Will the new exchange rate system work? So far, it seems to have tamed the black market. There was a huge drop in the black-market rate after the announcement of the new system—it fell from 87.91 BsF/dollar on February 19 to a low of 57.06 on March 21. It has bounced around since then and at this moment (May 30, 2014) is at 70.86. We can expect fluctuations in the black market due to speculation, as participants try to figure out how that new system is going to affect the price of the parallel dollar. But it does seem like the upward trend of the black-market dollar over the past year-and-a-half has been arrested. Most importantly, the SICAD II exchange rate has thus far been stable, settling at a rate of about 49 BsF per dollar.

The black market is at 1170 now.

He's been proven wrong year after year regarding his claims on Venezuela under Chavismo, and the idiot only seems to make up excuses and go with the bullshit propaganda that the Chavista regime likes to claim as truth. He's probably just another washed-up paid shill by the Chavista regime like that hag Eva Golinger.

that all but guaranteed a thriving black market as most businesses were locked out of favorable exchange rates.

The combination of price and currency controls implemented by Chavez were a toxic combination that merely created a spiral of inflation and shortages.

Wikipedia:

Mark Weisbrot is an American economist, columnist and co-director, with Dean Baker, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) in Washington, D.C. As a pundit, he contributes to publications such as New York Times, the UK's The Guardian, and Brazil's largest newspaper, Folha de S. Paulo.

As an economist, Weisbrot has opposed privatization of the United States Social Security system and has been critical of neoliberal globalization and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). He has supported efforts by South American governments to create a Bank of the South, in order to make them more independent of the IMF. Weisbrot's work on Latin American countries (including Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador and Venezuela) has attracted national and international attention, and in 2008 was cited by Brazilian Foreign Secretary Celso Amorim.[1] In early 2010 Weisbrot's work on Latvia's economic crisis attracted national and international attention. His work on Greece's ongoing debt crisis has influenced the debate over what measures the Greek government should take in negotiating a solution with the European Central Bank and European Commission, including with Greece's former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis and current Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.[2][3]

Weisbrot has several times contributed testimony to Congressional hearings, in 2002 to a House of Representatives committee, on Argentina's 1999–2002 economic crisis[4] and in 2004 to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on the state of democracy in Venezuela, and on media representation of Hugo Chávez and of Chávez's Venezuela.[

More:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Weisbrot