The latest from the Communist regime? Arresting shop owners:

Venezuela Confronts Retail Sector

Caracas Arrests CEO of Chain Store, Seizes Business, Alleging It Hoarded Goods; 20 Other Executives Held

In the past week, the CEO of supermarket chain Día Día was arrested after a meeting in the presidential palace, two dozen of its store managers brought in for questioning, and all 35 stores taken over by the government. Behind the Venezuelan government’s moves is its allegation that Día Día and other chains are hoarding food in an attempt to sow instability and overthrow the government.

Worse yet, Día Día Practimercados is a small grocery store chain that caters to Venezuelans living in the country’s slums.

The country’s economic doom can’t be blamed on fallin oil prices, either, since

Venezuela had the institutions it needed to prepare for a fall in oil prices. The main one was called FIEM and it was a Macroeconomic Stabilization Fund designed very specifically to prvent situations like the one we have today, by saving any windfall oil income above the average for the last five years in a rainy-day fund.

Miguel Octavio looks at the chaos,

But we don’t even know whether Maduro is completely in charge or whether others are telling him what to do, including his wife Cilia. But I am sorry to tell you, the Government is not acting as stupidly as many lead you to believe. To start, they got US 1.9 billion from the Dominican Republic, which purchased its Petrocaribe debt at less than half price. Then Citgo sold US$ 1.5 billion in a 2022 bond at a yield to maturity with a coupon of 11.5% and borrowed an additional US$1 billion from banks by pledging terminals and its shares. Not bad, US$ 4.5 billion at the blink of an eye in Maduro’s coffers. Jamaica could do the same and then Maduro may decide to close his eyes and send the gold to London and problem solved for 2015. Yeap, just like that, we are thinking 2016 and not 2015.

For now, since the regime will never admit that communism doesn’t work, and, unlike Cuba, it doesn’t have an embargo to blame yet, it needs scapegoats.

And now it’s the retailers turn.

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