businessweek-magazine / 3 posts found
The Meltdown in Venezuela’s Currency Is Deepening
The meltdown in Venezuela’s currency is deepening as a crippling dollar shortage and a threat of oil sanctions take their toll on the economy. The black-market rate for the bolivar traded weaker than 8,700 per dollar for the first time, according to dolartoday.com on Friday, compared with the official rate of around 10 and a more widely used alternative rate of 2,757. That’s creating an illusion for foreigners observing the country’s stock market, which appears to be valued at $2.57 trillion — bigger than Germany’s, France’s, India’s or Canada’s — but is worth only $3 billion based on the black-market rate. Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-21/the-meltdown-in-venezuela-s-currency-is-deepening
The Manhattan of Venezuela Parties Against a Backdrop of Crisis
In the courtyard of La Esquina, a restaurant in Caracas’s upscale Chacao district, Alexandra Lovera lived the more pleasant half of her double life. The 24-year-old culinary student and frequent protester of Photographer: Meridith Kohut/Bloomberg From afar, Venezuela’s capital appears to burn day and night. Protests against authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro have raged for more than 100 days, claiming scores of lives as the economy crumbles and masses go hungry. This month, the nation faces the prospect of a constitutional assembly that could hamstring democracy, a general strike and the possibility of fresh economic sanctions. But after dark, an elite class […]
Remember Peak Oil? Demand May Top Out Before Supply Does
When Bob Dudley, chief executive officer of British oil giant BP Plc, was asked at a recent conference when oil demand will peak, he had a precise answer: June 2, 2042. The audience at the annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum burst into laughter, knowing it’s impossible to predict such an event down to the day. But the American executive wasn’t speaking entirely in jest: The most recent edition of BP’s widely scrutinized Energy Outlook has global demand for crude maxing out in 2½ decades, give or take a year. That projection casts a shadow over one of the world’s largest industries, which […]
