Thread: Venezuela – An Economic Catastrophe In Images The Final Stage of a Crack-Up Boom

Trump was right all along putting that military option on the table for Venezuela

Venezuela sues neighbors for ... not treating its flood of refugees well enough

Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel suddenly concerned Trump may...invade Venezuela

September 21, 2018

What fresh idiocy is this?

By Monica Showalter

(Language warning.)

With all of Chicago's problems and scandals, from its Caracas-level violence to its financial straits to its corrupt and sex-harassing pols to its Obama library sweetheart deal to its issues with illegals to even Catholic Church scandals, Mayor Rahm Emanuel is concerned about...Venezuela – and, more specifically, the prospect that President Trump might invade it, which, in his mind, could only be for political gain.
CNBC's John Harwood reports:

Rahm Emanuel, the former top aide to President Barack Obama who is now Chicago's mayor, is publicly warning that the mercurial commander-in-chief may blow past the hesitation of national security advisors in search of a rally-around-the-flag political boost. He wants Congress to flash caution lights.
"We have a phrase in this country: the October surprise," Emanuel, Obama's first White House chief of staff, told me in an interview. "I think in this situation he is looking to do anything and will do anything."

So the number-one item on his agenda is the inside-baseball speculation that Trump might invade Venezuela to get his poll numbers up – as President Clinton did in the Balkans to get out of the Lewinsky scandal. Right, Rahm – we know that you know all about that.
CNBC doesn't do itself very proud, either, with Harwood buttressing his argument with claims that President Trump is against Latinos over the illegal immigration issue, followed by Marco Rubio's statement that he wouldn't be against such military action. Rubio, for Harwood's information, is Latino.
The response to all of this twaddle, from Venezuela itself, was harsh:

daniel duquenal @danielduquenal
Dear mayor
From Venezuela, a heart felt **** You!
Until Liberal USA comes up with a plan to counter Venezuela dictatorship, be nice enough to shut up.
Thx

Former Obama aide @RahmEmanuel warns Trump may order military action in Venezuela for political gain https://cnb.cx/2xtPQhK
12:51 AM - Sep 20, 2018



Former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel warns Trump may order military action in Venezuela for...

Emanuel, a veteran of the Clinton and Obama administrations, is publicly warning that Trump may blow past the hesitation of national security advisors in search of a rally-around-the-flag political...
cnbc.com

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It goes to show how unserious Rahm is, focusing on Washington issues in exclusively Trumpian terms, as if Trump lives rent-free inside his head, and apparently not recognizing that Venezuela is a real problem. His swamp focus certainly would explain why he's doing nothing in Chicago. You can take the swampster out of the swamp...
More to the point, the mayor doesn't seem to be aware that there's a mass exodus of Venezuelans fleeing a monstrous socialist hellhole, now amounting to at least 3 million people. Amnesty International just reported that Venezuela's extrajudicial killings number about 8,000 they can prove now, a massive crisis of state slaughter. Starvation is rife, and Venezuelans have lost an average of 24 pounds this year. Nicolás Maduro, the country's dictator, was last seen openly dining on steak and cigars in Istanbul. Inflation is heading for a million percent. The currency is garbage. The oil production has slipped to 1948 levels. Mass arrests of shop-owners as hoarders and wreckers have just thrown more than two dozen in jail against the backdrop of 40% of Venezuela's shops shutting down overnight. The chief of the Organization of American States brought up military intervention, and while he's since backtracked and many Latin nations protested, Colombia and Guyana, Venezuela's most menaced neighbors, went mysteriously silent. Something serious is going on over there.
And in Rahm's mind, it's all a matter of Trump wanting to engineer an October surprise, with Venezuela as some ginned up artificial issue.
Nope, Rahm. It's serious. What it really sounds like is that Rahm is trying to distract attention from his own failures as mayor in his own crisis-ridden city, by drawing attention to Venezuela and Trump. Sorry, Rahm: This one's for the big boys. Do what Señor Duquenal tells you.

Image credit: Daniel X. O'Neil via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.

