it's very interesting that la geo will be issuing the volcano bonds for various reasons and seeing how corrupt the president of el salvador, his government and his ruling party are it becomes possible to pinpoint what their ultimate aim really is. la geo is one of the few successful state companies in el salvador because it turns in a profit of several millions annually, even though it is a small and limited company at the scale and standards of el salvador it is a true hen of the golden eggs. that said, we should look back at the recent history of this company from around the year 2002 and all the political and legal controversies it generated from its relationship to the italian company ENEL. the case was well documented about 8 years ago and it was called the "CEL-ENEL" case that saw arbitration, law suits and other civil disputes in different courts of law. but the bottom line was the covert attempt to privatize la geo because, well, it turns in significant profits for salvadoran standards. my suspision is that the bukele mafia will use all their power and influence, not to lead the country towards the path of development, but rather simply to emerge as a new, dominant economic group that can carve itself a place in the table of the true economic rulers of the country, the traditional oligarchs or "factic powers" like bukele used to call them when he was a presidential candidate and to which he has not made any mention of since he won the elections. the dynamics of current salvadoran politics point to rivalries and power struggles among the different economic groups. bukele is the face of a palestinian origin group that is transitioning from services and retail to invest heavily in power generation and energy technologies and their natural adversaries are another palestinian group headed by the siman family who has traditionally represented the industrial sector of the economy. bukele and his mafia have not shyed away from using all their political muscle to bully anyone who poses any contradiction to their manipulative agenda to run the system as they please; but being the thugs that they really are they will just flat out steal and rob the country to continue to amass wealth and power. you can look how they handled the 3 billion emergency fund to deal with the pandemic two years ago, for example. so my thesis is that the volcano bonds will be used as a decoy for the bukele mafia to privatize la geo and land it straight into their portfolio of power generating and energy production ventures already in place. the strategy is simple: use ifinex to print valueless tethers for 1 billion to buy the bonds, then default on the bonds, send the case to arbitration where la geo will be handed over as collateral and strip the state away from one of its most successful and profitable public companies. that's the scheme that has always worked in el salvador by previous privatizer governments. and just to show how salvadoran businessmen have seen CEL, the state company that owns la geo, as an ideal cash register to grab cash directly from...ex president funes appointed nicolas salume as president of cel during his time in office as a way to repay a 2 million personal loan to salume's father during his presidential campaign.
Frank, there's a piece in this story that I think you've forgotten or were not aware of. Samson Mow, perhaps one of the creators of the volcano bond idea (bitcoin bond architect as he calls himself), offered Blockstream to issue the volcano bond using the liquid network. However, a couple of weeks ago, Mow left blockstream to spend more time on the nation-states bitcoin adoption BullS*&$ (https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/03/01/samson-mow-exits-blockstream-to-focus-on-nation-state-bitcoin-adoption/) according to himself. I wonder though whether Samson's Blockstream leave was related to the bond issuance, and what would be the implications of such move to the bond release. What are your thoughts about this?
Another interesting thing to think about is that Bukele's administration is urgently in need of funds. That means that the money raised by the bonds is actually needed to pay debt that is about to expire. To give you an idea, the debt service is a yearly bill of 1.2 billions; the treasury bonds (LETES and CETES) expiring this year (360 days short therm debt) accounts for 2.6 billion; and 800 million euro bond expiring in january 2023, not without mentioning a deficit budget of about 1.8 billion dollars. Shortly, Bukele needs resources desperately to roll over all those debts. The question is, how could Bukele buy bitcoins and fund bitcoin city with the 1 billion bond and pay back expiring debt at the same time?
And, just adding on top of Oscar Salguero comments, LaGeo is "a sort of" private institution funded with public money. As a private institution they're not obliged to make their operations transparent, that's why Chivo and Diario El Salvador where created using LaGeo as a sort of umbrella company. But if you think that LaGeo is the only company that Bukele is using to undercover his shady moves, last december another debt issuance was approved by Congress for the amount of 1.6 billion using two "autonomas", ANDA and Fovial, alegedly to raise funds for infraestructure investments (https://www.laprensagrafica.com/elsalvador/Ejecutivo-pide-titularizaciones-por-1600-millones-en-FOVIAL-y-ANDA-20211130-0085.html), both companies operation would be compromised by the issuance of those domestic bonds.
