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from the toilet-paper-is-worth-more dept.
In a surprise announcement, [President Nicolas] Maduro said on Sunday that the 100-bolivar note, worth about 2 US cents (£0.015) on the black market, would be taken out of circulation on Wednesday.
The president said the aim was to tackle transnational gangs which hoard the Venezuelan notes abroad, a move he has in the past described as part of the "economic war" being waged against his government. [...] He said part of the plan was to block any of the 100-bolivar notes from being taken back into the country so the gangs would be unable to exchange their hoarded bills, making them worthless.
"I have given the orders to close all land, maritime and air possibilities so those bills taken out can't be returned and they're stuck with their fraud abroad," he said speaking on television.
Venezuela's currency has fallen dramatically amid skyrocketing inflation.
[...] Analysts say the move is likely to worsen the cash crunch in Venezuela, where people have already been limited in the amount of cash they can take out at automated teller machines. Venezuelans have only been given 10 days to exchange their 100-bolivar notes for new coins and bills ranging from 500 to 20,000 bolivars due to be introduced from 15 December.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by jmorris on Wednesday December 14 2016, @05:23AM
Not calling for their deaths, just being realistic. There are exceptions, Gorbechev survived the fall of the Soviet Union; many of the tyrants in the slave states didn't fare so well. Ortega lost his power and actually got himself elected again. But the usual rule for Fascists and Socialists is to refuse to yield power and end up with a raging mob outside the palace.
There is substantial evidence that the US was involved in the coup attempt in 2002.
Ya, what else is new. We usually try to remove monsters when and where we can. Especially when they are in cahoots with other monsters.
And yes, it really is rich to now hear the whining about possible interfering in our elections by Russia. Everybody meddles when they see a vital enough national interest at stake. Raise your hand if you don't think we had a hand in the fall of the Soviet Union. Yea. Obama openly meddled in Egypt, openly campaigned against BrExit in the UK (and probably hurt the Remain cause by the backlash it created), meddled in Ukraine, overthrew a tamed tyrant in Libya, and so on. And lets not even discuss Bush II, Clinton, Bush I, Reagan, etc.
Their basic claim that led to the socialist rise to power...
Things suck, so lets install a Socialist because it doesn't suck hard enough! That is the lie that must be destroyed. Socialism is never the answer to any possible question. If it becomes required to throw off a defective government, it is only an improvement if a better one is installed. Rule of Law, functioning courts, effective and fair law enforcement, secure and stable property rights, sound money. Do those and prosper, do not and suffer.
The basic problem in Venezuela is something mostly outside the control of Maduro or anybody else in Venezuela...
Incorrect. Their problem was Socialism had already wrecked the economy, as it always does, but the oil revenue allowed them to import the basics of life in sufficient quantity to maintain the appearance of a functioning civilization. They had an economy sufficient to feed and cloth the population before oil was discovered. They might have had 'income inequality' but they didn't have mass starvation and other serious problems supplying the basics; they had TP for their bungholes. After Socialism, when the oil money faltered it was revealed that they no longer had much of any local production capacity; they have no TP for their bungholes now.
Toilet paper is not a difficult product to manufacture. They no longer possess the industrial base to manage it, which doesn't matter because they don't have the distribution capability to distribute it and are rapidly losing the retail end points of the chain, the transport capability for buyers to get to a retail outlet and the monetary system to transact the purchase with.
It should also be noted that while oil isn't over a hundred dollars a barrel anymore it isn't exactly being given away. Their problem is not so much the price of oil, it is the fact they no longer possess the capability to extract it. They nationalized all of the assets so they are on their own. No outside oil company will lift a finger to assist them and being Socialists their own people are corrupt and incompetent. The equipment they stole no longer works and they can't buy parts or replacements, because even if they could find a willing seller their money is worthless, and that is assuming they had competent people to perform the repairs. Being allies with Cuba and Iran doesn't help them as neither capable of helping with skilled manpower or materials; Cuba having no oil industry and Iran having troubles enough keeping their own fragile system producing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 14 2016, @01:41PM
Poor jmorris. His opinions run a little further outside than can be comfortably contained in a liberal world view, and is always marked troll for simply coloring outside the lines.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 14 2016, @06:18PM
I think spouting extreme ideological beliefs coupled with disturbing language that promotes the murder and death of others deserves to be modded troll. No other country other than the US has had the unique situation of forming in the modern era, founded on the principles of freedom especially, and obtaining a major cultural diversity through immigration. Those are the only reasons the US isn't a complete and total shitshow.
