SOCIALIST VENEZUELA IS BREATHING IT'S LAST

I have been covering the story of Venezuela rather closely over the past year, some of my previous posts can be found here and here, and in short articles for those that follow me on Facebook. To review some pertinent facts: Venezuela is governed by incompetent Socialist dictators that have ruined the nation and it's economy. The misguided dictators have nationalized private property and control almost all the means of production within the nation, and they compounded their foolish decisions by setting price controls and creating massive hyperinflation. The situation is so terrible, Venezuelans are fleeing their country by the hundreds of thousands.

 The only hope the Venezuelan government ever had at accomplishing anything with their economic boondoggle was the money brought in by PDVSA, the state owned oil company. However, even that has been a complete failure. The state owned oil company owes many of it's assets to properties seized from private businesses. Many of the skilled laborers and technical experts needed to run the company departed when the government began seizing properties, and they were replaced by overwhelmed, incompetent, and starving, ruling party favorites. As a result of this total calamity, Venezuela's oil production has fallen from 3.4 million barrels a day to less than 1.4 million barrels a day. But, the situation has only gotten worse. In a first of it's kind legal action, ConocoPhillips has seized properties owned by PDVSA. The US and other nations froze various assets owned by the Venezuelan government, and Venezuela's creditors are now filing lawsuits in order to gain access to those assets.

The mindless idiots of the Socialist party that control Venezuela have made a great many stupid decisions, and have left the nation, it's economy, and it's people in a state of ruin and despair. They owe billions of dollars to individuals and companies from whom they seized assets, in what can be compared to armed robbery. It is most likely that money will never be paid back, and what properties were seized by the power hungry Socialists will be lost forever. Perhaps the only chance Venezuela has for any sort of positive future is for the public to realize how badly the Socialists have botched the situation, and to unite and vote them out of office. However, things have been so bad for so long, it will take several decades for Venezuela to recover from the last 19 years of bungled government.

WHO CAN AFFORD THESE SUPER CURES??

Who can afford a one time medical treatment that costs hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars?
Almost nobody.
Only the most wealthy in society have the resources to pay for some of these whiz-bang George Jetson futurist cures at millions of dollars per treatment. Private health insurance and government funded Medicare will never cover the cost of these technological marvels.

What has caused this situation?
In a word, Inflation. The US and the Western World in general, are being destroyed by inflation. Inflation is a condition in which the value of currency is reduced, thereby giving the appearance of rising prices. It is NOT healthy for any society to have a period of prolonged inflation, because prices will rise faster than wages and the public will become impoverished. Let's look at the rising cost of living in this country, it has risen exponentially over the past 40 years, but wages have been stagnant. The cost of medical care and education have reached levels that would have been unimaginable thirty years ago. These new medical breakthroughs are following the same trend of rising prices, only in this case the government is actively pushing them along. I think the best explanation was given by the great economist Ludwig Von Mises over sixty years ago, he said

"The great inflations or our age are not acts of God. They are man-made, or to say it bluntly, government made. The are the off shoots of doctrines that ascribe to governments the magic power to create wealth out of nothing and making people happy by raising the national average." 

Moonshot Medicine: Who Can Afford It?

HOW POLITICAL CORRECTNESS DESTROYS PEOPLE'S LIVES

I found this on social mendia and decided to copy it verbatim. Political correctness is a destructive ideology that is being used to silence creativity, personal opinions, and the Truth. There is no better way to silence the Truth, than through public shaming and peer pressure.

It snowed all night long, so the morning went like this:
8:00: I made a snowman
8:10: A feminist passed by and asked me why I didn’t make a snow woman.

