From The Telegraph:
Even the middle classes, previously insulated from many of the country’s gathering economic woes, are feeling the pinch as poorer people come from the slums and suburbs in search of restricted goods, forming queues in previously upmarket areas.....
In a shopping centre in the Sabana Grande district last week, women queued outside a pharmacy for nearly two hours to buy two four-roll packs of toilet paper. In what has become the ultimate indignity for the Venezuelan public – and a huge embarrassment for the regime – shortages of toilet paper mean it is now strictly rationed.
In public, the shoppers are stoical, wary of speaking ill of a regime that has a track record of taking revenge on its critics, excluding them from the handouts and government jobs that became the hallmark of [Hugo] Chavez’s rule...
For Nicolas Maduro, the president, a former bus driver who Chavez designated as his successor and who won a disputed election in 2013, the response to the crisis has been a mixture of denial, wishful thinking and angry denunciations of international capitalism waging an “economic war” on Venezuela.
But with Mr Maduro’s approval ratings now at just 20 per cent, it seems a growing number of Venezuelans no longer believe his claims that outsiders are always to blame...
In a branch of the Farmatodo pharmacy, one entire wall is stocked just with toothpaste and mouthwash and another with bottles of Pepsi, following a government directive ordering stores to fill the shelves with anything to give the appearance of plenty. Curiously, for all the toothpaste on display, there are no toothbrushes
Seems to me that the country is rife with opportunity, particularly from outside investors. But this is mercantilism.
ReplyDeleteOpportunities simply abound! ... Like the opportunity to have your capital seized by the government! Or your entire industry taken over! Viva Marxism!
DeleteDidn't these people VOTE these clowns into office? So much for the wonders of "representative democracy", or whatever the hell this is.
ReplyDeleteThey voted in Madura, we voted in Obama.
ReplyDeleteFor some of us anti-progressive hopefuls, that imagine Americans will sooner or later wake up, and realize the folly of our socialist road ahead, let Venezuela be and example. Not only will we go down without a cognizant fight, but there will be no remorse, and few protests, in the failed future America.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, if Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Weimar ( etc etc), are observed, there wont be any repent amongst the populist masses for us to even gloat and say..."see, I told you so."