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https://www.americanthinker.com/blog...venezuela.html

Pompeo Vows "Series Of Actions" Against Venezuela's Maduro "In The Coming Days"



"...you’ll see in the coming days a series of actions..."


Sun, 09/23/2018 - 09:15
95 SHARES

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued an incredible statement to Fox News on Friday, vowing to take "series of actions" in "the coming days" against Nicolas Maduro's government in Venezuela.
The threat was couched in terms of being in the "best interest" of Venezuelans, and though Pompeo didn't specify details, he said the US is “determined to ensure that the Venezuelan people get their say.”
“I think you’ll see in the coming days a series of actions that continue to increase the pressure level against the Venezuelan leadership folks who are working directly against the best interest of the Venezuelan people,” Pompeo told Fox.


Image via ReutersIt is the broad nature of the threat that makes it unusual, but particularly the timing and context, as it follows the early August failed assassination attempt on Maduro which interrupted a live television broadcast from Caracas. Maduro had been speaking at a military parade when two explosive-laden drones said to be flying in the direct of the podium exploded in the area.

In the aftermath the Venezuelan socialist leader blamed the United States and allied right-wing groups for being behind the attack, in a speech describing, “They tried to assassinate me today," while blaming the attack on right-wing factions specifically connected to Columbia and Florida.
He claimed at the time that "several of those intellectually responsible and the financiers of this attack live in the United States, in the state of Florida," and called on U.S. President Donald Trump to "fight these terrorist groups".
The live broadcast on state television showing the assassination attempt:

AlbertoNews ✔ @AlbertoRodNews

Video at the tweet

ÚLTIMA HORA | VIDEO - Situación irregular en la avenida Bolívar de Caracas durante Cadena Nacional de Maduro en acto con la GNB.
VTV cortó de emergencia la transmisión oficial.
6:00 PM - Aug 4, 2018

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Washington has steadily increased sanctions on Venezuela over the past number of months after Trump administration officials have accused the Maduro government of stamping out democracy and jailing opposition leaders. Maduro for his part has blamed the country's ills, specifically the collapsed economy and now worthless currency, on Washington plotting and subversion.
Under Maduro the country is now beset by annual inflation running at 200,000 percent, resulting in basic stables and medicines disappearing from store shelves, resulting in a significant uptick in emigration for people with means.
But lately a series of statement and stories in the media have served to fuel and confirm his suspicions that the US is planning covert regime change. Certainly Pompeo's latest comments will add to Maduro's fears that more major "plotting" is afoot.
Early this month the The New York Times revealed in an explosive story that the Trump White House held covert meetings with Venezuelan military coup plotters seeking to topple the Maduro government. The US had set up a "clandestine channel" which involved contacts with what were described as "rebellious officers" bent on bringing about regime change with the help of Washington.
The NYT report detailed several secret meetings between the Trump administration and military officers to talk about potential coup plans, but according to Times sources "the coup plans stalled". The meetings were spearheaded by someone simply described as a "career diplomat".
Pompeo's Friday warning, which likely hints at more economic warfare and sanctions to be leveled against Venezuela, comes ahead of the annual U.N. General Assembly in New York next week. Maduro has not attended UN meetings since 2015 out of fear that he could be assassinated.



https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-...ro-coming-days

Bernie Sanders Might Learn Something From Venezuela's Minimum Wage Experiment



Socialism isn’t like the free market which progresses peacefully. Socialism requires a bureaucratic boot on the neck of business...

Wed, 09/26/2018 - 13:30
29 SHARES
Authored by Doug French via The Mises Institute,

There are labor shortages all over the country. There are not enough truck drivers, plumbers, food waitresses, construction workers, and so on. The official unemployment rate is below 4 percent. It was just reported private sector wages popped 2.9 percent.



However, Bernie Sanders and other “progressive” candidates are endorsing the idea of a federal living wage. On his website, Bernie starts with,

Millions of Americans are working for totally inadequate wages. We must ensure that no full-time worker lives in poverty. The current federal minimum wage is starvation pay and must become a living wage. We must increase it to $15 an hour over the next several years.

