#*how are you going to keep the equivalent to a god entertained and enriched | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

mastcomm · 5 years ago

Text

Venezuela’s Capital is Booming. Is This the End of the Revolution?

CARACAS, Venezuela — Swaying to the D.J. and sipping cocktails on the open terrace of a mountain side bar, a party of private-school teenagers in Prada sneakers and Chanel bags looked down over the shantytowns of Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, spread over the valley below.

On the poorer outskirts of the city, residents continue to struggle with water shortages and malnutrition. And in the countryside beyond, Venezuela is falling apart, with residents lacking even the most basic services, like electricity and the police.

But the wealthier areas dotting the capital have undergone a striking economic boom in recent months.

Shopping malls that were deserted six months ago are bustling, and imported SUVs course through the streets. New restaurants and bars are popping up weekly in the wealthier parts of town, their tables packed with foreign businessmen, fashionable locals and government insiders.

“The people are tired of getting by,” said Raul Anzola, the manager of the 1956 Lounge & Bar, which hosted the party. “They want to spend, they want to live.”

Almost overnight, the country’s authoritarian leader, Nicolás Maduro, has made that possible — for some.

With the country’s economy derailed by years of mismanagement and corruption, then pushed to the brink of collapse by American sanctions, Mr. Maduro was forced to relax the economic restraints that once defined his socialist government and provided the foundation for his political legitimacy.

The changes have helped transform Venezuela in ways few in Washington or Caracas had envisioned, but that are reminiscent of how its allies, Cuba and Nicaragua, relaxed Communist policies and allowed some private investment when faced with economic collapse in previous decades.

After years of nationalizing businesses, determining the exchange rate and setting the price of basic goods — measures that have long contributed to chronic shortages — Mr. Maduro seems to have made peace with the private sector and let it loose. And while the country’s economy continues to contract overall, the declining regulations have encouraged companies serving the wealthy or the export market to invest again.

Dollars are now accepted everywhere, despite Mr. Maduro’s frequent denouncing of the United States as the root of all of Venezuela’s problems. The country’s currency, the bolívar, made worthless by hyperinflation, is hard to find.

“I don’t see it badly, this process they call dollarization,” Mr. Maduro said in a television interview in December, referring to the free circulation of dollars. “Thank God it exists.”

Seeing shelves stocked again has also helped ease tensions in the capital, where anger over the lack of basic necessities has, over the years, helped fuel mass protests.

Under the new economy, Mr. Maduro’s supporters among the Venezuelan elite are living handsomely on business deals and stashes of hard currency, which American sanctions prevented them from spending abroad. At the 1956 Lounge, the teenagers and their parents sipped champagne and discussed coming yacht trips.

The transformation also brought some relief to the millions of Venezuelans who have family abroad and can now receive, and spend, their dollar remittances on imported food.

But the boom has also come at a cost.

The new free market economy completely excludes the half of Venezuelans without access to dollars. This exacerbated inequality, that most capitalist of ills, and undercut Mr. Maduro’s claim of preserving the legacy of greater social equality left by his predecessor, Hugo Chávez, and his “Bolivarian Revolution.”

In his speeches, Mr. Maduro continues to promote a vision of Venezuela in which its resources are shared by all, but the gap between the rhetoric and the reality is greater than ever, said Ramiro Molino, an economist at Caracas’s Andrés Bello Catholic University.

“The fight for survival has forced the government to become pragmatic,” Mr. Molino said. “Only the narrative is still socialist.”

Even some members of the ruling party called the changes under Mr. Maduro a betrayal of Mr. Chávez’s Socialist-inspired movement and its stated mission to help the poor.

“This is savage capitalism that erases years of struggle,” said Elias Jaua, Mr. Chávez’s former vice president, who still sits on the board of Mr. Maduro’s Socialist Party.

Oil production, the country’s biggest source of funds, is stabilizing after falling to the lowest levels since the 1940s as Mr. Maduro relaxed the state’s grip on the sector and embraced private investment.

But instead of continuing the lavish public spending that marked the Chávez era, there have been deep cuts to social programs. Venezuela’s government spending dropped 25 percent last year, according to Caracas-based consultancy Ecoanalítica.

The drastic economic liberalization has been accompanied by political repression designed to snuff out the last vestiges of organized opposition to Mr. Maduro’s rule. This new model has led some Venezuelans to call their country the “tropical China.”

