Hyperinflation as a weapon of mass destruction: Case of Venezuela

Source in Spanish - Crisis in Venezuela: 7 graphs that explain the economic and political situation in the South American country

When you look at the graphic that starts this publication, the timeline has two milestones marked, the first indicates the date that the late Ex-President Chavez began his government and the second milestone marks when his political heir, the current President Maduro assumed the government.

Certainly the way the graph changes is remarkable, it shows that inflation soared in an alarming way during the Maduro government. But, it must be considered that it is not very reasonable to separate both governments as if they were opposing factions, the current ruler is a continuation of the work of the previous one.

What changed things were factors external to the control of the Venezuelan political caste, mainly the price of the main export product, oil and its derivatives, although it should be noted that there are also internal factors, such as the active and systematic annihilation of specialized workforce in the oil sector by the government ...

Wait ... a government attacked the nation's main source of income and actively destroyed its wealth-producing capabilities? The answer is YES, they did that since the first decade of the current century and they made a lot of effort to bring the Venezuelan oil industry to a lamentable state in which it does not produce even the minimum necessary to feed its internal market, even less to export to the old levels it had when it was part of the founders of OPEC.

In addition, the monetary, fiscal and economic policies in general that the Chavista government, both the previous and the current one, took and executed with fury, were aimed at destroying the value of the currency and creating a population subordinate to populist and welfare policies. , to a certain extent as if it were a systematic plan to achieve a slave and impoverished population at levels similar to those that a 20th century country would have when it suffered a declared war or a military occupation.

Certainly, the international political and economic forces do not have clean hands on this problem, but the current disaster would not have reached the extreme without the collaboration of the government to destroy the private and public economy.

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