{"id":174583,"date":"2010-01-13T09:36:03","date_gmt":"2010-01-13T14:36:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/shops-close-their-doors-after-hugo-chavez-devalues-the-currency-but-bans-price-increases-2010-1"},"modified":"2010-01-13T09:36:03","modified_gmt":"2010-01-13T14:36:03","slug":"venezuela-approaching-humanitarian-disaster-as-chavez-expropriates-food-retailers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/174583","title":{"rendered":"Venezuela Approaching Humanitarian Disaster As Chavez Expropriates Food Retailers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"float_right\" src=\"http:\/\/static.businessinsider.com\/~~\/f?id=4b1e56aa0000000000b4cdc7&amp;maxX=400\" border=\"0\" alt=\"hugo chavez, venezuela\" width=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Just after Hugo Chavez devalued the Venezuelan currency by 20%, he declared that companies weren&#8217;t allowed to raise their prices. Yet this would be an economic impossibility for any business. No business is sustainable if its profit margins are negative.<\/p>\n<p>As a result of this reality, it appears food retailers were caught in the mix trying to raise prices, and taken over.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/story.albuquerqueexpress.com\/index.php\/ct\/9\/cid\/3a8a80d6f705f8cc\/id\/588081\/cs\/1\/\">Albuquerque Express:<\/a> Government inspectors in Venezuela have closed many shops this week after the owners were accused of trying to manipulate last week&#8217;s currency devaluation.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">A group of supermarkets and other businesses across Venezuela have quickly been taken over by the tax inspectors for allegedly speculating and changing the price of products.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">Superstores belonging to the Exito supermarket chain were the first to be acquired by the government.<\/p>\n<p>Given the Venezuelan government&#8217;s track record for running companies, expect food shortages ahead. Really. Just look at the energy industry for cues. Oil-rich Venezuela has been forced to impose <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/worldnews\/southamerica\/venezuela\/6980473\/Venezuela-imposes-electricity-blackouts.html\">rolling black outs on itself<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>By devaluing its currency while simultaneously preventing commensurate price increases for food, Venezuela has created huge disincentives for production. While Venezuela&#8217;s energy shortages are pretty sad already, food shortages would be plain scary. Venezuela continues to read like an Ayn Rand novel.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/shops-close-their-doors-after-hugo-chavez-devalues-the-currency-but-bans-price-increases-2010-1#comments\">Join the conversation about this story &#187;<\/a><\/p>\n<p><b>See Also:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/venezuelans-rush-stores-for-tvs-video-games-as-chavez-threatens-military-action-against-price-increases-2010-1\">Venezuelans Rush Stores For TVs And Video Games, As Chavez Threatens Military Action To Prevent Price Hikes<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/huga-chavez-pushes-venezuela-towards-financial-crisis-2009-12\">Venezuela Bonds Suffer A Rout As Chavez Manufactures A Banking Crisis<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/out-of-capitalist-scapegoats-chavez-asks-venezuelans-to-prepare-for-colombian-war-2009-11\">Out of Capitalist Scapegoats, Chavez Asks Venezuelans To Prepare For Colombian War<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/TheMoneyGame\/~4\/2GbskgsvPkE\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just after Hugo Chavez devalued the Venezuelan currency by 20%, he declared that companies weren&#8217;t allowed to raise their prices. Yet this would be an economic impossibility for any business. No business is sustainable if its profit margins are negative. As a result of this reality, it appears food retailers were caught in the mix [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-174583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174583\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}