His latest big idea is to

tax companies with 500 or more employees an amount equal to federal benefits received by their low-wage workers. The bill is designed to discourage large companies from paying their workers so little that they end up relying on federal benefits, such as food stamps, to make ends meet.

If Bernie were paying attention, there is a minimum wage experiment going on in real time in Venezuela right now. Sure, there’s some serious money printing going on there and plenty of socialist schemes to keep the shelves empty. However, the fact there’s nothing to buy hasn’t kept Venezuelan president Maduro from hiking that country’s minimum wage 24 times since 2013 when he took office.
The latest hike went into effect on September 17, and it was huuuge — 3,000 percent. Fabiola Zerpa writes forBloomberg,

7 million employees are guaranteed 1,800 bolivars a month — worth about $20 at the black-market rate. President Nicolas Maduro intended the mandate as political boost, but it’s having the opposite effect as companies, already hit by Venezuela’s epic economic contraction, tell workers they can’t afford to keep them.

No one should be stunned if employees are told to go home if the government by way of brute force increases pay by 30 times.

“I already told my four employees to go find other jobs,” Caracas garage owner Marcos Vizcaino told Bloomberg. “I’ve decided to close. There’s no need for me to keep to losing money for a third year in a row.”

Zerpa writes,

The higher minimum wage, which Maduro announced last month, was among several bids to steady the rapidly failing state’s economy and stanch hyperinflation. The socialist autocrat also devalued the currency and lopped five zeroes off denominations of the bolivar bill, which has been rendered almost valueless.

Lopping zeros off a currency has never worked and how on earth would raising the minimum wage by 30 times “stanch hyperinflation?” By the way, the zero lopping just happened a few weeks ago and price inflation is 100 percent for the new money.
Maduro’s policies only serve to drive the Venezuelan economy further into a Marxian hellhole. Venezuelan business owners must keep quiet because if they decide to “simply dismiss people. Much of the action happens secretively as companies try to avoid punishment by the government, which has been jailing those it believes are flouting the rules.”
Socialism isn’t like the free market which progresses peacefully. Socialism requires a bureaucratic boot on the neck of business. “Apart from the astronomical rise in wages, companies have limited ability to adapt, thanks to restrictive controls.” Zerpa writes. “Food operations are closely monitored as the government provides them imported raw materials. More than 500 supermarkets and stores have been fined and 200 managers and workers detained since Maduro’s announcements, according to Cedice, a private-property watchdog group.”
Maduro seized a cardboard plant and a pharmaceutical company for not toeing the government’s line. Even businesses with steady payrolls like banks, education, and construction are expected to be hammered by the new edict, because “large firms have collective-bargaining agreements subject to government scrutiny.”
Aurelio Concheso, a labor expert at Fedecamaras told Bloomberg, “The impact can be devastating; it can consume a whole company’s capital.”
Murray Rothbard wrote in The Free Market in 1988,

It is conventional among economists to be polite, to assume that economic fallacy is solely the result of intellectual error. But there are times when decorousness is seriously misleading, or, as Oscar Wilde once wrote, "when speaking one's mind becomes more than a duty; it becomes a positive pleasure." For if proponents of the higher minimum wage were simply wrongheaded people of good will, they would not stop at $3 or $4 an hour, but indeed would pursue their dimwit logic into the stratosphere.

Maduro is indeed pursuing his “dimwit logic into the stratosphere.” His country has no food or necessities and soon it will have no jobs.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-...age-experiment

Lady Liberty: Nikki Haley thrills Venezuela's battered democrats in the streets of New York

President Trump's United Nations ambassador picked up a megaphone and jumped down into the Venezuelan crowd protesting the odious Maduro regime to show them just whose side America stands on.

September 28, 2018
By Monica Showalter

Jumping down into the streets of New York with the crowds of protesters, U.S. United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley seized the moment with a megaphone, calling for democracy in Venezuela, just as Russia's Boris Yeltsin once did in the 1991 coup that overturned the Soviet Union.



