Now that's what I call as a burger!

I want one! Its the El Diablo Venezuelan burger!

Chavez, Mugabe and perhaps Gordo, classmates?

I think all of these chaps graduated from the same school, the how to ruin an economy in the shortest period of time school. Thanks to Samizdata, here's a great article on how Venezeula has managed to get totally mucked up by Chavez, the great white hope of the utterly economically illiterate. the last line is the best, I quote:

Petrodollar billions can buy a lot of things. As Chavez has found, well-stocked grocery shelves aren't always among them.

As always, all these grandiose economic ideas end up hurting the poor, hence "MORONS"

Technorati Tags: Zimbabwe,United Kingdom,Inflation,Venezuela

FARC, the Venezuelan Connection and terrorism

FARC, a totally unreconstructed Marxist terrorist group  is now on its last legs. Venezuela is clearly supporting it and it is also clearly a criminal, drug running group. (which is one of the reasons why I find groups such as SANSAD who support this FARC totally bewildering, they do good work but then they go about supporting FARC which basically tells me that their judgement is lacking....). Some good news here. First, Interpol has clearly said that it has found clear and incontrovertible evidence that Venezuela has had links with it.  I quote from the Economist:

But Interpol has now concluded that the huge cache of e-mails and other documents recovered from the computers of Raúl Reyes, a senior leader of the FARC guerrillas killed in a Colombian bombing raid on his camp in Ecuador on March 1st, are authentic and undoctored. The documents throw new light on the inner workings of the FARC. And they raise some very pointed questions about the ties between Venezuela's leftist president, Hugo Chávez, and a group considered to be terrorists by the United States and the European Union (EU).

Second, the head of FARC has been killed in an airstrike. This man is directly responsible for hundreds of deaths, killings, kidnappings, drug running, narco terrorism, and you name it. This is the time that the Columbian counter terrorist forces should go after them with a vengeance. Do not let up. See here for my previous essay on this issue.

Technorati Tags: Terrorism,Venezuela,Columbia,Counter -Terrorism

Forcing people to sell milk will end up with no milk to sell

Its like in all totalitarian and state run enterprises, they pretend to pay and the workers pretend to work. So if Hugo Chavez thinks that by expropriating the milk producers, he will create a better supply situation, then he is in cloud cookoo land.

Read and wonder at the continuing economic illiteracy.

The Venezuelan president has threatened to take over farms and milk plants if owners refuse to sell their milk for domestic consumption and seek higher profits by selling overseas instead.
If necessary the army would be deployed in order to expropriate farms and deal with milk shortages, Hugo Chavez said on Sunday.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

A full tank of gas for the price of an icecream

read and weep!

There is a world where oil costs $100 a barrel, where motorists wince as they fill up the tank and where energy efficiency is a mantra.

And then there is Venezuela. At a Caracas petrol station last week, Gloria Padron, a paediatrician, ticked off items that would cost about the same as the 60 litres of fuel gurgling into her Land Cruiser.

"Let me think. A Magnum ice cream. A cup of coffee. A cheese and ham arepa [sandwich]. Small stuff like that. Can't say I've ever really thought about the price. Why would you?"

When a litre costs 0.7p, and filling the tank of a 4x4 costs 42p, it is a fair question. Petrol is so cheap here - reputedly the cheapest in the world - as to be almost free. Even under the artificially overvalued official exchange rate, petrol is 45 times cheaper than in Britain.

Technorati Tags: Venezuela,Oil and Gas,Subsidies