Comments on: Dubai, Greece and Venezuela, three countries, three different debt profiles

By: garth

garth — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 12:27:05 +0000

Strangely the browser I got can’t show your page properly… Can you confirm that this article has been set up for Google Chrome? You may want to check this, even though it may come from some wrong settings on my laptop

By: Mee Nethery

Mee Nethery — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 21:39:44 +0000

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By: moctavio

moctavio — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 14:02:41 +0000

Jim: You are absolutely correct!!!

By: Jim

Jim — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 12:50:23 +0000

I believe the Las Vegas project that Dubai World invested in is MGM’s City Center, not a Wynn project. They put $2.5 billion into it and the Aria hotel and casino portion is scheduled to open mid-December. (My son works there).

We lived in Dubai for a couple of years earlier in the decade and even then it felt like a real estate bubble.

By: moctavio

moctavio — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:44:03 +0000

I did, it is in the post. I say that the debt is less than 90 billion, smaller than the 300 billion GDP at the official rate and smaller at the parallel rate, but clearly, the truth is somewhere in between and I dont know the weighted average GDP, so 300 billion is too high and 117 billion is too low, if we had a single exchange rate I could have quoted a real number, but we dont., and thus I conclude:

“but somewhere in between. which still looks comfortable, except that…”

and then I give the reasons why it may not be so comfortable concluding that the problem is political and I don’t see a crisis. Therefore I dont know what you did not see.

By: Arturo

Arturo — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 20:16:21 +0000

Very good comparitive post on these three countries. However, what I do not understand Octaviuo is why you contextualize the Dubai and Greece debt in terms of their GDP but do not do this for Venezuela? Venezuela’s total debt is far, far less than its GDP (all debts both external and internal are not more than 20% of GDP) and nothing as badly leveraged as the situation in Dubai or Greece.

Conclusion: the comparison was flawed from the outset since in terms of debt/GDP Venezuela has no problems whatsoever. Comapre Japan debt to its GDP – it’s 197%!! US debt vs. GDP is 97%.

Anyway, thanks for the information and the trouble you go to in order to present it in a comprhensible way.

By: nitpicker

nitpicker — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 16:16:22 +0000

Miguel,

The word sukuk is already a plural, of the singular sakk, hence no need for sukuks

Great post as usual.

Saludos

By: Fausta’s Blog » Blog Archive » The Honduran election Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:09:43 +0000

[...] VENEZUELA Dubai, Greece and Venezuela, three countries, three different debt profiles [...]

By: geha714

geha714 — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 23:15:40 +0000

Miguel: I ask you something that I think sometimes.

In your opinion, is possible that Venezuela’s debt just becomes too big to handle, even if another rise of oil prices and the following windfall of revenues comes, given the decline of PDVSA production, the mess created by the currency control, the bigger dependency of import goods, the deterioration of the non-oil economy and the private sector, the web of corruption and the total lack of accountability and transparency?

By: Holl

Holl — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 21:15:29 +0000

Great post! Next year should be very interesting as developed countries continue to issue debt to stimulate the world economy.