8:15: So, I made a snow woman.
8:17: The neighbors’ nanny complained about the snow woman’s voluptuous chest.
8:20: The gay couple living nearby grumbled that it could have been two snowmen instead.
8:25: The vegans at No. 12 complained about the carrot nose, as veggies are food and not to decorate snow figures with.
8:28: I was called a racist because the snow couple is white.
8:31: The Muslim gent across the road wanted the snow woman to wear a headscarf.
8:40: Someone called the cops who showed up to see what was going on.
8:42: I was told that the broomstick of the snowman needs to be removed because it could be used as a deadly weapon. Things got worse after I mutter : “Yeah, if it’s up your a**”
8:45: Local TV news crew showed up. I was asked if I knew the difference between snowmen and snow-women? I reply, “Snowballs” and am called a sexist.
8:52: My phone was seized and thoroughly checked while I was blindfolded and flown to the police station in a helicopter.
9:00: I’m on the news as a suspected terrorist bent on stirring up trouble during this difficult weather.
9:10: I was asked if I have any accomplices.
9:29: A little known jihadist group has claimed it was their plot.
There is no moral to this story. It’s just the America we live in today!

MIRACLES HAPPEN, CNN JUST PRAISED RAND PAUL

Senator Rand Paul, son of the famous libertarian Ron Paul, has once again committed an act of heroism by lambasting his own party, and CNN loved him for it. We've said it many times, there is no difference between the two parties at the national level. When Democrats are in power the Republicans talk conservative fiscal responsibility and balanced budgets, when Republicans are in power the roles are reversed. The ONLY exception to this was back during the 1990's when Newt Gingrich rammed the first balanced budget in many years right down everyone's throat. The media, and both parties, hated Gingrich for doing his job the right way. I imagine that Rand Paul will soon come under fierce scrutiny by everyone  in the media and politics, including his own party and his closest friends in the Senate. Nobody likes it when the ugly Truth is exposed.

THE MARKETS ARE FALLING AS PREDICTED

The financial markets around the world have finally begun to drop, as I have been saying they would. Why are they doing this? The reasons are complex, but easy to understand. To put it briefly, the Federal Reserve and Congress have abandoned their duty of ensuring the safety of our money and instead focused all their attention on scoring political points by convincing everyone that the government can create jobs and cause economic growth. This is a complete fabrication or lie. The only thing governments can do is to collect taxes, and create laws and regulations which affect the economy in the long term. However, a century ago during the First World War, governments realized they could borrow money from the future or just print it, and then spend almost limitless amounts of money which they created out of thin air. This spending pattern creates inflation. Inflation is defined as a period of rising prices, but this is caused due to a drop in the value of money. Putting excess amount of money into an economic system will always reduce the value of the given currency and thus raise prices.

This leads us to our current situation. The financial markets have tumbled because of fear that the Federal Reserve may raise interest rates. The Fed should have raised interest rates during the George W. Bush administration, right after 9-11. It's become too late to try to combat inflation, it is beyond control. I wrote about this on 01/20/2017, specifically I said:

"The amount of monetary inflation in the economy is beyond belief; it has become a super-sized bubble waiting to burst. When the inflation bubble finally bursts, the Federal Reserve will scramble to find enough cash to keep the banking system "liquid". During the 2007 Recession, Congress stepped in and put hundreds of billions of dollars in to the system in order to keep it moving. Basically, taxpayer money was used to prop up privately owned businesses. The taxpayers will never see that money again; it has disappeared into the TARP program. Over the past ten years, the Federal Reserve has pushed Trillions of dollars into the economy hoping it would stimulate a bit of economic growth. Their plan failed"

Now the chickens have come home to roost. Trump can not do anything about this, nor could any other resident of the White House. Congress is powerless, they've already put us in $20 TRILLION debt, they simple don't have any more money to waste. The Federal Reserve is also helpless, their policy of Quantitative Easing failed, and they have no other tools that will help.

What will happen next? An economic disaster the likes of which we have never seen.


http://money.cnn.com/2018/02/06/investing/stock-market-turmoil-global/index.html
https://thetruthstillmatters.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-hubris-of-janet-yellen-federal.html
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/inflation.asp
https://thetruthstillmatters.blogspot.com/2017/01/our-money-is-not-safe-hungry-sharks-are.html