The shoe dropeth

As I was expecting the decree about the new minimum wage was officially published today when it should have been published last week, at the latest. This way no one could make adequate preparation and many lost their jobs, many a store closed. And as I am typing it is not clear yet whether and how will the regime effectively subsidize the bulk of the new wages for 3 months.

But if you thought that going 35 times up minimal wage and hence putting the whole country on minimal wage was not bad enough, we got a few more choice items for you.

The food allocation "cesta ticket" went up to 180 from 4, the 4 if memory serves me well. Would it make any difference? At any rate that one will not be subsidized and the brunt will go straight to business owners just as the first signs of major contraction are already visible. Just check out how many stores have closed at your local mall over the last two weeks.

But to make it all worse, the government is UNABLE to have a precise communication message. For example retirees rioted downtown Caracas Saturday because the regime had said they would be able to start withdrawing their new checks in cash starting that day. Of course, the banks were not given the order to open, nor they would have had enough cash for that matter. Some mumbling happened Sunday from the regime until finally tonight Maduro said that withdrawals would be 90 a day and that he was informed that the sale of cash is going on.

For you people outside of this terror country cash scarcity has created a booming industry of cash sale. It works roughly that way. You go to a street vendor or some low life store that has a debit card point. You give your cash and the vendor will swap by his own debit card for twice the amount of cash you gave her in advance for your purchases.  Later on he will resell it for an extra 50%. In short at the end of the day 1 bolivar went up to 3 bolivares for all practical purposes.  It worked particularly well for retirees on miserable incomes, as the only way to survive. That is why they were all in throngs in the streets Saturday. That and they knew that prices are going to soar and they are in a rush to buy.

Today the Central Bank had to remove a tweet it put earlier that meant basically that credit was dead in Venezuela. Now corrections have appeared.

A few days ago the regime had forced the productive sector to "agree" on prices. Already this week they had to review many of them with a substantial price hike in some cases. I suppose that they finally listened to producers that were ready to stop production, turning in their keys to workers if necessary. Good luck selling below your production costs!

Sociopath and psychopath brethren 

But the best was to see today a "press" event with the brothers Rodriguez, sociopath Delcy as the vice president and psychopath Jorge as the communication minister.  You would have though that the press was summoned to clarify economic measures. Not at all, the time was spent on denying that there is a refugee crisis out of Venezuela.  A crisis even reaching NPR. Then again you must know that at the same time a group of 13 regional countries that receive immigrants started today a meeting on how to deal with the crisis, a crisis that seems now risking changing the whole hemisphere as no other crisis has done in decades.

Meanwhile the opposition is still settling accounts rather than dealing with the current situation.

It is a crazy house my friends. The end is near.  The end of something is, anyway.

PS: Venezuela is so much on the front burner that all but one links are in English today!

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As a parting gift for tonight a cute meme

pic.twitter.com/fFD33nzyOd

— daniel duquenal (@danielduquenal) September 3, 2018

Passengers reaction when they are told they need to make an emergency landing in Venezuela (apologies for not giving credit, I received this through What's app. If any one knows...