In a sign of newfound market confidence, about 100 Venezuelan companies have applied to issue new bonds in 2019, the highest figure in a decade. The country’s biggest rum producer, Ron Santa Teresa, last week completed the country’s first new issue of shares on the local stock exchange in 11 years.

The government has slashed red tape and turned a blind eye to taxation, fueling a boom in private exports of everything from oil to chocolate, enriching the politically connected and traditional business elites.

Imports by private companies overtook those done by the state for the first time in Venezuela’s modern history last year, according to Mr. Molino, the economist.

“There’s a lot of money going around at the moment, you just need to know how to find it,” Zairet López, an accountant, said recently at a packed music festival in Caracas, which charged a $70 entry fee, or the equivalent of 14 months’ worth of the country’s minimum salary.

The open-air festival, featuring Venezuela’s top émigré bands, $12 hamburgers and artisanal beer, was one of the myriad entertainment events that have blossomed around the once gloomy capital in recent months.

The economic opening has had a starkly unequal impact on Venezuelans.

Well-connected officials and military officers have benefited from a plethora of new business opportunities and government concessions in everything from gold mining to beach hotels. By reducing access to foreign travel and banking, the sanctions have also forced these elites to spend at home, boosting domestic luxury consumption.

Tired of waiting for political change, the upper and middle classes opposed to Mr. Maduro have tapped into the foreign savings set aside during Venezuela’s oil bonanza of the 2000s, when the government gave citizens billions of dollars at highly subsidized exchange rates.

Venezuelans held abroad deposits worth $136 billion in 2018, according to the country’s Central Bank. Even if divided evenly among Venezuelans, this figure equals $4,500 a person. But a few Venezuelans held much more than that.

Those lower down the social scale rely increasingly on money sent by the millions of Venezuelans who have emigrated in recent years to survive. About 40 percent of Venezuelan households receive money from abroad — a total of about $3.5 billion a year, which has become crucial to keeping Venezuela’s economy afloat, according to Mr. Molina, the economist.

“The government has been able to achieve the effect of plenty, and it’s very powerful,” said Félix Seijas, director of the Caracas-based pollster Delphos. “It brings a certain relief that helps to lower the social tension.”

But about half of all Venezuelans have no access to dollars. Most of them live in the provinces, where they barely survive on government handouts of devalued local currency and subsidized food, according to Delphos. Much of that food is imported or packaged by the private companies once derided by Mr. Maduro as coup-mongers and parasites.

And while the stocked shops and busy restaurants have improved the mood in the capital for some, after years of unrelenting economic decline, they have not turned around the country’s overall economic prospects.

Venezuela’s gross domestic product is expected to lose another 10 percent this year after shrinking by more than two thirds since 2013, the largest decline in modern history outside a war zone, according to the International Monetary Fund.

About 80 percent of Venezuelans think they are worse off or the same now as a year ago, according to Delphos. And while the government’s economic changes have lowered the incentive for demonstrations, at least in the capital, almost two out of three Venezuelans said they would protest, if conditions were right.

“The discontent has gone latent, but it hasn’t gone away,” Mr. Seijas said.

For most Venezuelans, Mr. Maduro’s reforms have brought only marginal relief from the economic devastation of recent years.

Mariely Marin, 30, sells cotton candy in a square in downtown Caracas. She makes $2 a day, barely enough to buy food and insufficient to treat a respiratory illness that recently cost her a lung.

“This is a way to cover up the reality,” she said of the throngs of people taking selfies on the lit-up square lined with street sellers hawking popcorn and sweets. “Those who have known another Venezuela understand that things are not well. It’s obvious that the crisis continues.”

from WordPress https://mastcomm.com/venezuelas-capital-is-booming-is-this-the-end-of-the-revolution/

#Event

0 notes

athome-businessideas · 8 years ago

Text

Former Detroit CEO Finds Vulnerability – and Fine-tunes His Business Savvy – in Tribal Papua New Guinea

When John Quinlan’s publicly traded company failed in 1985 his employees were hurt and his friends scattered. His marriage soon dissolved, removing his young stepdaughter from his life. With the need to withdraw from the public humiliation as well as to mend his heart, Quinlan set out on a quest that took him to places few have traveled, or even imagined.

