We’ll get to our Down The Rabbit Hole segment in a few but first…Merco Press reports that Venezuela’s TSJ (Supreme Court) ordered the intervention of PCV (Communist Party of Venezuela), known for it’s stance against Venezuela President (dictator), Nicolas Maduro. It seems all Marxists aren’t comrades, huh.

 TSJ appointed an ad hoc board of directors, as they did with the Venezuela opposition parties in 2020. For those unfamiliar with the Chavista’s undemocratic practices, the strategy is to remove party leadership and arbitrarily replace them with leaders more “Chavista friendly”, although they deny it.

 Last month more than 300 politicians, academics, trade unionists, and activists from several countries signed a petition requesting Maduro avoid the “judicialization” of PCV. I guess they don’t know the stat that, at one point, TSJ had a record of 50,000 rulings supporting the regime and ZERO against.

 They must have seen this coming. Ousted secretary general of PCV, Oscar Figuera, called those behind the lawsuit (that’s the fraudulent pretext for TSJ getting involved) “a mercenary group” and accused them of “an anti-democratic maneuver”.

 It’s worth noting that PCV was and ally of former President and Chavista icon, Hugo Chavez, but broke with Maduro over economic discrepancies.

 Then we have Rio Times telling us that Venezuela President (dictator), Nicolas Maduro, claims that the US government, through the Treasury Department, took control of Citgo Petroleum, owned by PDVSA (Venezuela government-owned oil company),unjustly and demands it’s immediate return.

 He also called for the US to reimburse Venezuela $4 billion for the time the company was “withheld”.

 With the auction process for the sale of Citgo shares to pay Venezuela’s creditors some of what they’re owed scheduled to begin in October I guess Nico decided it was time for some of his meaningless bluster.

 Now, lets head Down The Rabbit Hole…

 Chapter 5/ continued…

 …If you’re feeling a bit confused you’re not alone. Here’s something I found a little while ago. Keep in mind, these figures are from official government websites.

 According to the Venezuelan Ministry of National Commerce :

 1 Petro = 36,00 bsS = $60

DICOM official exchange rate – 3,297 bsS/ dollar

 So:

 According to DICOM each Petro should equal 197,820 bsS (or $60)

 If the value of the Petro really is 36,000 (as they claim) then the Petro is really worth $10.92 (not $60)

 The government can’t even reconcile values from it’s own websites! Needless to say, this discrepancy isn’t covered by Venezuelan media and there is never an interview or press conference where someone might ask the question, “So, what is it? It has to be one value or the other…It can’t be both!” To ask that question would be to ask for jail time.

 So, how’s all this working out for “The Revolution’s” New Way Forward? Well, in the 3 and 1/2 weeks from the announcement until these changes went into effect the bsS (The new Sovereign Bolivar) didn’t stop the minimum wage’s nosedive in real terms. The huge 3,000% increase in the minimum wage got a minimum wage earner UP TO $30 A MONTH! Yes, a buck a day. (Remember, approximately a dollar a day is the UN metric for extreme poverty). By the time it went into effect the new minimum wage, due to devaluation in dollar terms, was reduced to $22 and at the time we wrote this, in 2019, was about $7 and today is under $5 A MONTH!

 Summary : So what were the announced intentions of these price and currency controls? Price controls would provide food to the people at affordable prices. The reality was that the price controls increased shortages of many items and increased prices of many items. Either you couldn’t find things or you couldn’t afford to buy what you could find.

 Currency controls would keep dollars from leaving Venezuela and and help control inflation while protecting the buying power of the average Venezuelan. Well, the dollars still left the country only not through conventional avenues. It went to overseas bank accounts held by overnight Chavista millionaires created by the regime’s price controls. Inflation went from 100% to 1,000,000%. Buying power, well…the $200 a month minimum wage deemed unacceptable by Hugo Chavez when he took power was $7 A MONTH in 2019, under $5 A MONTH today, and that’s up from a low of just over 60 cents A MONTH. People that used to think about buying a car, a house, or taking a vacation now think about how to survive when a month’s minimum wage buys you 3 and 1/3 kilos of flour and noting more. As always, the socialist policies that were supposed to help “the people” only helped those in power and did nothing but inflict suffering on “the people”.

 What’s that I hear? It’s that broken record again. There was no major drought or famine. There was no war. There was no natural disaster. This is an economic disaster. A self-inflicted disaster. A Chavista- made disaster.

 That will do it for this week’s third world, dystopian dispatches. We’ll be back Monday with our next segment of Venezuela : Down The Rabbit Hole as well as more current news. Until then…Have a great weekend everybody!!!!