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Currency Exchange Website Accused of Cyber Terrorism By Venezuelan Government (arstechnica.com)
braindrainbahrain writes: A U.S.-based website that covers the unofficial exchange rate between the U.S. dollar and the Bolivar, the Venezuelan currency, has been accused of cyber terrorism in a civil complaint. Venezuela, suffering from ever increasing inflation, maintains very tight controls on currency exchange, and accuses the website operators of racketeering and conspiracy. In an earlier speech, Venezuelan President Nicola Maduro stated he would ask the President of the United States to hunt down the operators of the DT Site and extradite them to Venezuela to be tried as criminals.
The coverage I've seen of this today has emphasised that the Venezuelan Government's filing has essentially no chance whatsoever of success. That's undoubtedly true, but I suspect it misses the point.
This is unlikely to be about the law, or even about an attempt to stifle the website in question. Rather, it's likely to be gesture politics aimed at a domestic audience. Maduro, like Chavez before him, keeps his political base motivated by constructing elaborate theories to show that almost the entire world (and particularly the US) is conspiring against them. The sense of victimhood and isolation this creates is a useful political tool.
When this filing is rejected (likely at the first hurdle) it becomes another piece of "evidence" that the US is seeking to destroy Venezuela.
This is from a man who thinks capitalism is terrorism.
Nicolas Maduro is insanely angry that his political party got heaved out of office in the recent elections, and he's going to be heaved out too, as soon as it's legally possible. Venezuela's shitty governance isn't quite fixed yet, but it's well on the way... and Maduro's already begun his transformation into a salt golem.
1985? Check your code for an off-by-one error. Or is it like a new version; 1984++ or something?
To win a Nobel prize in economics today a person needs to have no idea about real economics and instead he needs to support the idiotic Keynesian ideas that let the governments do what they want to do anyway: print paper money and pretend that central planning is what builds the economy. In the beginning of 20th century USA had under 20 formal economists and a sound economy. Today USA has tens of thousands of 'economists' and a shadow of its former economic power.
You can't handle the truth.
Fantasy and wish-fulfillment have always been a hallmark of the science of Economics. And bad math. Some of the biggest names in Economics (Milton Friedman, Keynes, etc) are basically just self-justifying cheerleaders.
Economics is a softer science than parapsychology. I'm not exaggerating, either. If you find the few people who are doing parapsychology research at major institutions, you'll find that they're much more rigorous than they have to be, because of their bad reputation. Economists, on the other hand, especially the ones who sit in named chairs, mainly exist to advocate for their pet systems. And their math is pretty unimpressive when you dig down.
You are welcome on my lawn.
While I understand the charges are likely based on political paranoia within Venezuela's government and a desire to find a scapegoat for their financial issues, how could a website that merely reports an exchange rate (the site in question appears to be a news site and not an actual currency exchange) be guilty of racketeering? If the exchange rate was wrong, no one would use them as a reliable source of information in the first place. This would be like trying to charge the New York Times with securities fraud because they report stock prices.