“The ‘Tau Bada’ tale I’m about to share is not simply an achievement or an outcome, or a recipe for the attainment of goals and self-improvement, or even a romantic happy ending. It is about the quiet transitions to real courage and the soul milieu that connects and binds us as mutual occupants of a shared planet.”

Thus begins Quinlan’s book Tau Bada, The Quest and Memoir of a Vulnerable Man. Tau Bada means “big white man,” which is what Quinlan is when he meets up with the tribes of Papua New Guinea’s Oro Province, north of Australia.

Realizing his relationships are shallow and that he doesn’t really know himself – or like what he knows – Quinlan leaves his posh lifestyle in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, to travel across the US on his motorcycle on a personal trek to self-discovery. Out west, he meets and falls for Fiona Delaney, a Papua New Guinea native who is working with a group of girls with disabilities. The instant bond with her is so strong that, in Quinlan’s words, “It’s like magic.”

Low-Cost Home-Based Businesses – Visit the Home Biz Mag EXPO

Following his heart, John and Fiona, who eventually marry, travel through the South Pacificdetermined to create a sustainable livelihood business, since Fiona’s visa was no longer valid for the US. They make an attempt at a fishing business before settling on coffeeexporting in Papua New Guinea. There, Quinlan uses his expertise as a businessman to pull together over 2400 people from numerous different tribes to form a business focused oncoffee collection, processing, logistics and export. What he doesn’t count on are the culturaldifferences or the aura of fear and mistrust that surround some of the tribes regarding this “big white man”, as well as each other. Or – closer to home – the greed and vengeance that are apparently equivalent across the globe,whether in a boardroom in Grosse Pointe, Michigan or a tribal hut in the PNG mountains.

Fiona, a strong partner in both business and life, proves to be the rock John thought she was when he first met her. Her resiliency givesher the titles of “The Woman Who Would Not Be Shot” and for her outspokenness as a businesswoman, she is called “The Man in a Woman’s Body” by the tribes people where they worked in Papua New Guinea.

Michigan-born author John E Quinlan makes his literary debut with a book so fascinating on every level that he calls up the spirit of adventure in all of us while at the same time carrying the standard for being genuine and trusting of ourselves and authentic with others.–Grady Harp, Amazon Top 100 Hall of Fame Reviewer

Fraught with intrigue, danger, humor and of course, the power of love, Quinlan’s book is both a philosophical look at his inner man, and a page-turning adventure as they are shot at, participate in a tribal ritual to wipe a curse from their village, and fall at the hands of betrayal, sabotage, and even attempted murder. (All of this happens over the seven years he and Fiona run their businesses in the South Pacific, while Quinlan still keeps a finger in the corporate world in the U.S)

Quinlan, now an organization development specialist and the owner and CEO of Growth Strategies Global LLC in the United States,uses his 30 years of consulting experience to advise business owners, specializing in family-founded and closely held businesses.

“The world does not count mishaps or misfortunes, no matter how much you contributed,” says Quinlan. “It makes you feel foolish for contributing, for being vulnerable.” And yet being vulnerable is exactly what Quinlan works on with individuals when he consults.

“I find it fascinating to go into their inner sanctum where they can drop their guard and be real with me,” says Quinlan. “Then I can shift it to business practices. What do you want to talk about? Customer relations?”

Once employers and their employees are ready to open up, show their vulnerabilities, and discuss what it is they really want for their company, then Quinlan moves on to the logistical aspects of work. Some of his current clients include: Harvey Hohauser & Associates; Tarus Products; McClures Pickles and Merlo Constructions.

When asked if he has any regrets about his life’s journey, Quinlan replies, “I’m feeling distinguished. It was worth it. It was well worth it. It has enriched my life and individuated me to a higher degree.”

He is once again thriving, and although he is back at the top of his game, he says he will never be that same shallow man who started off on his motorcycle back after his first fall. His heart has changed, and whether in business or in life, he strives to remain vulnerable.

Tau Bada: The Quest and Memoir of a Vulnerable Man (ISBN 978-1-63413-956-4, 2016), MCP Books, paperback, 333 pages, available at Amazon, Barnes & Nobel and the author’s website: http://www.TauBada.com. View the book trailer here: http://bit.ly/TauBadaBookTrailer.

Excerpts Tau Bada

The “Tau Bada” tale I’m about to share is not simply an achievement or an outcome, or a recipe for the attainment of goals and self-improvement, or even a romantic happy ending. It is about the quiet transitions to real courage and the soul milieu that connects and binds us as mutual occupants of a shared planet.

