An inside-look of the economic crisis in Venezuela

[DetlefK]

http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-2128-my-wealthy-country-became-dystopia-6-realities.html

- Supermarkets are barely stocked, you are only allowed to shop twice a week, the queues are endless and the black-market controls everything.

- Hospitals are also running low on supplies and have serious problems treating patients.

- Crime (thefts, muggings, murders...) are through the roof. And the cops don't feel like getting tough on crime because the best they can get as a reward is a higher salary... in a country where there is barely something to buy.

- Drug-trafficking and corruption can be found even at the highest levels.

- Venezuela normally would be super-rich with oil-money...
Except the price of oil is extremely low right now.
And the social programs were created with oil-money in mind.
And nobody bothered to set up some reserves for dire times.
And Venezuela had a gigantic problem with corrupt businessmen and officials stealing billions of oil-money.

- When things started to go bad, the venezuelan government blamed greedy foreign corporations and confiscated their holdings... only to run those factories 'n stuff into the ground with mismanagement.

- When inflation got really bad, rich people started converting their fortunes into US-Dollars. Until the venezuelan government outlawed this.
But now venezuelan companies could no longer import stuff: They could only pay for imports with the venezuelan Bolivar. And that currency was basically worthless due to the inflation, so nobody was willing to export to Venezuela.

- Government propaganda claims that the scarcity only bothers you if you are unpatriotic.

- Two days after the elections (in which the opposition had made massive gains), toilet-paper was all of a sudden unavailable again, even on the black-market.