Doesn’t LaGeo know that bonds are the business of money printers? SMH
it's very interesting that la geo will be issuing the volcano bonds for various reasons and seeing how corrupt the president of el salvador, his government and his ruling party are it becomes possible to pinpoint what their ultimate aim really is. la geo is one of the few successful state companies in el salvador because it turns in a profit of several millions annually, even though it is a small and limited company at the scale and standards of el salvador it is a true hen of the golden eggs. that said, we should look back at the recent history of this company from around the year 2002 and all the political and legal controversies it generated from its relationship to the italian company ENEL. the case was well documented about 8 years ago and it was called the "CEL-ENEL" case that saw arbitration, law suits and other civil disputes in different courts of law. but the bottom line was the covert attempt to privatize la geo because, well, it turns in significant profits for salvadoran standards. my suspision is that the bukele mafia will use all their power and influence, not to lead the country towards the path of development, but rather simply to emerge as a new, dominant economic group that can carve itself a place in the table of the true economic rulers of the country, the traditional oligarchs or "factic powers" like bukele used to call them when he was a presidential candidate and to which he has not made any mention of since he won the elections. the dynamics of current salvadoran politics point to rivalries and power struggles among the different economic groups. bukele is the face of a palestinian origin group that is transitioning from services and retail to invest heavily in power generation and energy technologies and their natural adversaries are another palestinian group headed by the siman family who has traditionally represented the industrial sector of the economy. bukele and his mafia have not shyed away from using all their political muscle to bully anyone who poses any contradiction to their manipulative agenda to run the system as they please; but being the thugs that they really are they will just flat out steal and rob the country to continue to amass wealth and power. you can look how they handled the 3 billion emergency fund to deal with the pandemic two years ago, for example. so my thesis is that the volcano bonds will be used as a decoy for the bukele mafia to privatize la geo and land it straight into their portfolio of power generating and energy production ventures already in place. the strategy is simple: use ifinex to print valueless tethers for 1 billion to buy the bonds, then default on the bonds, send the case to arbitration where la geo will be handed over as collateral and strip the state away from one of its most successful and profitable public companies. that's the scheme that has always worked in el salvador by previous privatizer governments. and just to show how salvadoran businessmen have seen CEL, the state company that owns la geo, as an ideal cash register to grab cash directly from...ex president funes appointed nicolas salume as president of cel during his time in office as a way to repay a 2 million personal loan to salume's father during his presidential campaign.
Frank, there's a piece in this story that I think you've forgotten or were not aware of. Samson Mow, perhaps one of the creators of the volcano bond idea (bitcoin bond architect as he calls himself), offered Blockstream to issue the volcano bond using the liquid network. However, a couple of weeks ago, Mow left blockstream to spend more time on the nation-states bitcoin adoption BullS*&$ (https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/03/01/samson-mow-exits-blockstream-to-focus-on-nation-state-bitcoin-adoption/) according to himself. I wonder though whether Samson's Blockstream leave was related to the bond issuance, and what would be the implications of such move to the bond release. What are your thoughts about this?
Another interesting thing to think about is that Bukele's administration is urgently in need of funds. That means that the money raised by the bonds is actually needed to pay debt that is about to expire. To give you an idea, the debt service is a yearly bill of 1.2 billions; the treasury bonds (LETES and CETES) expiring this year (360 days short therm debt) accounts for 2.6 billion; and 800 million euro bond expiring in january 2023, not without mentioning a deficit budget of about 1.8 billion dollars. Shortly, Bukele needs resources desperately to roll over all those debts. The question is, how could Bukele buy bitcoins and fund bitcoin city with the 1 billion bond and pay back expiring debt at the same time?
And, just adding on top of Oscar Salguero comments, LaGeo is "a sort of" private institution funded with public money. As a private institution they're not obliged to make their operations transparent, that's why Chivo and Diario El Salvador where created using LaGeo as a sort of umbrella company. But if you think that LaGeo is the only company that Bukele is using to undercover his shady moves, last december another debt issuance was approved by Congress for the amount of 1.6 billion using two "autonomas", ANDA and Fovial, alegedly to raise funds for infraestructure investments (https://www.laprensagrafica.com/elsalvador/Ejecutivo-pide-titularizaciones-por-1600-millones-en-FOVIAL-y-ANDA-20211130-0085.html), both companies operation would be compromised by the issuance of those domestic bonds.