Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro inaugurates a new state of bad news in Venezuela: Like his Cuban Communist bosses, Maduro is now incarcerating business owners. Their crime? Owning a business:

Venezuela Arrests 100 ‘Bourgeois’ Businessmen In Crackdown, Maduro Says

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said on Thursday that authorities had arrested more than 100 “bourgeois” businessmen in a crackdown on alleged price-gouging since the weekend. “We have more than 100 of the bourgeoisie behind bars at the moment,” Maduro said in a speech to the nation.

One of them movingly tries to protest (in Spanish) in vain,

Make no mistake, this is the start of the really bad news.

Venezuela’s House of Cards goes from bad to worse, as Steve Hanke points out:

the implied monthly inflation rate has now ramped up to 36%, as shown in the chart below. That’s dangerously close to the hyperinflation threshold of 50% per month. This is due to an accelerating depreciation of the bolivar, reflecting Venezuelan’s deteriorating economic outlook.

Indeed, the repression is going to worsen, as the regime will never admit that Communism doesn’t work.



