Trying to predict what will happen in South America’s wildest emerging markets in 2015 has the degree of difficulty of trying to compute pi to the 100th digit in your head.

尝试预测南美最疯狂的新兴市场在2015年会发生什么，其难度无异于尝试靠自己的脑袋把π值计算到小数点后第100位。

With Venezuela, in particular, the range of options of what could happen next year is almost as infinite – ranging from more of the same and muddling through, to default, violence, coup, civil war and international brigades. On the economic front, whether Venezuela survives 2015 will depend almost purely on the price of oil, however.

就委内瑞拉而言尤其如此，未来一年可能发生的情况几乎有无限多种，从几无变化、得过且过地混下去，到出现违约、暴力冲突、政变、内战和国际纵队。不过，就经济而言，委内瑞拉能否撑过2015年将近乎完全取决于原油价格。

Venezuela is facing a set of serious economic problems that thus far the country’s leadership under former Cuba-trained bus driver Nicolas Maduro seems unable, unwilling and woefully unprepared to deal with. Inflation – officially clocked by the government this summer at over 64 per cent – is in reality running at over 120 per cent. Rather than give evidence of how bad the economy is, the Government simply stopped publishing pesky economic statistics. The government has not even bothered to publish GDP figures since 2013.

委内瑞拉眼下面临一系列严重经济问题。迄今为止，以尼古拉斯•马杜罗(Nicolas Maduro)为首的委内瑞拉领导层看上去没有能力、没有意愿、也完全没有准备好解决这些问题。马杜罗以前是名公交车司机，曾在古巴受训。眼下的真实通胀率为120%以上，官方去年夏天给出的数字是逾64%。为了不留下说明经济状况有多糟的证据，委内瑞拉政府干脆不再发布讨厌的经济统计数据。自2013年开始，它甚至连国内生产总值(GDP)数据都懒得发布了。

While the bolivar is not readily convertible into dollars because of currency controls that value the dollar mainly at a rate of 6.3 bolivars – a 28th of what the black market does – the free market for the dollar has doubled in price in the last three months to 180 bolivars from just 90 in September.

尽管委内瑞拉货币玻利瓦尔与美元的兑换受到限制（原因是委内瑞拉实行外汇管制，官方牌价基本上锁定为1美元兑6.3玻利瓦尔，仅为黑市价格的二十八分之一），但自由市场的美元兑玻利瓦尔汇率过去3个月已翻了一番，从9月份的1美元兑90玻利瓦尔涨至现在的1美元兑180玻利瓦尔。

With Venezuela’s oil price – which, because of its heaviness, trades $5 to $7 cheaper than West Texas Intermediate (WTI) – hovering at just over $50 a barrel, falling oil production and heavy domestic consumption (gasoline is less than a penny a gallon at the black market rate), Venezuela – as the holder of the largest oil reserves in the world – finds itself in dire straits.

由于委内瑞拉的油价徘徊在每桶略高于50美元的水平（该国出产的原油质地较重，因此每桶价格比西德克萨斯中质原油(WTI)低5至7美元），加上其原油产量不断下跌、且国内消费量巨大（黑市汽油价格每加仑不到一分钱），这个世界上原油储量最大的国家眼下处境艰难。

Out of an anemic 2.5m barrels per day of production (Saudi Arabia produces 9.6m bpd), Venezuela uses 800,000 bpd domestically. In addition, Venezuela provides 100,000 barrels a day to Cuba free, and sends between 250,000 and 450,000 barrels a day without payment to China – paying back loans of $50bn from the Asian dynamo.

委内瑞拉的原油日产量仅为区区250万桶（沙特为960万桶），其中有80万桶用于国内消费。此外，它每日还向古巴免费提供10万桶原油，并向中国提供25万至45万桶原油、用于抵偿从这个亚洲经济强国那里借得的500亿美元贷款。

In short, Venezuela is left with income from just 1.3m to 1.5m barrels per day (the majority of which are sold to the United States. But here is the problem: at $50 a barrel, 1.5m bpd produces a total of only $27.38bn a year. At $60, Venezuela’s sole export produces just $32.85bn a year.

简而言之，委内瑞拉每日只剩下130万至150万桶原油（其中大部分销往美国）能够提供收入。但问题是：以每桶50美元的价格计算，150万桶的日产量每年只能产生273.8亿美元的收入。以每桶60美元的价格计算，委内瑞拉的原油（也是该国出口的唯一商品）出口每年只能带来328.5亿美元。

And there is the rub. In 2012, Venezuela – whose limited domestic production of consumer goods has been destroyed by 15 years of expropriations, price controls, and communism – spent $55bn to import goods. In 2013, the shortage of dollars had cut imports to $44bn and shortages of everything from toilet paper to autoparts began to bite. In 2014, imports for the nation of over 29m have tumbled to around $36bn and shortages of everything abound.

那么难题来了。委内瑞拉国内的消费品生产原本就有限，经过15年的国有化运动、价格管制和共产主义，该国国内的消费品生产已被完全摧毁。2012年，委内瑞拉花了550亿美元来进口各种商品。2013年，美元的短缺迫使委内瑞拉将进口额削减至440亿美元，从厕纸到汽车零部件等所有东西都开始出现短缺。2014年，这个拥有逾2900万人口的国家的进口额猛降至360亿美元左右，一切东西都出现了短缺。

But it gets worse.

