA (Venezuela government-owned oil company) asked an 11th Circuit panel to overturn a decision rejecting it’s motion to intervene in a racketeering and anti-trust lawsuit accusing major international energy firms of cheating the company out of billions of dollars in a price-fixing and bid-rigging conspiracy.

 The Atlanta-based appeals court ruled in 2021 that a trust formed by PDVSA did not have legal standing to sue the alleged conspirators. The case, originally filed in 2018, is now further complicated by the opposition’s decision to remove Venezuela’s “interim President”, Juan Guaido, and to dissolve his parallel government.

 The PDVSA attorney is suggesting the court obtain a “definitive” statement from the US State Department regarding their position on Nicolas Maduro now, since he was previously deemed illegitimate and that was a major factor in the court previously rejecting their case. He also suggested that the decision by the US Treasury Department to allow Chevron to resume it’s operations in Venezuela is a “de facto recognition” of PDVSA’s (and Maduro’s) legitimacy…What a mess!

 As if the Chavistas didn’t already have enough ways to delay court proceedings against them they now can seek to re-litigate all the rulings against them (almost all rulings have been against them, and rightfully so) based on a re-evaluation of Maduro’s, hence PDVSA’s legitimacy. I think we’re going to see a lot more of this, even though the State Department has said numerous times it has not changed it’s stance on the legitimacy of Nicolas Maduro and his government. (I guess that’s not “definitive” enough for them)

 Now, let’s head Down The Rabbit Hole…

 Chapter 1 continued…

 …You may be wondering how you can “tell them nothing”, pretty much about anything, especially a question like “Where did all the money go?” It’s simple… Early on Chavez set up a government department called Fonden to distribute 60% of government spending. The first 40% of government spending was accountable to the National Assembly, Venezuela’s legislative body. Fonden was, and is, accountable to no one, except Chavez and now Maduro. Also, nobody is brave enough to ask a question like “Where did all the money go?” but I’ll save that discussion for another time.

 With no money and no access to credit they tried a series of bilateral agreements to supply the failing systems but, country by country, deal by deal, the Chavistas screwed everyone and burned all those bridges.

 To take us even further “Down The Rabbit Hole”, Maduro has been ruling by decree almost since “day one” due to the declaration of a “state of emergency”. At the same time he has been denying (until recently) that there is a humanitarian crisis (emergency). Call me crazy but isn’t it one or the other? FYI, the Maduro regime now uses the term “state of alarm” since they can’t use the term “emergency” without admitting there’s “an emergency”.

 That led us to the government’s conscious decision to just let people die. They had to choose between paying off their bondholders, who strangely enough were mostly wealthy, well-connected Chavistas, or putting that money toward caring for the people. Even that only lasted until 2017 when they first defaulted on most of their bonds and are now in default on all of them. This situation won’t be resolved as the guy Maduro put in charge of restructuring Venezuela’s debt, Tareck el Aissami, is prohibited by law from speaking to the bondholders.

 Note : It is our contention that if the full truth is ever known about the Chavista’s plundering of Venezuela’s wealth and resources it will go down as the greatest theft of a country’s treasury in the history of the Western Hemisphere (possibly anywhere).

 So here we are. The government keeps a well staffed and supplied hospital or two as well as a couple of Barrio Adentro locations they can show visitors gullible enough to believe the government line. They don’t hear from people like the doctor in one of the “non-showcase” facilities that said it was like practicing battlefield medicine two hundred years ago.

 The good news is, the main hospital on Margarita Island was reopened. The bad news is that with no supplies, few doctors, and for the most part no food, water, or dependable electricity it truly is, as Duglimar said, “In Venezuela you go to the hospital to die”.

 Summary : It was my intent to focus on how the healthcare system in Venezuela collapsed. In doing so I didn’t get into how horrific the situation is ie; babies in cardboard boxes instead of incubators etc. It is catastrophic and as you can see it is not the effect of outside influences, natural disasters, or civil war. It is a self-inflicted wound, a man-made disaster, a Chavista- made disaster.

 More tomorrow….