On Saturday, October 14, 2017 at 12:59:38 PM UTC-7, BurfordTJustice wrote:
LOL!! Paging Bernie Sanders/trader

Socialism at its best..

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro signed an emergency decree earlier this
week extending expired passports for two more years amid a widespread
shortage of paper and ink at the government agency that issues the travel
documents.

Demand for new passports in Venezuela is at a record high - at least half a
million people have been trapped in the South American nation for months as
they wait for new travel documents, according to Britain's The Times - as
the economic and political crisis in the country continues with no end in
sight.

In August, neighboring Colombia reported that 58,000 Venezuelans immigrated
to the country in August, three times the monthly average at the beginning
of 2017, to escape the world's worst recession, soaring violent crime rates
and an increasingly volatile political situation.

The passport shortage, which was first announced back in March, is only the
latest item to be added to the list of scarcities in Venezuela.

In Caracas and elsewhere, Venezuelans have struggled for months - and in
some cases years - to get hold of supplies ranging from vital medications to
toilet paper to basic foodstuffs. A video recently went viral of a starving
homeless women in the Venezuelan resort town on Rio Chico, about 80 miles
east of Caracas, skinning and eating a cat in front of a shocked crowd.
Even those Venezuelans who have a valid passport will have a tough time
traveling abroad as the country's official currency, the bolivar, has
basically become worthless, with one bolÃ*var being worth about 10 cents in
the U.S.

Venezuela's political upheaval and crumbling economy - the value of a
bolÃ*var in now worth less than the fake gold used in the popular online
role-playing game "World of Warcraft" - has also caused a number of major
airlines to stop flights to and from the country.

In July, Colombian Avianca stopped service to Venezuela and Delta Air Lines
said it plans to suspend service in November. These two join a group of some
of the largest airlines in the world to stop flights to Venezuela - United,
LATAM, Lufthansa, Aeromexico and Air Canada are just a few
There are now only 10 international airlines that maintain service to
Venezuela: American Airlines, Air Europa, Air France, Caribbean Airlines,
Copa Airlines, Cubana, Iberia, Latin American Wings, Tame, TAP and Turkish
Airlines.

"This is a real tragedy for every Venezuelan," Jason Marczak, director of
the Latin America Economic Growth Initiative at the Atlantic Council's
Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center, told Fox News. "Commercial flights are
critical for Venezuelans who have the ability to leave the country and for
those who lobby for help from abroad."

Home to the world's largest oil reserves, Venezuela was for decades an
economic leader in the Western hemisphere and, despite a massive gap between
rich and poor, was a major destination for neighboring Colombians and other
Latin Americans fleeing their less prosperous and more troubled homelands..

But in 1999 with the rise to power of the late Hugo Chávez - whose social
and economic reforms initially endeared him to the poor but also set up an
unsustainable system of state spending - Venezuela's economy began to creep
toward a crisis.

The situation has been exacerbated by Maduro, Chávez's successor, who took
power in 2013, and by a plunge in global oil prices in 2015. The
International Monetary Fund projects Venezuela's inflation rate could reach
720 percent this year, and 93 percent of Venezuelans said their income was
not sufficient to buy the food they need, according to a study by some of
country's top universities.
Far from derailing Maduro, the Venezuelan leader appeared emboldened by the
sanctions, praising those accused by the U.S. government of undermining the
nation's democracy and abusing human rights.

"We don't recognize any sanction," he said. "For us, it's a recognition of
morality, loyalty to the nation and civic honesty."

..