The ceremony was perfunctory in most respects. But his opening remarks were quite entertaining. “My friends, as we gather here today to see the first white people ever to be married in our village, let us not forget not too long ago we would not be marrying them, we would be eating them,” he said. The congregation said: “Amen.” Fiona and I responded: “Amen.”

Had all of this work and progress been thrown away by one person’s desire for personal gain, and was that possibly condoned by the community at large? … I felt compelled to confront this culture of stealing and demonstrate the morality of transparency.

In all directions, wheat fields are stretching out as far as I can see. This is the “beauty road” attested to by our own Native Americans. I just left South Dakota, riding over a bridge into Wyoming, peering down on the Missouri River. I enter the Standing Rock Indian reservation. On a bluff, I gaze at the road just traveled. I am in sync. My inward man and outward man are one.

Whether it is a PNG sorcerer/chief casting or supporting fear-ridden spells or a Western corporate CEO or politician implementing marketing strategies, the results are similar. Well-constructed cultural fortresses are nearly impossible to penetrate. Leadership’s defensive routines and behaviors are intransigent.

Brusquely, the vehicle veered to the center as an object loudly and forcibly hit the Land Cruiser. Fiona screeched. To our left, five hooded men, three of them armed with what looked like spears, lunged out of the bush and pumped cartridges from rifles at our vehicle.

Fiona is now known as the woman who would not be shot. They are at loss to explain how she could be as powerful and invincible as a man.

The highway behind gives me courage to move into the future. I desire to see the first light of tomorrow.

The quotes below from the book are highly representative.

The cowboy, leaning over his horse, asked the bartender for a six-pack of beer. I turned around and looked up and said, “I would like to buy you and your horse a drink.” He said no thank you … turned around and rode out. … A patron informed me that I had just met the “Zen cowboy.” … With one fluttering upper tooth, he stuttered out a Buddhist koan uttered by the Zen cowboy. He said: “It is what it is. It ain’t what it ain’t. Never say never. Let it go.” … This would stick with me during frequent squalls and a few storms over the course of coming years.

The lure of the future was more powerful than the fear of the present.

To my right was a pretty woman with blonde braids, milky-blue eyes, and a tender and engaging smile that sprang from a soft, beautiful pale face. I liked the strength in her look. … I grabbed her attention. She quickly remarked: “… I’m Fiona Delaney, from Papua New Guinea.” My response was automatic: “Papa what?”

I started my first diary at the age of 10. I don’t think it can ever be completed.

Self-importance and the illusion of invincibility eventually ended my reign as chairman and CEO of a publicly traded company. I failed my organization deeply, hurting employees and shareholders alike. … Truthfully, I evolved into an asshole. Many of my friends disappeared as the king’s castle collapsed. Such insights were mortifyingly obvious.

Fear is viral and has few boundaries. From the Potomac River think tankers to a microdot island village in the Solomon Sea, we are interconnected.

I wanted to enter into the mind of God in order to reach a higher consciousness and a consequent new way of being. Like a wrestling match, this can be a dirty, sweaty and smelly affair; I gained glimpses of my core rot in secret places.

We carried the roasted coffee beans back to the village of Tabuane. The orchestrated villages’ sing-sing would be lifted to a new level of energy by a caffeine buzz never before experienced. They would taste and drink their coffee for the first time since planting began in 1963.

To my right and then quickly to the left, two warriors jumped out from behind the welcome committee, thrusting spears at my feet to signify I was welcomed. Highly stimulated, my response was typical. I almost crapped in my pants. Fiona reassured me by saying, “Everything is fine darling. The closer the spears the more you are hailed.”

The take I am talking about is a legal buyout and corruption of one’s soul. It is an inner larceny I am referring to. Sucking up to power is part of the game. … You become part of the system you were ordained, elected or hired to change.

We never conceived the community where we were helping to build a sustainable business would become jealous enough to erupt…

The emotional healing has been an evolvement where we are feeling almost whole. The financial ruin is still a challenge. … Even more disconcerting was to conjecture that equal love for the most part is a figment of my imagination.

Fear is a powerful conditioner and has little regard for honest conversations with oneself. Fear is the master builder. Until the threshold of pain becomes greater than the fear to change, I remain in a buoyant state.

