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Venezuelan authorities have arrested two toy company executives and seized almost four million toys, which they say they will distribute to the poor. Officials accused the company of hoarding toys and hiking prices in the run-up to Christmas. Last week, the government issued an order to retailers to reduce prices on a range of good by 30%......

Venezuela, mired in an economic crisis and facing the world's highest inflation, will pull its largest bill, worth two U.S. cents on the black market, from circulation this week ahead of introducing new higher-value notes, President Nicolas Maduro said on Sunday. The surprise move, announced by Maduro during an hours-long speech, is likely to worsen a cash crunch in Venezuela. Maduro said the 100-bolivar bill will be taken out of circulation on Wednesday and Venezuelans will have 10 days after that to exchange those notes at the central bank. Critics slammed the move, which Maduro said was needed to combat...

Venezuela price regulators on Friday seized almost 4 million toys from warehouses around greater Caracas and said they’d distribute them to low income children ahead of the Christmas holiday. With the nation's currency hyperinflating faster than a CNN Russian hacking story, this confiscation of 'unfairly-priced' toys is likely the only way to keep the Grinch from the door of this socialist nirvana.

Seeking to spread some cheer, President Nicolas Maduro's socialist government has set aside its distaste for consumerism and sent a small army of bureaucrats and soldiers to force more than 200 retail stores in Caracas to hold Christmas sales. "Our worker-president has ordered us to guarantee fair prices for the people, and we are complying. These economic hitmen can't take away our merry Christmas," said William Contreras, head of the National Superintendency for the Defense of Socioeconomic Rights, known by the acronym Sundde. The government accuses the owners of the targeted stores of jacking up prices by 300 to 500...

Gangs of out-of-work fishermen have turned to a life of piracy and have killed dozens who still venture into the sea in Venezuela, as the country's economic crisis worsens. Once home to the world's fourth-largest tuna fleet, now the fishing trade has collapsed and those who continue to fish are falling prey to the vicious bandits. Many have been tied up and thrown overboard by pirates, as those with boats opt for illegal ways of making money, such as smuggling and piracy.

Venezuela will introduce six new bills ranging from 500 to 20,000 bolivars, the OPEC nation's central bank said in a statement on Sunday. Currently, the largest-denominated Venezuelan note is 100 bolivars (9.4 euros), which is worth just around two US cents on the black market. A two-liter soft drink bottle can cost 25 times that amount.

Venezuela has run out of cash. Not metaphorically, mind you: The country literally doesn’t have enough cash to go around. Two weeks ago, facing an acute shortage of paper money, bank regulators capped cash withdrawals at 10,000 Venezuelan bolivars per day — about $5.25. As I write this, following an almighty rout on the black market, those same 10,000 bolivars are worth less than half that much: $2.17. (By the time you read this, the real number’s likely lower.)

Domingris Montano did the calculations as she stood in the rain at the midpoint of a queue outside a bank in Caracas. She needed to buy groceries. A package of rice would cost 3,500 bolivars, more than half the daily withdrawal limit, and the automated teller machine might be empty by the time her turn came. Maybe she could hit a few more before dark? “I’ve had to go to six different ATMs just to get 6,000 bolivars,” said Montano, a 36-year-old hair stylist...

Venezuela's bolivar currency tumbled past the psychological barrier of 4,000 per dollar on the black market on Wednesday, racking up a 10 percent depreciation since Monday and fueling concerns about the crisis-stricken OPEC nation's economy. The black market rate has weakened 62 percent this month amid Soviet-style product shortages and a crippling recession that have become the norm in Venezuela's steadily unraveling socialist economy.

It’s not so easy to find someone who still uses a wallet in Venezuela, where inflation is expected to reach 720 percent this year and the biggest bill — 100 bolivars — is worth about 5 U.S. cents on the black market. The currency has dropped dramatically in value as Venezuela’s oil-based economy has cratered and the government has frantically printed more money. Prices, meanwhile, are soaring. So Venezuelans must handle huge volumes of cash — so much that the bills don’t always fit in a standard wallet — with many people packing wads of currency in handbags, money belts or backpacks.

