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The month of July saw a high number of bitcoin transactions in Venezuela with August achieving a new record high as more people turn to the digital currency as the country continues to tackle the inflation of Bolivar. Venezuela is a country that is blighted by hyperinflation. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Venezuela is projected to remain in a deep recession in 2016. Compared to contraction rate of 5.7 percent in 2015, 2016 saw a rise of 8 percent. Political uncertainty and the decline in the price of oil are factors affecting macroeconomic imbalances and pressures. The IMF...

The Burrito Index: Consumer Prices Have Soared 160% Since 2001 by Tyler Durden Aug 1, 2016 11:31 AM 0 SHARES Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith via PeakProsperity.com, In our household, we measure inflation with the "Burrito Index": How much has the cost of a regular burrito at our favorite taco truck gone up?Since we keep detailed records of expenses (a necessity if you’re a self-employed free-lance writer), I can track the real-world inflation of the Burrito Index with great accuracy: the cost of a regular burrito from our local taco truck has gone up from $2.50 in 2001 to $5 in...

Minister for Social Protection Leo Varadkar has thrown his political weight behind indexing welfare payments to inflation. Speaking at MacGill Summer School in Donegal, the Dublin TD struck a socially aware tone throughout his speech — referring to the period of economic downturn as “Ireland’s lost decade” and bemoaning a stalling in living standards. “Were it not for social welfare payments over half of the country would be at risk of poverty,” he said, before he emphasized the need to “protect the value of these payments now and into the future”. “I believe this can best be done by indexing...

While most advanced economies struggle to lift inflation, none would want Venezuela‘s situation: Consumer-price inflation is forecast to hit 480% this year and top 1,640% in 2017, according to the International Monetary Fund. A shortage of medical supplies means infants and other sick patients are dying of treatable illnesses. Soldiers guard empty grocery store shelves. Inflation is so bad, the government has had to order bolivars by the planeload.

One of the biggest threats to our economic outlook.” Endless discussions of how important inflation is to the US economy, and how there hasn’t been enough of it in recent years, and how more inflation would be a godsend, has become the standard. The threat of lethal deflation is being brandished to rationalize all kinds of absurd monetary policies. And we know why: inflation is good only for debtors, in an over-indebted country. But that’s not true either. Because a lot of debtors, particularly those who funded their education with loans, are being strangled by … inflation. “College Tuition and...

“Don’t be afraid to say to anything because no matter what you say, no matter how idiotic it is, it has already been said by some eminent economist.” – Ludwig von Mises... ...the first laser printer (Xerox Star 8010) set consumers back $17,000 in 1981... ...the norm in a free economy... ...the very rich serve as “venture buyers” since only they have the means to purchase what is both expensive and unproven... ...luxury items down to prices that we can all afford. The first ball-point pen cost over $12, the first mobile phone nearly $4,000, while the first... ...logical and...

Millennials, who first arrived in 1980, are the largest generational group in American history. As such, they tend to have a deep-seated, some would say exaggerated, sense of their own importance. Now that the last of the millennials, those born in the late 1990s, have reached voting age, the millennial generation is exerting ever greater influence on presidential politics. The campaign of Bernie Sanders, one of the most radical leftists ever to run for the presidency, is almost their exclusive preserve. Sanders's platform is well targeted to the idealism of most millennials. It offers free universal health care ("Medicare for...

A U.S. Federal Reserve Bank president said Monday the global markets seem to be poised for an interest rate hike this summer. James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis, said his outlook was not "too surprising" since signs are pointing to a second quarter rebound in the U.S. gross domestic product, the value of all goods and services produced in the U.S. Bullard's remarks, made at an international conference in Seoul, South Korea, follow revised data Friday from the U.S. Commerce Department that the economy expanded faster than previously thought in the first three months of...

<p>It's official: years of warnings that Obamacare will lead to dramatic increases in healthcare premiums are about to be validated.</p> <p>As the WSJ writes, big health plans stung by losses in the first few years of the U.S. health law’s implementation are seeking hefty premium increases for individual plans sold through insurance exchanges in more than a dozen states.</p>

Venezuelans on Tuesday woke up to discover that the government-controlled price of corn flour -- used to make corn patty arepas, a staple of local cuisine -- has risen 900 percent. The socialist government of President Nicolas Maduro had kept the price of corn flour frozen for 15 months at 19 bolivares a kilogram (two pounds).