但还有更坏的消息。

In addition to the cost of imported goods, Venezuela has maturity and interest payments on its foreign debt of around $11bn in 2015. The maturity schedule in the first half of the year is relatively light, with the country’s only maturity a 1bn euro 7 per cent bond that comes due in the Ides of March.

除了进口商品要花钱之外，委内瑞拉还要偿付到期的外债及应付利息，这笔钱在2015年约为110亿美元。上半年到期的债务相对较轻，只有一笔将于3月15日到期的10亿欧元债券（票息7%）。

But in the second half of the year, what makes for a frightening Halloween/Guy Fawkes period for investors is that Venezuela and PDVSA must pay $3.4bn in bonds and $1.7bn in interest for a scary total of $5.8bn. If oil has not recovered by then (or worse still, continues to deteriorate) and Venezuela is still shut out of international capital markets (where its bonds are currently trading at yields of 50 per cent), it could be lights out for the Bolivarian Republic, which has already quietly and seemingly unnoticed defaulted on the bonds of steel company Sidetur, which it expropriated in 2012.

但在2015年下半年，从万圣夜(Halloween)到烟火节(Guy Fawkes Night)这段时期，投资者将会体验“恐惧”的滋味，因为委内瑞拉政府和委内瑞拉国家石油公司(PDVSA)届时要偿还34亿美元的债券以及17亿美元的利息。如果那时油价还未回升（或者更加糟糕的是，油价继续走低）、而且委内瑞拉仍被关在国际资本市场门外（国际资本市场上委内瑞拉债券眼下的收益率达到50%），那么委内瑞拉玻里瓦尔共和国（委内瑞拉的官方名称为委内瑞拉玻里瓦尔共和国： the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela——编者注）可能就前景渺茫了。该国已然悄悄地、似乎未引起注意地对钢铁公司赛德图尔（Sidetur，2010年被收归国有）的债券违约。

Meanwhile, if 2014 has taught us anything, it is that bondholders can sometimes be a very patient lot. Like Venezuela’s Sidetur bondholders, holders of Argentina bonds are extraordinarily quietly waiting to be paid. While Argentina defaulted on its foreign debt in July, its bonds have managed to maintain 80-90 per cent of their values – even though bondholders are not getting billions in interest due.

与此同时，如果说2014年让我们明白了一点，那就是债券持有人有时可以非常耐心。跟委内瑞拉赛德图尔债券的持有人一样，阿根廷债券的持有人也在非常安静地等待得到偿付。尽管阿根廷去年7月对外债违约，但其债券仍保住了80%至90%的价值——尽管债券持有人将不会得到数十亿美元的应付利息。

In 2015, patience with the government of Cristina Kirchner, the Argentinian president, will run thin, as their strategy of “paying” bondholders by putting their money in a newly-created bank somewhere implodes (a strategy reminiscent of the “wildcat banknotes” of the early frontier days of US economic history, so called because to get paid your dollars you had to go to the wilderness location of the bank where wildcats might devour you on the way.)

2015年，投资者对阿根廷总统克里斯蒂娜•基什内尔(Cristina Kirchner)政府将不会那么有耐心，因为该政府想出的偿债招数（也就是将债券持有人的钱放到某处一家新成立的银行里，用这种方式来“偿付”他们）破产了。（阿根廷政府的这一招数让人联想起美国经济史上早期拓荒时代的“野猫银行券”，这种银行券之所以得此名字，是因为如果你想用它兑现铸币，就必须来到那家银行所在的穷乡僻壤，在路途中你可能会被野猫吃掉。）

I believe that even after the expiration of the Rights Upon Future Offers (RUFO) clause at the end of this month – which the Argentine government has blamed for its inability to negotiate with the pre-2001 defaulted debt holders led by Paul Singer and his hedge fund NML – the Kirchner government will still be unwilling and unable to reach a settlement with the holdouts and those Argentina bond prices that have held up so well will move closer toward joining their Venezuelan cousins in the tank.

我相信，即便在“未来受偿权”（Rights upon Future Offers，简称RUFO）条款本月底失效之后（阿根廷政府认为是这一条款导致它无法与以保罗•辛格(Paul Singer)及其对冲基金NML为首的、2001年违约债券的持有人进行协商），克里斯蒂娜政府也仍没有意愿、也没有能力与那些“钉子户”达成和解，迄今一直坚挺的阿根廷债券价格也将像委内瑞拉债券价格一样一路下滑。

Thankfully, Argentina will hold a Presidential election on October 25th and a new administration will take office there in December 2015, which will provide an exit from a financial strategy that has all the hallmarks of being designed by a petulant teenager. Venezuela, sadly, has no such easy exit strategy from its financial folly.

值得庆幸的是，阿根廷将于10月25日举行总统选举，新一届政府将于2015年12月上台，为退出目前这种孩子气十足的财政战略提供了契机。可惜的是，委内瑞拉缺少这种轻松的退路退出目前这种财政愚行。