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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.

Have anyone of us contemplated this dilemma? Here we have a nation, run by liberals and socialists. And this year we have seen how it all ended. Just like in Greece and Maybe Puerto Rico. No Money, and in the case of Venezuela, no food. By now they have probably wiped out most of their pets and farm animals. But they have to eat meat once in a while. What are they going to do? cross over in their neighboring nations and kidnap any animal walking the streets and take them back home for dinner?

Venezuela's economic chaos, critics say is the consequence of failed socialist policies for the last 17 years, especially price and currency controls. Venezuelan security forces fired teargas at protesters chanting "We want food!" near Caracas' presidential palace on Thursday, the latest street violence in the crisis-hit OPEC nation. Hundreds of angry Venezuelans heading towards Miraflores palace in downtown Caracas were met by National Guard troops and police who blocked a major road. President Nicolas Maduro, under intense pressure over a worsening economic crisis in the South American nation of 30 million, had been scheduled to address a rally of indigenous...

The situation in Venezuela has been steadily declining in the past couple of years, but in the past few weeks, it has become so dire and disturbing that scenes coming out of the socialist country are said to mirror the apocalypse. News reports have surfaced of people having to eat their own pets in order to survive, due to a lack of food in the country. Currently, 75 percent of Venezuelans live in poverty, a stunning increase from the 25 percent rate just two years ago.

Venezuela's opposition has urged the public to defy a state of emergency that President Nicolas Maduro decreed over a nation sapped by food shortages and a collapsing economy. Key points: Opposition-controlled parliament rejects the President's state of emergency decree The opposition leader asks army: are you "with the constitution or with Maduro" Polls show 70 per cent of the population wants a new government The opposition-controlled National Assembly rejected the decree in a vote, saying it "deepens the severe disruption of constitutional and democratic order that Venezuela is suffering through".

Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles has urged the army to choose whether it is 'with the constitution or with (President Nicolas) Maduro", after a state of emergency was declared. President Maduro has announced a 60-day emergency, giving soldiers and police wider powers to deal with the country's sprialling economic crisis. Mr. Capriles said the decree gave the president unconstitutional powers. He called on Veneuelans to ignore it and take to the streets on Wednesday. "We Venezuelans, will not accept this decree. This is Maduro putting himself above the constitution," Mr. Capriles told journalists. "To impose this, he'd better start preparing...

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Saturday ordered authorities to seize factories that have stopped production and jail their owners, a day after declaring a state of emergency to combat the country's economic crisis. "We must take all measures to recover productive capacity, which is being paralyzed by the bourgeoisie," he told a rally in Caracas. "Anyone who wants to halt (production) to sabotage the country should get out, and those who do must be handcuffed and sent to the PGV (Venezuelan General Penitentiary)," he said.

At the moment, the armed forces’ position vis-à-vis the government is not clear. Some speculate that the Bolivarian National Guard is divided. Others claim that the regime exerts full control over the Bolivarian National Guard’s members. The only certainty is that uncertainty abounds. The PanAm Post had the opportunity to interview a Bolivarian National Guard member of middle rank, who asked to remain anonymous since his views could expose him to danger. Why has the state launched an offensive against criminal groups? The situation was getting out of hand for political reasons. The state has no means to control criminal...

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

It's come to this: The country with the largest oil reserves in the world can't afford to brew its own beer, stay in its own time zone, or even have its own people show up to work more than two times a week. Venezuela, in other words, is well past the point of worrying that its economy might collapse. It already has. That's the only way to describe an economy that the International Monetary Fund thinks is going to shrink 8 percent and have 720 percent inflation this year. And that's not even the worst of it. No, that's the...

CARACAS, Venezuela—The largest private Venezuelan company and producer of 80% of the beer consumed here began to shut down its last beer plant on Friday, the latest deprivation in a country crippled by shortages. After Empresas Polar SA closed its three other beer plants over the past several days, the shutting of the San Joaquin plant, near Valencia, will leave just a week’s supply of beer, the company said. Like many other firms here, Polar blames the government, which hasn’t allocated the dollars the company needs to pay for imported raw materials such as malted barley. President Nicolás Maduro’s government...