May 23 (Reuters) - The Venezuelan bottler of Coca-Cola has halted production of sugar-sweetened beverage due to a lack of sugar, a Coca-Cola Co spokeswoman said on Monday. Venezuela is in the midst of a deep recession, and spontaneous demonstrations and looting have become more common amid worsening food shortages, frequent power cuts and the world's highest inflation.

As for March, there was an increase in yearly prices due to inflation — a 582.9 percent increase for food,

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Over the past decade, we've been told that inflation has been tame -- actually below the target the Federal Reserve would like to see. But if that's true, then why does the average household find it harder and harder to get by? The ugly reality is that the true annual cost of living is far outpacing the government's reported inflation rate. By nearly 10x in many parts of the country. This week, we welcome Ed Butowsky, developer of the Chapwood Index, to the program. His index is a 'real world' measure of how prices are increasing much faster than the...

Here is a thought experiment that illuminates the challenges facing macroeconomic policymakers in the United States and the rest of the industrial world. Imagine that in a brief period, inflation expectations around the industrial world, as inferred from the indexed bond market or the inflation swaps market, rose by nearly 50 basis points to a level well above the 2 percent target, with larger increases foreseen at longer horizons. Imagine that at the same time, survey measures of inflation expectations such as those calculated by the University of Michigan and New York Fed in the United States were rising sharply....

GAINING ATTENTION these days is the idea of abolishing high denominations of the dollar and the euro. This concept graphically displays the astonishing stupidity-and intellectual bankruptcy-of today's liberal economic policymakers and the economics profession. Larry Summers, a former Treasury Secretary and Harvard president, is pushing the U.S. to ban $50 and $100 bills. There's a lot of chatter, too, about prohibiting the €500 note. The ostensible reason is to help in the fight against terrorists, bribers, drug dealers and tax evaders by making it more inconvenient for these bad guys to move around and store their ill-gotten cash........ If the...

Saudis, Russia Agree to Freeze Oil Output; Iran Still Resists by Reuters Feb 16 2016, 9:34 am ET Top oil exporters Russia and Saudi Arabia agreed on Tuesday to freeze output levels but said the deal was contingent on other producers joining in - a major sticking point with Iran absent from the talks and determined to raise production. The Saudi, Russian, Qatari and Venezuelan oil ministers announced the proposal after a previously undisclosed meeting in Doha. It could become the first joint OPEC and non-OPEC deal in 15 years, aimed at tackling a growing oversupply of crude and helping...

The stock market is having a horrible time so far in 2016, with the S&P 500 down more than 9%. Gold, on the other hand, is up nearly 10% year-to-date and hit a four-month high of just under $1200 per ounce on Monday before dipping 0.7% Tuesday to $1189.30. It's a bit of a cliche to say that people turn to gold in times of uncertainty: Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. Gold did phenomenally well from 2000-2011 but really suffered after hitting nearly $2000 per ounce in 2011. From 2011 to 2015, the yellow metal pretty much fell in...

On Monday the U.S. national debt hit a new record: $19,012,827,698,418. This is the first time the national debt has ever exceeded $19 trillion. That's more than $58,000 for each person who lives in the U.S. today (including children). The main culprit behind the rising deficits and debt is growing federal spending--especially among Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare. Traditionally, Congress has set a limit for how much debt the U.S. may take on, known simply as the debt limit. But rather than put a higher limit on the debt, lawmakers and the president have repeatedly suspended the debt limit,...

We need an estimated $1tn per year to stay below a global temperature rise of 2C. Creating new money might be the only way to meet this financial challenge. The international community has agreed on an ambitious agenda to curb climate change. Some 195 countries have decided to try and cut greenhouse gas emissions to a level that will limit the rise in average global temperatures to well below 2C. The question we now face is: how are we going to finance the changes needed to reach this goal? Quantitative easing - creating new money - might just be the...