Venezuela, where a hamburger is officially $170

[Bacchus4.0]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/venezuela-where-hamburger-officially-170-184605711.html

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A hamburger sold for 1,700 Venezuelan bolivares is $170, or a 69,000-bolivar hotel room is $6,900 a night, based on the official rate of 10 bolivares for $1.

But of course no merchant is pricing at the official rate imposed under currency controls. It's the black market rate of 1,000 bolivares per dollar that's applied.

But for Venezuelans paid in hyperinflation-hit bolivares, and living in an economy relying on mostly imported goods or raw materials, conditions are unthinkably expensive.

Even for the middle class, most of it sliding into poverty, hamburgers and hotels are out-of-reach excesses.

[DetlefK]

1. How dare you blame Venezuela's currency-problems on Maduro's currency-policies!!!

The US clearly schemed to bankrupt Venezuela with $170 hamburgers!!!

[COLGATE4]

2. Yeah! Maduro is obviously a CIA plant.

[DetlefK]

3. Whoa. That's either batshit crazy or the plot for the best thriller ever.

A CIA-plant to destabilize and subdue a country to US-control. While simultaneously fighting other domestic political rivals who ALSO have connections to the US but want to take control of Venezuela for themselves.



Reminds me somehow of Iain Banks' novel "Use of Weapons". A mercenary gets hired as a strategic advisor to support one side in a civil-war that has turned into a proxy-war of foreign powers. But as his side starts winning, he gets new orders: He must ensure that this civil-war ends soon and it must end in a DRAW: No winner, no loser.

[COLGATE4]

4. Didn't think I needed the 'sarcasm' thingy...

[DetlefK]

5. I got that it's sarcasm, but...

My question was: Is this premise just crazy? Or is it so over-the-top crazy that it would make a good movie?

[COLGATE4]

6. It'd make a hell of a movie. Maybe Eva Golinger could star

as the heroine (you know, bandoliers slung over her strategically bare shoulders as she fires her AK-47 at the dastardly CIA agents who are throttling the Peoples' Revolution).