Venezuela Goes from Bad to Catastrophe

[Bacchus4.0]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/venezuela-goes-bad-catastrophe-100952193.html


No more Coca-Cola for Venezuela–there’s not enough sugar. Diet Coke is still around–until the country runs out of aspartame–but the disappearance from store shelves of an icon of globalization is the latest blow for an economy on the edge. In April, the country’s largest private company, Empresas Polar SA, which makes 80% of the beer that Venezuelans consume, closed its doors. The government now rations water, so Venezuelans have begun stealing it from tanker trucks and swimming pools.

Electricity is also in short supply, and President Nicolás Maduro has ordered public offices to conserve energy by remaining open just two days a week. An ongoing drought only makes matters worse. About 65% of the country’s electricity is generated by a single hydroelectric dam that’s now in serious trouble. Blackouts, scheduled and otherwise, have become common.

This isn’t just bad luck. Supermarket shelves are often empty, in part because price controls have discouraged production of staples, and Maduro is threatening to seize closed factories and nationalize them.
------------------

It’s no surprise Venezuelans are angry. There are 17 demonstrations per day across the country on average. That discontent helped an opposition alliance win control of parliament in December for the first time in 17 years. Maduro’s approval rating is at 26%, and 70% of Venezuelans want him removed from office. The opposition needed 200,000 signatures to trigger a recall referendum. It got 1.85 million.

[Vogon_Glory]

1. I've Said It More Than Once And I'll Say It Again

I've said it more than once and I'll say it again. I STRONGLY believe that the function of good government is to promote general prosperity for everyone, not just a few oligarchs and their retainers or make some raucous noises against "imperialists" while running its country's economy into the ground. Mr Maduro may not be an old-style Latin oligarch, but he still has that charge to promote his people's general prosperity. In this he and his party has failed and failed miserably.