Guest Post by Simon Black
This weekend, British billionaire Richard Branson hosted a concert on the Colombian side of the Colombian-Venezuelan border.
Branson was trying to raise $100 million to help the living conditions of the millions of Venezuelans affected by the dictatorship of its president, Nicolas Maduro.
Gross economic mismanagement has led the country to the brink of collapse. The situation is so bad in Venezuela that three million people left in the past three years alone.
But Nicolas Maduro, who decries international aid as “American imperialism,” shut the border to prevent any food or medicine from entering the country.
So in good dictator fashion, Maduro went about organizing his own border festival.
But if he manages events like he manages the economy, we don’t have a lot of faith in Maduro’s ability to throw a good party…
Under his rule, and that of his predecessor, Venezuela went from the richest country in Latin America to a complete disaster.
In 2018 alone, the Venezuelan economy shrank by 18% and inflation reached a million percent.
We think Venezuela is a clear example of what happens when a country falls into the hands of socialism.
Central planning always fails– there is no way a small bunch of bureaucrats can know what millions of people need and desire at any point in time.
Venezuela clearly needs drastic change.
And while we wait for the regime of Nicolas Maduro to crumble, Venezuela is a becoming a blood-in-the-streets, chaos opportunity.
(It’s clearly too much chaos; I just postponed my planned trip to Caracas later this week after our law firm there advised that it would be ‘exceedingly difficult’ to enter the country given the border fiasco.)
Because of the government’s gross mismanagement of its state affairs, the economy is in shambles and some things, like land and property, are quite cheap.
I’ve been in touch over the last few weeks with brokers and lawyers in the country combing over distressed assets.
One asset class in particular that’s interesting is partially completed buildings. This would be a case where a real estate developer started construction on, say, an office building… but then fled the country when the building was 80% complete.
Now the bank (or some other entity) takes over the building and needs to flip it to another developer. But there are few takers.
That, combined with the fact that Venezuela’s financial system is in desperate need of hard currency, foreign investors can pick up those partially-completed property deals for almost nothing.
I’m going to wait for things to calm down a bit in Venezuela before I look to invest…
But there’s plenty of investment potential on the other side of the border…
For 60 years, Colombia was ravaged by a civil war that saw billionaire drug lords and the FARC guerilla group cripple the government and render private and public investment in the country virtually impossible.
But in 2016, Colombia signed a peace agreement with the FARC to end the civil war. Besides a small number of “shadow narcos” – drug traffickers hiding from public sight – the age of the powerful drug cartels have all but disappeared.
The government is wasting no time to catch up on its massive lack of infrastructure investment and is building more than 8,000 miles of roads and highways, along with ports and airports.
But Colombia hasn’t yet seen a massive influx of foreign investment, so the country remains deeply undervalued… for now.
Prices around the country have started picking up, and foreign investors have begun to notice Colombia (like Norway’s $1 trillion sovereign wealth fund, the largest in the world, that started investing in Colombia in 2016).
I tend to invest in assets around the world that provide me with a huge margin of safety, should things go wrong.
Colombia is one of those places.
Property in Medellin and Cali often sells for less than the cost of construction. And land is ridiculously cheap.
And while we didn’t invest in real estate, Sovereign Man Private Investor members have already reaped enormous gains in Colombia…
In mid-2016, we invested in a small, private business in Colombia.
It went public last month, earning our subscribers over $100 million dollars.
But the truth is, investing in these private deals can often be complicated. You’ve got to get your boots on the ground, analyze deals and do tons of due diligence.
It’s a mountain work that if done well, can be incredibly lucrative. But it’s not for everybody.
There are always other ways to buy extremely undervalued assets around the world without getting on a plane… you don’t even have to leave your living room.
You’ve just got to put in the work to find undervalued securities on exchanged all over the world.
For example, we’ve found an incredibly easy way to buy some of the best-known companies in the world at huge discounts to their market value.
Our Chief Investment Strategist, Tim Staermose, who pens The 4th Pillar, discovered a little-known security that gives you access to blue chip stocks at a 26% discount to where they trade on public markets today.
And while many of Tim’s recommendations are on exchanges in Asia or New Zealand, this particular stock trades on the New York Stock Exchange.
It’s incredibly easy to access.
