The collapse of civilization
Yes, it has happened in war zones, but it's also happening in Venezuela right now due to gross misrule and the collapse of oil prices. The Gulf monarchies prepared for this eventuality by putting money away. They won't be able to live on their savings forever, but the Saudis have acknowledged that the end of the era when money gushes from oil wells is coming, and they have vowed to diversify their economy. Norway, though not as dependent on petroleum as the Saudis, is also preparing for the gravy train to end.Alaska and Louisiana did not plan; nor did West Virginia plan for the collapse of the coal industry. All three stat...
Source: Stayin' Alive - May 16, 2016 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
The IMF Predicts a Collapse of Venezuela's Bolivar
In January, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) told us that Venezuela’s annual inflation rate would hit 720 percent by the end of the year. The IMF’s World Economic Outlook, which was published in April, stuck with the 720 percent inflation forecast. What the IMF failed to do is tell us how they arrived at the forecast. Never mind. The press has repeated the 720 percent inflation forecast ad nauseam.
Since the IMF’s 720 percent forecast has been elevated to the status of a factoid, it is worth a bit of reflection and analysis. We can reverse engineer the IMF’s inflation forecast to determine the Bolivar to U.S....
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 16, 2016 Category: American Health Authors: Steve H. Hanke Source Type: blogs
“After Julio Rafael Parucho suffered a serious head injury...
"After Julio Rafael Parucho suffered a serious head injury a year ago, doctors removed a quarter of his brain. But because of a shortage of doctors, Julio, 32, has had to wait a year for a follow-up operation. The economic crisis in Venezuela, where Julio lives, has exploded into a public health emergency. Luis Razetti Hospital, where @meridithkohut photographed Julio, is a battlefield clinic in a country where there is no war. Even among Venezuela's failing hospitals, Luis Razetti has become one of the most notorious. For the past 2 and a half months, the hospital hasn't had a way to print X-rays, so patients must use a s...
Source: Kidney Notes - May 15, 2016 Category: Urology & Nephrology Authors: Joshua Schwimmer Source Type: blogs
Venezuela Hikes Minimum Wage 30 Percent in Midst of Economic Meltdown
This weekend Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro announced a 30 percent increase in the minimum wage. This marks the twelfth increase since he took over from Hugo Chavez in 2013, and comes on the heels of a 25 percent increase March 1. The minimum wage is now up to roughly $13.50 at the black market inflation rate. That’s not an hourly minimum, but $13.50 per month.
Due to disastrous economic policies and the recent fall in the price of oil, Venezuela’s economy, already teetering on the brink of a crisis, has plunged into full-fledged collapse in recent weeks. Venezuelans face dire shortages in everything from food to...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 3, 2016 Category: American Health Authors: Charles Hughes Source Type: blogs
A promising Ebolavirus antiviral compound
A small molecule antiviral compound has been shown to protect rhesus monkeys against lethal Ebolavirus disease, even when given up to three days after virus inoculation.
The compound, called GS-5734, is a nucleoside analog. After uptake into cells, GS-5734 is converted to a nucleoside triphosphate (illustrated, bottom panel) which is incorporated by the viral RNA dependent RNA polymerase as it copies the viral genome. However, the nucleoside is chemically different from ATP (illustrated, top) and no further nucleotides can be incorporated into the growing RNA strand. RNA synthesis ceases, blocking production of infect...
Source: virology blog - March 3, 2016 Category: Virology Authors: Vincent Racaniello Tags: Basic virology Information antiviral compound chain terminator ebolavirus nucleoside analog RNA polymerase rna synthesis viruses Source Type: blogs
“The road between Barquisimeto and Merida, #Venezuela. The...
"The road between Barquisimeto and Merida, #Venezuela. The photographer @meridithkohut traveled across Venezuela with @caseysalbum, a @nytimes reporter who has been chronicling the country's people, politics, language, quirks and culture every day for the last month. "I traveled across the country on what seemed, to many, the eve of a disaster," writes @caseysalbum, who just moved to Caracas. "It showed in the faces of the people along the journey, 1,200 miles in all, starting at the coast, winding through the Andes and finally dropping down into Venezuela's vast but dying agricultural plains." Visit the link in our profil...
Source: Kidney Notes - February 9, 2016 Category: Urology & Nephrology Authors: Joshua Schwimmer Source Type: blogs
Venezuela: Ricardo Hausmann versus Nicolas Maduro
Prof. Ricardo Hausmann, a native of Venezuela and professor at Harvard, concluded in a Financial Times op-ed last week that Venezuela will go down the tubes. Indeed, Hausmann wrote that “It is probably too late to avoid a Venezuelan catastrophe altogether. But to reduce its length and intensity, the country needs to adopt a sound economic plan that can garner ample international financial support. This is unlikely to happen while Mr. Maduro remains in power.”
