Posted on 08/17/2018 1:56:12 AM PDT by Ciaphas Cain
MEDELLÍN, Colombia — Faced with nearly incomprehensible inflation — 32,714 percent as of Wednesday — Venezuelan officials thought they had a solution: They changed the color of the bank notes and increased their denomination. Then they said they would lop off three zeros. And when that didn’t seem enough, they announced they would cut off two more.
The tactics have left Venezuelans like Yosmar Nowak, the owner of a coffee shop in Caracas, convinced that there is no solution in sight and that the government cannot even bring down the price of a cup of coffee, an eye-watering 2 million bolivars.
“I imagine if we keep like this we’re going to have to do the same thing in December,” said Nowak, who has been forced to raise prices in her cafe at least 40 times this year.
(Excerpt) Read more at wral.com ...
So sad.
But, the people there voted this abomination into power.
It should be a warning to others about the dangers of socialism. It won’t, but it should.
And China and Russia keep Venezuela going by trainung their military, providing them weapons/aid/food, and buying their oil. Cuba also in on the party.
I am sure our socialist airhead politician celebrity would say, “Venezuela just made everyone like, five times richer! Socialism works!” The media would report this as profound wisdom. The Democrats would write it into their platform.
That’s why the Germans (after WW 1) always ordered 2 cups of coffee at once. They beat the price increase on 2nd cup that way.
They should sell vacation packages for those who want the Weimar Republic experience.
The problem with blaming the people is that, in the words of Cuomo, Venezuela was never that great.
They tried doing that in Weimar Germany when the reichsmark became worthless due to hyperinflation.
They had to curb spending and introduce a new currency to get that under control.
In Venezuela, the government never seems to run out of money even though it can’t buy anything and you can’t buy anything anyway under socialism.
I’ve looked at a few historical cases of hyperinflation, and outside of the ones caused mainly by war, it seems that economic policies which hurt economic productivity, and then price controls play a major role.
The historical solution seems to be backing the currency temporarily along with market pricing and policies that promote productivity.
Weimar backed their currency with real estate temporarily.
I bet Maduro, Chavez’s relatives and the other thieve have their wealth stored in dollars.
Back the Bolivar with some quantity of oil. It’s the only thing they have that the world wants right now. Then they can start digging out from under — after getting rid of Maduro, of course.
Yet our Leftists refuse to admit this is the natural end-state of Democratic Socialism.
They got rid of the foreign experts who ran their oil industry, so I don’t think oil backing would work.
I’m sure that the first election was legitimate. The likelihood of any successive election being legitimate drops with each election held. At this point, the real vote does not matter; the socialist dictator will win, regardless.
Venezuela could fix all their problems by using the George Costanza technique, do the exact opposite of what they normally do.
With sufficient security guarantees in a post-Maduro Venezuala, the oil companies would return. They might be Chinese oil companies, but somebody would be in there.
Well, that should fix the problem. Socialism really DOES work. /s
My guess is China would also need foreign experts.
There’s nobody better at oil than Americans. That’s how the Saudis got rich.
gonna have to lop off a couple of zeros every day. These things always accelerate until the whole economy stops.
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