If you’re already a 4th Pillar Subscriber, you can get the report here…
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)
Great piece that pushes the CIA agenda to regime change Venezuela. Perhaps the economic struggle wouldn’t be nearly as severe if the country wasn’t being sanctioned out of existence. No one mentions the fact that sovereign nations are supposed to be just that: Sovereign, and not subject to the whim of a far more powerful nation that has designs on its abundant resources. Another formerly democratically elected President now awaits his Ghaddafi-like fate, courtesy of good ol’ Uncle Sam. What a great bunch of guys that are shedding crocodile tears and hand-wringing over the fate of the poor Venezuelan people. What a crock.
Exactly, the narrative here with Simon Black which TBP loves so much is that somehow it comes down to a capitalism VS. socialism argument when neither have anything to do with why the U.S. really wants to subdue Venezuela. It’s is to gain control of it’s vast resources through the barrel of a gun (which is theft by definition) and then calling it capitalism when they do it. No different than if I rob you on the street at gunpoint and then I call it capitalism instead of theft. It is obvious that Mobile, Halliburton, Shell, BP, etc. are not capitalist institutions. They are socialist institutions. Socialism is getting something for nothing. They get something for nothing via theft from others with the full support of the hired guns via the U.S. military.
It’s a Hegelian Dialectic. After attacking Venezuela economically, Donald Trump sends them aid and is preparing a military intervention against that country,”. They wouldn’t need the aid if the economic sanctions had not been placed on them in the first place. How fucked up is that? It’s a war of oil plunder in the waiting to enrich U.S. corporations with the windfall profits of oil revenue and geostrategic realigning of energy resources. The agents of the New World Order have been doing this in the Middle East all the while. As a matter of fact try to name a country that the U.S. has not attacked that did not have oil or mineral resources?
An asinine comment like that will get you a tongue bath at CommonDreams.
Prove the content wrong pussy.
“there is no way a small bunch of bureaucrats can know what millions of people need and desire at any point in time.”
Sounds like the USA.
Except with the USA it’s Billions.
“CNN was ridiculed recently (Redacted Tonight, 2/1/19) when it carried a report on Venezuela, “in the socialist utopia that now leaves virtually every stomach empty,” followed immediately with a cut to a demonstration by the right-wing opposition, where everybody appeared to be quite well-fed.
But surely that’s because most of the anti-government demonstrators were upper-middle class, a viewer might think. The proletarians at pro-government demonstrations must be suffering severe hunger.
Not if one consults photos of the massive pro-government demonstration on February 2, where people seemed to be doing pretty well. This is in spite of the Trump administration’s extreme economic squeeze on the country, reminiscent of the “make the economy scream” strategy used by the Nixon administration and the CIA against the democratic government of President Salvador Allende in Chile, as well as many other democratically elected governments.”
I might be slightly more inclined to believe this narrative if Bolton and Abrams weren’t the ones running this shit-show.
Abrams is a criminal felon and Bolton is a chickenhawk. But that doesn’t bother Simon Asshole Black. He just has to spin a tale with a capitalism VS. socialism false dichotomy. Which has nothing to do with U.S. meddling in Venezuela at all. Pure propaganda.
Trumps UN speech:
“That is why America will always choose independence and cooperation over global governance, control, and domination,” Trump said. “I honor the right of every nation in this room to pursue its own customs, beliefs, and traditions. The United States will not tell you how to live or work or worship. We only ask that you honor our sovereignty in return.”
Sovereignty for me but not for thee! ~ Donald Trump
I thought Simon Black was considered to be alternative media? Everything in this article is a regurgitation of main stream medias narratives. If TBP is alternative media, then why would they too quote main stream media or Simon Black like it was the holy bible? Something is a miss here.
Humanitarian crisis? Why? Because the Jewish controlled media in AmeriKa said so.
Where are the ‘empty shelves’? Max Blumenthal tours Caracas supermarket
That klown in the Potemkin Village grocery store forgot to mention that those readily available items each cost more than what the average worker earns in a month.
That’s what Sanctions does. It hurts people not government. But the MSM AmeriKa says also that food shelves are empty.
https://www.alternet.org/2017/11/trump-doubles-down-sanctions-and-regime-change-venezuela/
Venezuela refuses to become the 68th sovereign government overthrown by America
https://www.sott.net/article/408041-Venezuela-refuses-to-become-the-68th-sovereign-government-overthrown-by-America
I make $87h while I’m traveling the world. Last week I worked by my laptop in Rome, Monti Carlo and finally Paris. This week I’m back in the USA. All I do are easy tasks from this one cool site. check it out, ►► https://bit.ly/2I4T8R7
If you get some free time, why not try shoving that laptop up your ass?