Agriculture minister Elias Jaua, has offered his solution to fight an inflation which is reaching any
time soon the 40% annual rate, second only to Zimbabwe and such type of well run economies. He just told folks to haggle when they go shopping, that it was the best way to stop speculators, hoarders, bandits and other scourges of socialistic economies such as the one his boss is promoting. We had already the solution of bartering offered by our beloved leader el supremo, now the second leg of XXI socialism shopping is complete: haggle! When you go to a supermarket and milk is too expensive (if you can find it) just haggle at the cashier. Beer too expensive for you? Haggle! It is so simple that we all wonder why we never thought of it before.The only question here is since we already used to haggle at open air farmer markets and other such shopping arenas (buhoneros), what are we going to do there now? If we are required to haggle at grocery stores does that mean at farmers market we'll need now to start fighting it out with the seller?
Obviously serious sectors of the economy are not amused by such a silly minister. In fact some ask whether the goods that are submitted to price control should also be haggled over...
The immense silliness of chavista ministers will never cease to surprise us. I wish it were a simple provocation but I suspect that no, it is not a provocation. What we are seeing is a government that refuses to face the music, that refuses to admit that most of the economical problems it is facing are of its own making. What we are seeing is a government that has run out of ideas and is simply losing its grip on reality.
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