Free Republic

President Nicolás Maduro raised Venezuela's minimum wage Friday for the second time this year to help workers being battered by the world's highest inflation. Speaking at a May Day rally, the socialist leader said he is boosting the minimum wage and pensions for retirees by 30 percent, with two-thirds of the increase coming this month and the rest on July 1. He also said he would raise salaries for government employees and military personnel. The wage increase, while a welcome relief for many workers, fell short of expectations that the embattled Maduro might use Friday's celebrations to expand state control...

MIAMI -- For the second time, Venezuela has failed to pay mining company Gold Reserve the $750 million it has been awarded for Venezuela's expropriation of its gold mining operation in 2007.

...praised the Vermont lawmaker and even empathized with his humble beginnings. “He is an emerging candidate with a renovating and revolutionary message,” Maduro told a crowd congregated in Caracas to commemorate the “Anti-Imperialism Day” — a holiday created last year to mark March 9 as the day President Obama declared Venezuela a national security threat. ... Meanwhile, during the Wednesday night debate Sanders was asked to comment on positive remarks he made in the past about Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, two close allies of Venezuela’s Chavismo. One of the hosts played a 1985 video in which Sanders...

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro has a plan to “guarantee food supply, social justice, and democracy.” As with most of Maduro’s plans, it will accomplish none of those things. Vice News reports: “A new decree establishing that any employee in Venezuela can be effectively made to work in the country’s fields as a way to fight the current food crisis is unlawful and effectively amounts to forced labor,” Amnesty International said in a statement released on Thursday. President Nicolás Maduro signed a decree at the end of last week that gives powers to the labor ministry to order “all workers from...

El pueblo hizo retroceder a la GNB en Lara, impidiendo q depositaran sus kilos de billetes de 💯. De donde sale tanto dinero en efectivo?... pic.twitter.com/idIhyUBhbR— Rocío San Miguel (@rociosanmiguel) December 13, 2016 TRANSLATION: The National Guard tries to exchange its own boxes of banknotes (how come they have such?). The people block access to the bank! Here is a direct LINK to the Tweet with the Video.

Venezuela's highest denomination banknote has ceased to be legal tender, in a move that has caused cash chaos and long queues at banks this week. Some cash machines on Thursday were still issuing the old 100-bolivar notes, hours before they expired. President Nicolas Maduro said new higher-denomination bills would be fully distributed in January.

Takeout food? Yeah! That's just the ticket! It's about as good excuse as consumerism to explain the economic woes of Venezuela. A few weeks ago reporter Nicholas Casey of the New York Times almost completely avoided any mention of socialism and placed the blame for Venezuela's economic woes on a vague "consumerism" during an interview on National Public Radio's Fresh Air as chronicled in Newsbusters by Clay Waters. Since that "consumerism" excuse seems to have been widely mocked, Casey went to bat with an even more laughable excuse, comparing Venezuela's economic woes to someone who has been ordering takeout food for years...

Once there was a South American country with a promising future. It had a functioning democracy, a rapidly developing economy and a growing middle class. All the important indicators, including education, health care and foreign investment, were pointed in the right direction. It was far from perfect, but the mood was hopeful – and with good reason. But now all that promise is gone. The country is a failed state, a hollowed-out shell of its former self. Services like power and water are sporadic. The most basic consumer goods--from bread to toilet paper--are in chronically short supply. Crime has skyrocketed....

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro has ordered a 60% increase in the country's minimum wage, effective from Monday...... The pay rise is the third this year from Mr. Maduro, and aims to benefit government workers and the military. It comes a month after deadly protests erupted in the country...... Even residents of traditionally pro-Maduro districts have been joining the protests. "I have been a month now joining in all the protests because I want my country to be free of this dictatorship," said 42 year-old Yoleida Viloria, a hairdresser from the capital, Caracas. Observers fear 1 May could bring a spike...

Opposition leaders in Venezuela have strongly criticized the investment bank Goldman Sachs for buying $2.8 bn (2.1 bn pounds) of government bonds. Opponents of embattled President Nicolas Maduro say the move has given his government a financial lifeline.... "Goldman Sachs' financial lifeline to the regime will serve to strengthen the brutal repression unleashed against the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans peacefully protesting for political change in the country," said Julio Borges, head of Venezuela's Congress, in a letter to Goldman Sachs president Lloyd Blankfein.......

