Venezuela Has No Idea How To Solve Its Mounting Economic Crisis

[Bacchus4.0]

http://www.businessinsider.com/venezuela-has-no-idea-how-to-solve-its-mounting-economic-crisis-2015-1
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Today the Bicentenario has sugar, maize flour, chicken and toilet paper at giveaway, government-controlled prices — but no milk. It is 9.30am and customers who began queuing at six o'clock are just emerging. Hundreds more wait outside a narrow gate in the 3-metre-high railings around the lot. Uniformed police keep order; most customers seem resigned rather than belligerent.



But the shortages are undermining support for the autocratic regime's "21st-century socialist" experiment, especially among the poor, its intended beneficiaries. As queues lengthen across the country, there have been protests and some looting and violence. Fights break out, the strong snatch shopping from the weak and shots have reportedly been fired on occasion.

Supermarkets have banned customers from photographing empty shelves, presumably under government pressure. Police have arrested journalists and charged them with disturbing the peace as they tried to report on food shortages. Several state governors have forbidden queuing overnight, perhaps sensing that it looks more shameful than when it happens during daylight. Government stores limit customers to shopping one day a week, assigning the day according to the last number of their identity cards.

The government insists it is the victim of "economic warfare" waged by the opposition. According to one official, the children of the rich are "infiltrating people into the queues" to cause trouble. The real source of trouble, private-sector economists agree, is price and exchange controls imposed by the government, along with nationalisations of food processing and farmland. The diving price of oil, virtually Venezuela's only export, means that the government can no longer import its way out of trouble. Earnings of foreign exchange are expected to drop by $35 billion this year, from $65 billion in 2014.

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Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/venezuela-has-no-idea-how-to-solve-its-mounting-economic-crisis-2015-1#ixzz3PsPz95bZ

[COLGATE4]

1. Economists call this "swirling the bowl". nt