Venezuela

Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

The last several days in Venezuela have been absolutely mind-blowing.

Pretty much all the stories you’ve heard are true– countless people eating out of garbage cans, the appalling shortages of basic staples like food, medicine, and even soap… and the lines.

Oh boy, the lines.

The longest lines I saw, in fact, were not at grocery stores, but at banks.

Hundreds of people were queuing up, many of them to pull money out of their accounts to exchange cash on the black market.

Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

The gunfire on the streets near my hotel started around 9pm last night.

The sound is unmistakable, especially at night on an otherwise quiet city street.

I had recently returned to the hotel after a few evening meetings. And coming back after dark it was as if they had rolled the sidewalks up — restaurants with no patrons, bars and clubs that were totally empty.

Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

The first thing to understand about Venezuela today is that it’s becoming exceedingly difficult to even get here.

Or get out.

Nearly every major regional and international carrier has discontinued service to/from Caracas.

Due to safety concerns amid all the chaos and violence here, Lan Airlines in Chile (now merged with TAM in Brazil as Latin America’s biggest airline) no longer serves Venezuela.

During my testimony in April, 2017 before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, I stressed that, to establish stability and turn Venezuela’s economy around, runaway inflation must be stopped in its tracks. After all, stability might not be everything, but everything is nothing without stability.

After barely managing to scrape together the nearly $200 million needed to make a bond payment earlier this month (the country made the payment a week late), Embattled Venezeulan President Nicolas Maduro is refocusing his attention on the US, warning military leaders Tuesday to begin preparing for war with the US.