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro looked to the world of digital currency to circumvent U.S.-led financial sanctions, announcing on Sunday the launch of the "petro" backed by oil reserves to shore up a collapsed economy. The leftist leader offered few specifics about the currency launch or how the struggling OPEC member would pull off such a feat, but he declared to cheers that "the 21st century has arrived!" "Venezuela will create a cryptocurrency," backed by oil, gas, gold and diamond reserves, Maduro said in his regular Sunday televised broadcast, a five-hour showcase of Christmas songs and dancing. The petro, he...

Bernie Sanders has opined for years on the necessity of raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, explaining that: By phasing in a pay raise for tens of millions of workers, we can improve living standards, lift families out of poverty, and provide a much-needed boost to our economy. Our bill will raise the wages of 41 million workers — an extra $3,500 a year in pay for full-time workers. The socialist Senator this past year introduced legislation in the Senate for the wage hike and while that didn't succeed (so far) has made the $15 wage call a...

This thread is a friendly collaborative place for FReepers to analyze information and share opinons. FReepers have a wide variety of reasons for investigating Q Anon content; this is not the appropriate place to criticize or badger those who choose to use some of their time in this manner. This thread is a continuation of the prior Q Anon thread located here: http://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3636549/posts I plan to post one thread at a time and ping new drops posted to it. The current schedule is to post new threads Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. When I post each (new) thread, the prior thread...

CARACAS — Venezuela's diplomatically-isolated president received a show of support from Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday ahead of a weekend election boycotted by the opposition coalition and decried by Washington. The United States, the European Union and major Latin American countries have criticized Sunday's vote in which leftist President Nicolas Maduro is likely to win re-election to a six-year term. Critics say Maduro, a 55-year-old former bus driver who has presided over an economic meltdown, is virtually assured victory as two of his most popular opponents are banned from running and the electoral council is pro-government. The Trump administration...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan took aim at investors who are selling Turkish lira, saying the currency was under attack as it hit fresh record lows against the dollar. Erdoğan said there was no technical or rational reason why the lira should be losing so much value. Turkey has prepared a “project” that will reverse this trend, he said in a speech on Tuesday. The lira hit a new record as Erdoğan spoke, falling to as low as 4.3 to the U.S. currency. It declined 0.6 percent to 4.2946 at 1:28 p.m. in Istanbul. The currency had traded at 1.15...

By now, we’re all tired of hearing about the virtual currency turned investment craze known as Bitcoin. Created in response to the 2008 financial crisis, anarcho-capitalists hailed it as the decentralized future of commerce. But as prices soared and the biggest names on Wall Street bought in, Bitcoin became mostly known as a speculative, unregulated investment. Think Beanie Babies, but you can also use them to buy drugs and engage in human trafficking. Perhaps the most remarkable Bitcoin storyline recently has been just how much computational horsepower it takes to create the virtual currency: some 26 quintillion calculations per second....

Just because it’s digital doesn’t mean it doesn’t need a vault, and Silicon Valley millionaires and billionaires now have a way to keep their cryptocurrency safe from the criminals: Underground bunkers packed with encrypted computer servers storing cryptographic keys for billions in bitcoin. This is cold storage, with a major security twist. It’s a new kind of vault for a new age and one Argentine pioneer has finally convinced the wealthy that this is where their digital currency will be safe. The brainchild of entrepreneur Wences Casares, a startup called Xapo has built crypto bunkers on five continents—including one in...

Link to Bloomberg

Some of the biggest names on Wall Street are warming up to bitcoin, a virtual currency that for nearly a decade has been consigned to the unregulated fringes of the financial world. The parent company of the New York Stock Exchange has been working on an online trading platform that would allow large investors to buy and hold bitcoin, according to emails and documents viewed by The New York Times and four people briefed on the effort who asked to remain anonymous because the plans were still confidential. The news of the virtual exchange, which has not been reported before,...

Warren Buffett is still not a fan of investing in bitcoin. The Oracle of Omaha reiterated his negative view on the cryptocurrency, according to CNBC's Becky Quick. Bitcoin is "probably rat poison squared," he said. Buffett is presiding at the Berkshire Hathaway 2018 annual shareholder meeting on Saturday. Charlie Munger, Berkshire's vice chairman and long-time Buffett collaborator, said during the meeting that trading in cryptocurrencies is "just dementia." In January Buffett warned investors about the craze over bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in interview with CNBC. "In terms of cryptocurrencies, generally, I can say with almost certainty that they will come...