Yesterday I posted that Chavez had nationalized the Venezuelan-based assets of U.S.-based food giant Cargill and threatened to do the same with the Caracas-based food maker Polar, in addition to setting quotas for food staples which are to be sold at government-imposed prices.
Back in 2007 there were food shortages
According to a poll of 1,300 people conducted by private firm Datanalisis, 73 percent admitted having difficultied finding sugar; 52 percent had problems finding beef, and more than 45 percent could not find powdered milk and chicken.
Clearly price controls and government intervention didn’t work in easing the food shortages, but as I have mentioned before, the issue is consolidating power.
So we’ll see more price controls and nationalization. Noticias 24 (article in Spanish) today reports that Tras tomar el arroz, ahora van por la harina, el aceite y el ‘papel toilette’ After taking over the rice, now they’re going for the flour, the cooking oil and the toilet paper.
All for the sake of “protecting the people”, in Chavez’s own words.
I’ll be talking about this in today’s podcast at 11AM Eastern. See you there! (This is the Van Dyck portrait I mentioned in the podcast)
It better not be Charmin; after all, the Gorebal “Warming” acolytes have a problem with comfortable TP.
Amiga Fausta, don’t worry about there not being enough toilet paper in Venezuela. They can now use Chávez weekly newspaper column for that purpose 😛