Youtube Video https://youtu.be/Lj4zFksuclo

Don't think Venezuelans weren't thrilled. These are Venezuela's beleaguered democrats, the ones who have been beaten, jailed, starved, and murdered as their elections were stolen from them in front of their faces. They were utterly, utterly thrilled, and not just in the streets of New York, but across the continent and deep inside Venezuela itself.

Pedro Mario Burelli @pburelli

Thanks Amb. @nikkihaley. Whether as a diplomat, as a politician, as a freedom loving and caring woman, you have proven to be a firm voice, a constant ally. Millions of Venezuelans, in and out of our beleaguered country, THANK YOU!
Nikki Haley ✔ @nikkihaley

RT @USUN: Socialism and corruption have taken freedom away from the people of Venezuela. Proud to join these great people protesting the Maduro dictatorship.



10:35 PM - Sep 27, 2018

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Roberto Negretti Chalbaud @RNegrettiCh

We love you Nikky Haley, thanks fpr being a voice of freedom for Venezuela! God Bless you!
Nikki Haley ✔ @nikkihaley

RT @USUN: Socialism and corruption have taken freedom away from the people of Venezuela. Proud to join these great people protesting the Maduro dictatorship.



2:05 AM - Sep 28, 2018

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Betsy__VENZ @Betsy_VENZ

Replying to @nikkihaley and 3 others
Miss Haley, I take this opportunity to say “THANKS”! to you from my people from Venezuela ! For your bravery to defend us! For raising your voice to alleviate our pain, and hunger.. Justice for Vzla! for a FREE Venezuela! SOS !!!Thanks
11:27 PM - Sep 27, 2018

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Sonia Simmons @soniasimmons18

Replying to @nikkihaley and 2 others
Thank you Ms Nikki Haley for your words and support to my country Venezuela. Hope you and all the people assisting the United Nations keep on supporting us. May God bless you, your family and the United States.
9:53 PM - Sep 27, 2018

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Andres Cuellar @Sou_Andres

· 22h

Ver a esta mujer hablar tan comprometida con la causa Venezolana hizo que se ganara mi estima por siempre. Vídeo sin editar. @nikkihaley @leonline2000 @DonCorneliano2 @Neoadolfo pic.twitter.com/zIAN42Jote

Henry González @meteoro252002

Video at the tweet and page link

@nikkihaley Thank you for your commitmen with a just, urgent and necessary cause... Helping to bring freedom and justice upon Venezuela. God bless you Nikki Haley, God bless Donald Trump and his entire administration.
6:13 AM - Sep 28, 2018

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Thrilled is an understatement; hog-wild is more like it. Nicaraguans and Cuban-Americans were thrilled, too.
What an amazing irony this is. For decades, nitpickers, even on the Venezuelan side, have criticized American officials, such as then-secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, who have spoke out on the Venezuelan hellhole, saying they were engaging in "megaphone" diplomacy, and sniffing that it was unhelpful.
Well, here's some megaphone diplomacy, and it's being received by Venezuelans in the same way the great Ronald Reagan's speech on the Evil Empire was received by the prisoners within the walls of the Gulag, as Natan Sharansky wrote of: With unrestrained joy.
Someone is finally listening to them. Someone is finally there on the ramparts with them, cheering them and giving them encouragement they're lapping up like a thirsty man in the desert. And she looks like Lady Liberty.
No wonder they are shedding tears of joy.

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Sorry If You’re Offended, but Socialism Leads to Misery and Destitution

No taxpayer money, no aid and NO oatmeal.

They can go home and fight their OWN civil war, take their oil and fix their own problems.

DO NOT LET THEM COME HERE AND DO NOT FORCE US TO GIVE THEM MONEY OUT OF OUR WALLETS!

OUR WALLETS...KEEP YOUR PAWS OFF OUR TAXPAYER MONEY FOR THIS!

Their money worthless, Venezuela's desperate flee by foot...