In Venezuela, It's not a 'Humanitarian' Crisis. It's a Socialist Crisis

The disaster unfolding in Venezuela is entirely the fault of the Venezuelans who elected first Hugo Chavez and then Nicolas Maduro. But check out the way CNN Money frames what’s happening:

You name it, Venezuela is short of it: Meat, fish, fruits, sugar and bread. The government just doesn’t have enough money to pay for them. It’s created a staggering humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, where citizens don’t have enough food to eat. Looting and riots have rocked the country. The declines in exports of certain food categories are staggering.

Bread shipments to Venezuela fell 94% in the first half of 2016 compared to the the same period last year. That’s $216,000 worth of bread this year, versus $3.5 million last year. Meat exports declined 63% to $127 million, from nearly $350 million last year Exports of fruit such as bananas and strawberries plunged 99%, to $159,000, from $21 million Fish exports dropped 87% Sugar fell 34%

The numbers come from Panjiva, a global trade analytics firm, which pulls data from the United Nations, U.S. customs and other governments. For this article, Panjiva pulled export data from the United States, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Chile. Venezuela likely gets food from other countries that were excluded from this analysis.

Venezuelans “can’t buy bread and meat and all you can really get is cereals — the really, really basic stuff,” says Chris Rogers, a research analyst at Panjiva.

Gee, that’s too damn bad.

Venezuela’s economy has plunged into a deep recession and the country is fast running out of cash. The key problem behind Venezuela’s inability to pay its bills is that the value of its currency, the bolivar, has plummeted dramatically in the last couple of years. That’s made paying for food imports prohibitively expensive.

“The Brazilians aren’t unwilling to sell meat to Venezuela. It’s not a political thing. The Venezuelans just don’t have the money,” says Rogers.

I wonder why. Read the whole thing and notice the one word you don’t see in the article. Go ahead, I dare you.