Basic items like nail polish remover and deodorant are hard to come by.Beauty-obsessed Venezuelans are being forced to live without their favorite supplies like nail polish and makeup, but also essential hygiene products like deodorant, shampoos, and baby wipes. This is due in large part to a lack of dollars and poor exchange rates in the debt-strapped country, all of which are preventing it from being able to import goods. About 70 percent of Venezuela's products are imported from other countries. "This year things have gotten pretty ugly," Jesus Guillen, a sales clerk in a drugstore in the neighborhood of...

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's socialist government ordered public workers on Tuesday to work a two-day week as an energy-saving measure in the crisis-hit South American OPEC country. President Nicolas Maduro had already given most of Venezuela's 2.8 million state employees Fridays off during April and May to cut down on electricity consumption. Water shortages and electricity cuts have added to the hardships of Venezuela's 30 million people, already enduring a brutal recession, shortages of basics from milk to medicines, soaring prices, and long lines at shops.

nezuela is, once again, in the throes of a full-blown electricity crisis. Citizens complain of unannounced blackouts are shutting down factories, forcing shopping malls to close early, and otherwise wreaking havoc on an already-sputtering economy. The crisis is so severe that President Nicolás Maduro has curtailed working hours for government workers. Last week he even extended the Holy Week holiday to reduce power usage. And Venezuelans are preparing for even worse news. Many are anxiously monitoring the dwindling water supply of the enormous Guri dam, which supplies roughly half of the country’s electricity. Experts are predicting that, as soon as...

Oh, and the power's out, so they can't preserve what little is sitting around. I’m sure the Bernie lovers will come up with a reason this is different and not the same, but every policy the Chavistas have put in place in Venezuela since the revolution has more or less tracked to what Bernie Sanders would do here - with one exception. At least Hugo Chavez and his hapless successor Nicolas Maduro believed in exploiting the country’s oil resources. It’s just that they used them to grease their own palms rather than meet the needs of their people, which is...

Venezuela's economy is collapsing. The country has topped Bloomberg's "Economic Misery Index," which takes into account several economic measures, for two years. Runaway inflation and high unemployment are plaguing the country. Socialism is what produces bread lines in an oil-rich country. In developed countries, economic debates often focus on narrow questions, such as raising the minimum wage, where it's possible for reasonable people to disagree. This leads to an impression that the relative merits of free enterprise and big government policies can be in the eye of the beholder. To a certain extent this is true. Or, at any rate,...

Venezuelan opposition legislator José Manuel Olivares claims the country has under-reported cases of the Zika virus and the country lacks necessary medical supplies to properly combat the outbreak sweeping the region. “I hope that President Nicolas Maduro will not continue putting policy and ideology before the health and life of Venezuelans,” he declared.

Dear International Editor: Listen and understand. The game changed in Venezuela last night. What had been a slow-motion unravelling that had stretched out over many years went kinetic all of a sudden. What we have this morning is no longer the Venezuela story you thought you understood. Throughout last night, panicked people told their stories of state-sponsored paramilitaries on motorcycles roaming middle class neighborhoods, shooting at people and storming into apartment buildings, shooting at anyone who seemed like he might be protesting. People continue to be arrested merely for protesting, and a long established local Human Rights NGO makes an...

...Bottled water seems to be gone for good. Choice is also gone. Deli is getting to a "it is that or nothing level". Now grocery stores are not even trying to hide the empty spaces with junk. On the medical front things are worse, if possible. Today I learned of the arrival of some generics from a medicine for triglycerides that I had to stop taking. I arrived in time at my local "LOCATEL". I tried to get also a small bottle of rubbing alcohol. To my surprise there is none. The lone brand on the market has stopped delivering....

The problem with socialism, Margaret Thatcher is credited with saying, is that you eventually run out of other people's money. But the late Mrs. Thatcher - heroic conservative prime minister of Great Britain - was too well-mannered to tell people what actually comes next. So I'll have to do it. After socialists run out of other people's money, the people eventually run out of something almost as precious as money: Toilet paper. It's happening right now in Venezuela, once a socialist, oil-rich paradise and land of great shortstops. But Venezuela is fast becoming a thoroughly failed state. Let's just hope...