A sardonic grin materialized in my passenger window reflection. Times had changed since those hard-charging days, and I had paid a steep price. Self-importance and the illusion of invincibility eventually ended my reign as chairman and CEO of a publicly trade company. I failed my organization deeply, hurting employees and shareholders alike. Truthfully, I had evolved into an asshole. Many of my friends disappeared as the king’s castle collapsed. Such insights were now mortifyingly obvious.

Fiona and I must have looked like any typical motorcycling couple, out for a simple pleasure ride, but, unexpectedly, I noticed tears running down my cheeks. I glanced into my left-hand mirror and saw that she was crying too. I realized we were unexplainably connected, and I felt really good…It was magic.

We were holding hands as we walked down the coffee-garden path to our home. I glanced up as a military truck pulled up. At least a dozen uniformed men with automatic rifles piled out. The sudden pandemonium, screams, wailing, and sense of fear were overwhelming. These militant “pigs” took over the village. We were stunned – like an avalanche or tsunami stunned. We were ill prepared for such an event. Survival skills for such a mishap were not a priority.

I did not feel courageous. I felt like crapping my pants. I was, at that moment, empathetically extending myself by not redirecting the truck back down the Kweno Mountain road. The vehicle veered to the left and missed a significant bog. The headlights erratically fell onto the faces of one hundred villagers. Standing in the dark and mist with the stoicism of granite statues, they had been waiting in silence for Fiona and me to arrive. The rain began to fall harder.

A series of out-of-body experiences (OBE) unfolded in the span of two weeks after I landed in Detroit, confirming my insanities.

About John E. Quinlan

John E. Quinlan is the founder and CEO of Growth Strategies Global LLC, an organization development consulting firm that specializes in family-founded and closely held businesses, as well as executive development, organizational change management and strategic planning.

Formerly, Quinlan was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of a publicly traded financial services holding company. Between 1972 and 1985 he guided this organization from inception to 300 employees and $430 million in assets, and with 28 offices in 14 states.

He’s been a leadership/CEO coach and a management consultant in the United States, and owned a fishing business in the South Pacific. He also owned Java Mama, a Certified Organic & Rainforest Alliance export coffee company in Papua New Guinea where he ran a cross-cultural business with neighboring tribes.

The seven years he spent with the Papua New Guinea business rose from the search for a different kind of life. After the humiliation of losing his publicly traded company in 1985, Quinlan began a motorcycle trek through the United States – a quest for self-discovery that led him to realize that vulnerability and honesty are the foundations for a strong character. Pulling from his experience of the past 40 years, Quinlan has written the book Tau Bada: The Quest and Memoir of a Vulnerable Man. The experiences he writes about are what give him the strategies he uses today that make him so effective as a consultant. Quinlan incorporates a strong behavioral science approach to his work, allowing him to operate from a unique philosophy that has shown proven success across the board.

His consulting experiences include: Former Governor Buddy Rhoemer of Louisiana, F. X. Coughlin Co., Acorn Windows, Cadillac Coffee, McMillan Bros, Industrial Radiant, Inc., Panell Kerr Forster, BDO Siedman, Broad Voght & Conant, Comerica, Vistage, formerly The Executive Committee (TEC) International Display Producers, Gail & Rice, Cox Hodgeman & Giarmarco, Central Detroit Warehouse, Office Pavilion Inc., Great Lakes Woodworking, Michigan Seat Company, Engineering Services Group, Inc., Detroit Art Services, C.A. Muer Company.

As the lead change consultant working with Detroit Mayor Dennis M. Archer and Freeman Hendrix, Chief of Staff, Mr. Quinlan developed the first Integrated Values Based Change Strategy Plan for the City of Detroit, encompassing 43 departments and 19,000 employees.

John Quinlan holds a BA degree in Economics from Albion College, Albion, Michigan and a Master of Science degree in Organizational Development (MSOD) from the American University, Washington, D.C. where he graduated “with distinction” for his written comps in 1990.

Married to Fiona, he has three stepdaughters and resides in Grosse Pointe, Michigan and Cairns, Australia.

The post Former Detroit CEO Finds Vulnerability – and Fine-tunes His Business Savvy – in Tribal Papua New Guinea appeared first on Home Business Magazine.

from Home Business Magazine http://ift.tt/2iw1XoS via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Home Business Magazine