Bernardo Álvarez Herrera, a longtime ambassador to the United States who led Hugo Chávez’s diplomats in defending Venezuela’s socialist revolution to skeptical foreign governments, died on Thursday in Caracas. He was 60. President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela announced the death but did not give the cause.

Under the rule of charismatic revolutionary dictator Hugo Chávez, Venezuela positioned itself as the one of the world’s most prominent socialist “havens,” with Chávez regularly expressing an extremely hostile approach to what he described as ‘US imperialism.’ Yet three years after Chávez’s death, his anti-democratic legacy remains, whilst his socialist policies have left the country in crisis.

HOOVER, Ala.—Public Enemy No. 1 of Venezuela’s revolutionary government is Gustavo Díaz, a Home Depot Inc. employee in central Alabama. On his lunch breaks from the hardware section, Mr. Díaz, 60 years old, does more than anyone else to set the price of everything from rice to aspirin to cars in his native Venezuela, influencing the inflation rate and swaying millions of dollars of daily currency transactions. How? He is president of one of Venezuela’s most popular and insurgent websites, DolarToday.com, which provides a benchmark exchange rate used by his compatriots to buy and sell black-market dollars. That allows them...

A Marxist, a Venezuelan diplomat and an illegal alien headlined a meeting of organizers of the Trump resistance as they announced their plan to shut down Chicago on Saturday and Washington, D.C. on Inauguration Day. The Chicago branch of Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER) met in Chicago’s northwest side neighborhood of Albany Park to plot their next move in their resistance of the Trump presidency. Chicago ANSWER was one of the radical leftist groups that helped to organize anti-Trump protests when his campaign tried to hold a rally in March; that rally was canceled after protesters...

Two of Donald Trump’s main pledges during the presidential race were building a wall along the border with Mexico, and making the U.S. energy-independent. Now that the election is over, these issues are coming to the fore. First, the president-elect said that the wall, which he mentioned on the campaign trail and in numerous debates, is still very much on the table, though what type of “wall” that may be is an unknow. Second, he said he planned to start deporting illegal aliens—those with criminal records—which could amount to as many as three million individuals. Despite “The Wall”, the deportation...

You are idiots. There was an election, you lost. That Hillary got more popular vote is irrelevant: it is a federal country, a union of 50 countries and thus the will of a majority of former independent countries is a must, like it or not. This is the reason of the electoral college and trust me, in a presidential system like the US you need all what you can to make it harder the election of a president and control him/her/: Instead of rioting in the streets think about what else could you have done to get more votes for...

Sometimes, even the old media can see the obvious.  This picture is from a recent article in the Atlantic. From theatlantic.com: The headline and subtext from the article using the picture above is this: How Much Longer Can Venezuela Go on Like This? Large numbers of citizens want to oust President Nicolas Maduro. But he commands the loyalty of many men with guns. The fact the Venezuela has become another socialist distopian nightmare is obvious to any who care to look. Even a far-left writer from the Washington post can see it. It is hilarious how he admits that...

To paraphrase noted economic expert Obi-Wan Kenobi, many of the truths we cling to about currencies really do depend greatly on our own point-of-view. Take Venezuela. The good news is that, if you look at it over a long enough timeline, its currency hasn't changed much the past month. The bad news, though, is that's because it's gone from being almost worthless to almost entirely worthless. And the worse news is that it's actually lost over a third of its value during this stretch.

As Venezuelans struggle with widespread shortages in everything from basic food stuffs to toilet paper, the socialist nation’s defense minister announced on Wednesday that the military will take control of the distribution of "all medical and surgical supplies managed in all hospitals." Venezuelan Minister of Defense Vladimir Padrino López said during an address broadcast on state-owned Venezolana de Televisión that the National Bolivarian Armed Forces of Venezuela will take control of the medical supply sector "to guarantee that these medicines and supplies get to the patient efficiently and are neatly distributed and assigned."

Venezuela's opposition-led parliament has delayed the symbolic trial of President Nicolas Maduro, which was due to take place on Tuesday. The speaker of the National Assembly said the decision was aimed at easing the country's political crisis. An opposition march on the presidential palace planned for Thursday has also been postponed. President Maduro is accused of violating the constitution but claims MP's are attempting a "coup". The decision to delay the trial follows Vatican-sponsored talks between the two sides, and the release from prison of three anti-government activists......