Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez has signalled his true intentions with more clarity than ever today, announcing that he would expropriate:

1. All the phone lines
2. All the electricity

As this happened, a provincial governor from Bolivar state down south let it all hang out, simply saying he wanted to confiscate the entire media, forcing it all under state control. Just ‘nationalization’ don’t you know.

Think of the implications of Chavez’s move, there, as well as the nutty governor’s statement.

Chavez intends to control all the media and information all through the country. CANTV’s stock has now plunged 16% on the NYSE until it was yanked from floor trading, due to its precipitous fall. Nobody thinks Chavez is going to compensate anyone fairly for his forced expropriation and the market is responding accordingly.

But more significantly, with the prospect of Chavez owning the entire phone line system — oh and what a shame this will be because Venezuela’s phone lines are the clearest in all South America, and they’ll go to hell under state ownership — Chavez will be able to listen in on any phone call he wants, especially with all the great electronic help he’s getting from Cuba’s communist electronic warfare experts who are now in Caracas. Worse yet, he’ll be able to cut off electricity to any dissident or group, effectively ending any possible power to dissemimate news via electronic media. The only way to get any serious news out of Venezuela now will be to fly into Venezuela. If you can get a visa.

This comes on the heels of the announced destruction of a major television station, RCTV. The chief of the Organization of American States, Jose Miguel Insulza, voiced his concern for this clear case of political retaliation and Chavez today publicly demanded his resignation and called him a “pendejo” over and over and over again.

This clearly is an effort to Cubanize the nation, turning its free media into a state monopoly to disempower the opposition, and end all free inquiry or accountability. It’s something that is a mighty curious step for Chavez to take, given his claims he won the December election by an overwhelming majority. Something already doesn’t sound right.

This isn’t all the thug is up to, by the way. He’s also stealing the entire central bank, by ending autonomy for it. He’s turning that into an instrument for money-printing, now that he’s badly mismanaged the entire oil bonanza, wrecked the oil fields, fired all of the talent who could clean up this situation, and wasted hundreds of billions of dollars of oil earnings on stealing, corruption and socialist mismanagement.

In short, Chavez is turning Venezuela into the wasteland of nothingness that is communist Cuba.

Pity poor Venezuela!

Chavez and his little men at today’s cabinet presentation in Lilliput
Source: AP, via Yahoo! News

Miguel at Devil’s Excrement in Venezuela has two important accounts of this growing nightmare here and here. Read it while you still can.

Daniel at Venezuela News & Views has a long and excellent analysis of the implications for freedom of speech, here. Read this too while you still can.

Gustavo Coronel has a brilliant essay on this matter, explaining why it’s now official that Venezuela has become a dictatorship. Read the whole thing here.

UPDATE: Fausta at Fausta’s blog has a W-O-W quality roundup and the latest updates along with excellent analysis in this don’t-miss post here.

UPDATE: Oh man, you gotta check out Club for Growth‘s incredible, awesome chart that tells the whole truthful story of what’s going on in one small square of space here. Total must-see.

UPDATE: Alek Boyd at VCrisis has more thoughts here – skim through the Goldman report I’ve already posted here and go to the bottom where the good stuff is – his take on Chavez’s pendejo insults, for one, and just what Chavez plans to pop in the mail for the Catholic bishops who oppose his leftist thuggery – it’s excellent reading, here.

Venezuela Today has all the critical updates, click on frequently to see the latest developments here.

Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs reports the disaster as follows:

Focus: Venezuela

President Ch????vez Will Ask Congress for Special Powers and Announces Nationalizations

As President Ch????vez begins his second six-year term he made a number of important policy announcements that are likely to leave investors quite concerned. Below we list this afternoon????????s main policy announcements:

1. Scrap central bank autonomy.

2. Nationalize CANTV (telecom company) and the electricity industry.

3. Change business code/laws;

4. Cancel (or fail to renew) the broadcasting license of a local TV network (RCTV) considered sympathetic to the opposition (despite criticism by the Organization of American States and international freedom of the press advocates).

5. Seek special powers from Congress to approve new ???????Revolutionary??????? laws (i.e., for Congress to delegate some of its legislative powers to the executive).

6. The state should have a majority stake in Orinoco Basin heavy oil upgrading joint-ventures.

These disconcerting policy announcements represent a clear turn into deeper nationalist and interventionist policies, which could lead to further erosion of business confidence and the country????????s macro and institutional fundamentals.

President Ch????vez will also ask for special legislative powers, which, in our assessment, are not really justified as the country is not living in a state of emergency, and all legislators in the unicameral National Assembly belong to political parties that support the regime (the opposition boycotted the legislative elections due to lack of guarantees about the integrity of the election).

Furthermore, we think that special powers to the government would further strengthen the already high concentration of power in the executive, and continue to erode the current architecture of institutional checks and balances.

and

President Ch????vez Opposes Central Bank Autonomy

President Ch????vez stated that the Central Bank should not be autonomous, which would leave the institution vulnerable to the dictates of multilateral agencies.

As such, the government plans to remove from the constitution all remaining guarantees for an autonomous central bank.

Goldman writes:

Comment: (-) The government has already reduced significantly the autonomy of the central bank over the last few years by forcing it to hand over more than US$10 billion in international reserves to the government and by pressuring the monetary authority to continue to adopt an extremely loose monetary policy (negative real rates).

Contrary to the official line, there is an extensive collection of theoretical and empirical economic research pointing to the benefits of formal Central Bank independence in terms of lower inflation outcomes, capacity to anchor inflation expectations, and lower volatility in financial and real variables, when compared with central banks that are not autonomous.

Turning the Central Bank into an appendage of the government or the Ministry of Finance would certainly carry significant risks going forward in terms of the capacity and willingness of the monetary authority to control growing inflationary pressures, in our view. Furthermore, it could erode the quality and the integrity of the economic statistics computed and reported by the Central Bank.

Here’s something else from Goldman today:

President Ch????vez Swears In New Cabinet and Increases Number of Ministries

President Ch????vez announced today the creation of two new ministries (Sports and Indigenous Affairs) as he swore in the new cabinet for his second six-year term.

As part of the ongoing cabinet reshuffle President Ch????vez announced that his older brother will serve as Education Minister. Last Week President Ch????vez announced the replacement of the Vice President and the Finance and Interior Ministers.

During the ceremony, President Ch????vez urged the new cabinet members to work incessantly towards the deepening of the socialist model.

Goldman’s comment:

Comment: The public bureaucracy keeps on expanding, from 13 ministries in 1999 to 27 after today????????s announcement.

We expect the current heterodox/interventionist policy approach to continue unabated over the next few years.

Chavez and Venezuela’s cabinet, with now ex-vice president Jose Vissarionovich Rangel at the center, at a cabinet presentation ceremony today, where Chavez made his pronunciamentos.
Source: Agencia EFE