Endgame In Venezuela?

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The Economist: The endgame in Venezuela

The country is on the brink of a social explosion that only a negotiated transition can prevent

AT 9.30am on a Thursday six Venezuelans wait for a guided tour of the former military museum that is now the mausoleum of Hugo Chávez, the country’s populist president of 1999-2013. Across the road around 120 people are queuing for food at government-controlled prices from a state-run supermarket. The food queue starts at 3am. “Sometimes there’s food and sometimes there isn’t,” one would-be shopper says.

In this district of Caracas, once a Chávez stronghold, his aura is fading amid the struggle for daily survival. Long gone are the days when he used a massive oil windfall triumphantly to impose his “Bolivarian revolution”, a mishmash of indiscriminate subsidies, price and exchange controls, social programmes, expropriations and grand larceny by officials. The collapse in the oil price has exposed the revolution as a monumental swindle.

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WNU Editor: When you have to fly in your money by the planeload (at higher denominations) .... Venezuela, where cash is worth less than a napkin (The Australian/WSJ) .... you have already lost the battle. And while some are calling for Venezuela to declare a default on its debt .... A debt default may be Venezuelans’ best hope (Financial Times), my prediction is that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro will stick it to the end .... Venezuela president vows to resist ouster (AFP), while blaming others for Venezuela's economic collapse .... Maduro Calls Owner of Largest Food Company `Thief' and `Traitor' (Bloomberg).