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.
News that Goldman purchased some $2.8 billion in Venezuela bonds issued by state oil company PDVSA and until recently held by Venezuela's central bank - at a 30% discount to market, paying 31 cents on the dollar or around $865 million in notional - quickly set off a firestorm of angry protests, in which Goldman was accused of making money from other people's misery (even though the story of Goldman's involvement in Venezuela's debt is hardly new, as we reported in 2014 in "How Goldman Sachs Became Broke Venezuela's Loan Shark"
With its people resorting to eating flamingoes, the Venezuelan government has decided to find yet another thing to blame for the collapse of the socialist utopia - the bakers!
As The BBC reports, the Venezuelan government says it will expropriate bakeries which fail to abide by new government regulations aimed at tackling bread shortages.
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
There are a number of reasons why adopting the USD is a natural choice for any Venezuelan government that is not bent on self-destruction.
Let's start our analysis of Venezuela's economic plight with two exhibits: Exhibit A is a chart of the market (free) exchange rate of the Venezuelan Bolivar and the U.S. dollar (USD), and Exhibit B is a chart of the USD.