'Toys for Socialist Tots' appears to be the latest scheme dreamed up by Venezuela's President Maduro to keep the people from the verge of outright revolution. As Bloomberg reports, Venezuela price regulators on Friday seized almost 4 million toys from warehouses around greater Caracas and said they’d distribute them to low income children ahead of the Christmas holiday.
For anyone still curious what hyperinflation in real time looks like, here is the visual answer...
And as SHTFPlan.com's Mac Slavo notes, Venezuela is deep into the death spiral, and things are likely to get worse before they get better.
Authored by Steve H. Hanke of the Johns Hopkins University. Follow him on Twitter @Steve_Hanke.
As the Venezuelan bolivar collapses, the hype about Venezuela’s alleged hyperinflation becomes more intense. Most of the commentary is literally fantastic, suggesting that the authors are unfamiliar with the subject of hyperinflation and the arithmetic of inflation.
With the nation's currency in full-fledged hyperinflationary collapse, OilPrice.com's Nick Cunningham notes that at times it seems that Venezuela’s economic crisis cannot get any worse. Food shortages, electricity blackouts, and scarce medical supplies have created a humanitarian disaster in Venezuela. However, with each passing month the situation deteriorates, and the crisis appears to be entering a dangerous new phase.
Venezuela’s currency has lost about 60% of its value so far in November, the worst monthly decline on record.
The value of the Venezuelan Bolivar has crashed by 50% in the last two months, breaking above 2000/$ on the black market today for the first time ever. We know this thanks to Gustavo Díaz, a Home Depot employee in central Alabama, who runs one of Venezuela’s most popular and insurgent websites, DolarToday.com, which provides a benchmark exchange rate used by his compatriots to buy and sell black-market dollars.