lifestyle leader

Venezuela has taken the "war on inflation" to a new level (via DeLong):

"Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s president, on Sunday threatened to deploy troops and expropriate businesses that increase their prices following a steep devaluation of the currency on Friday.... Go ahead and speculate if you want, but we will take your business away and give it to the workers, to the people,” he said, stating there was no reason for businesses to raise prices."

Hmm, expropriation by the government for the good of the people.... Maintaining that level of doublespeak must be exhausting. More likely, this money will be used by the government to pay back foreign creditors.

I gather that Venezuela's currency had been overvalued for quite some time, so this is a good news for Venezuela's revenues from oil exports, on which it relies for about 30% of GDP. That very same GDP contracted by about 3% last year.

Unfortunately for regular Venezuelans, this means that their personal savings have been devalued along with the currency, and those lovely imported DVD players are going to be more expensive. But that's okay! because you can't use a DVD player if you don't have any electricity!