For jmorris to hop in and claim that some nebulous group called "socialist" is the worst thing in the world, well he shows his ideological brainwashing, lack of mental adaptability, and a detached viciousness that would be quickly put down if he were an animal.
The lies about socialism run very deep in the US, but anyone with a functioning brain could compare the successful countries in the world and quickly discover that major amounts of socialism actually seem to work better than the garbage we have here in the US. If the rich and powerful would stop undermining every attempt at creating a better system then we might actually have a a country that supports its citizens instead of the other way around. The ACA turned into a terrible quagmire because the Republicans wanted it to be a stain on Obama's presidency. The one promise he tried to make good on and the Republicans ruined it, because apparently a good portion of the US is filled with jmorris clones who have enough of a brain to understand basics and internalize propaganda, but not enough to analyze squat.
"coloring outside the lines"
That's rich, he's more like a parody of the most quintessential 50's US attitude. Capitalism good, socialism bad, kill the bad guys.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 14 2016, @08:04PM
I think spouting extreme ideological beliefs coupled with disturbing language that promotes the murder and death of others deserves to be modded troll.
well he shows his ideological brainwashing, lack of mental adaptability, and a detached viciousness that would be quickly put down if he were an animal.
And yet you do the same, and are modded insightful.
Don't you guys ever get embarrassed that you fail to offer cogent counter-arguments, and instead have to rely on soft censorship to promote your views?
I would.
I guess this is what happens when the Facebook generation attempts political debate, god help us all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 15 2016, @07:11PM
...modded insightful.
By one user, maybe the poster.
Don't you guys...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 14 2016, @01:45PM
No, Venezuela's problem is and has always been that it is a petrostate.
You can look at other countries in the Middle East or Africa and say that their problems are caused by adherence to an extreme version of Islam or tribal loyalties and corruption but those are just surface phenomena unrelated to the cause of their problems: total reliance on a single commodity with volatile price swings: a petrostate.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Thursday December 15 2016, @07:33PM
The timing is odd because this happened last week:
OPEC has persuaded 11 non-members to cut oil production [...] starting Jan. 1 [...]
The 11 non-OPEC countries taking part in the agreement are: Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Brunei, Equatorial Guinea, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Mexico, Oman, Russia, Sudan and South Sudan.
-- http://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/10/non-opec-oil-producers-to-cut-output-558000-barrels-a-day.html [cnbc.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday December 14 2016, @03:42PM
I, unlike you, am not willing to accept that as an axiom. And the reason is that there are a number of questions that socialism has demonstrably handled better than anything else that's been tried:
- Education: The smartest kids don't always have the smartest or wealthiest parents. That means that without an education system that is collectively paid for (i.e. socialism), potentially brilliant minds go to waste because they never got the training they needed to put those minds to use. Students in countries that do this extensively, like Finland, test substantially better and have better economies than countries that don't, like Nigeria.
- Health care: The best health care systems in the world, as measured by cost per patient, infant mortality, life expectancy, and various quality-of-life indicators, are the ones managed by government agencies such as the UK's National Health Service. The US's relatively privatized health care is on par with Costa Rica and Slovenia, at about twice the cost.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 14 2016, @06:52PM
“Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.”
― Frédéric Bastiat, The Law
True in the 1800s. Even truer today.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Thursday December 15 2016, @07:47PM
> Even truer today.
Examples from the last 20 years or so, please?