The nub of Hausmann’s diagnosis of the infirmed patient is clear:
As bad as these numbers are, 2016 looks dramatically worse. Imports, which had already been co...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - February 8, 2016 Category: American Health Authors: Steve H. Hanke Source Type: blogs
Venezuela’s Lying Statistics
Surprise! Venezuela, the world’s most miserable country (according to my misery index) has just released an annualized inflation estimate for the quarter that ended September 2015. This is late on two counts. First, it has been nine months since the last estimate was released. Second, September 2015 is not January 2016. So, the newly released inflation estimate of 141.5% is out of date.
I estimate that the current implied annual inflation rate in Venezuela is 392%. That’s almost three times higher than the latest official estimate.
Venezuela’s notoriously incompetent central bank is producing lying statistics – jus...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - January 19, 2016 Category: American Health Authors: Steve H. Hanke Source Type: blogs
Venezuela v. Reality
Over a month ago — when Venezuelan’s were still living under the heel of Nicolás Maduro’s United Socialist party — Ilya Shapiro and I had a very interesting meeting with the folks behind DolarToday. As the Wikipedia article concerning it explains, DolarToday “is an American [nota bene] website that focuses on Latin American politics and finance. The company is more known for being an exchange rate reference to the Venezuelan bolívar, a currency which is not freely convertible.”
My reason for attending the meeting was obvious enough: Venezuela has recently been suffering from the world’s highest infla...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - December 16, 2015 Category: American Health Authors: George Selgin Source Type: blogs
Happy Human Rights Day
Today is Human Rights Day, a time we should celebrate great advances in human freedom through history—the rise of the rule of law, the abolition of slavery, the spread of religious liberty, the secular decline of violence, respect for free speech, etc.—as well as honor those groups and individuals working to promote or safeguard human rights in the many parts of the world they are currently being violated or threatened.
At Cato, we have been honored to host and work with human rights champions from around the globe, all of whom have suffered persecution for speaking truth to power. The list includes renowned Soviet dis...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - December 10, 2015 Category: American Health Authors: Ian Vásquez Source Type: blogs
The End of the Beginning of Chavismo in Venezuela
Of all the plausible scenarios for Venezuela’s parliamentary elections yesterday, the actual outcome is the most positive and, to me, the least expected.
Past midnight last night in Caracas, and more than five hours after polling stations closed, the head of the government-controlled National Electoral Council announced that the opposition Democratic Unity Movement (MUD) had won 99 seats in the National Assembly against 46 of the government’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). The other 22 seats supposedly remain too close to call. Within minutes, president Nicolás Maduro went on air to admit defeat, while bl...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - December 7, 2015 Category: American Health Authors: Juan Carlos Hidalgo Source Type: blogs
What to Expect of Argentina's New President
The election of Mauricio Macri as the new president of Argentina brings to a close 12 years of populist, interventionist and increasingly authoritarian Peronist rule by Cristina Fernández and her late husband Néstor Kirchner. Here are some observations of what’s ahead for Macri’s Argentina:
The meaning of “change”: Argentines were adamant ahead of the election that they wanted change. However, polls reflected that voters were tired of the confrontational governing style of President Fernández de Kirchner and her cadre, but not necessarily of her economic policies. The government successfully sold its so-called ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - November 23, 2015 Category: American Health Authors: Juan Carlos Hidalgo Source Type: blogs
The NYT Fails Its Inflation Exam
The front page of today’s New York Times contains reportage by William Neuman and Patricia Torres on the ravages of Venezuela’s inflation. The headline writer produced a very catchy title for Neuman and Torres: “In Venezuela, Even Thieves Prefer Dollars.” While the reporters turned up some colorful anecdotal evidence, they came up short when they attempted to deal with the hard facts.
Neuman and Torres claim that there is no estimate for inflation in war-torn Syria. This is not true. The Johns Hopkins-Cato Troubled Currencies Project, which I direct, produces reliable implied annual inflation rates for Syria each d...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - October 19, 2015 Category: American Health Authors: Steve H. Hanke Source Type: blogs
Designing Drugs That Kill Invasive Fungi Without Harming Humans
Invasive fungal infections kill more than 1 million worldwide people every year. Almost all of these deaths are due to fungi in one of these four groups. Credit: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Invasive fungal infections—the kind that infect the bloodstream, lung and brain—are inordinately deadly. A big part of the problem is the lack of drugs that are both effective against the fungi and nontoxic to humans.
The situation might change in the future though, thanks to the work of a multidisciplinary research team led by chemist Martin Burke at the University of Illinois. For years, the team has focused on an...
Source: Biomedical Beat Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - June 29, 2015 Category: Research Authors: Srivalli Subbaramaiah Tags: Chemistry and Biochemistry Pharmacology Drug Resistance Infection Medicines Source Type: blogs
The Three M’s: Milosevic, Mugabe, and Maduro
What do Slobodan Milosevic, Robert Mugabe, and Nicolás Maduro have in common? The Communist Manifesto and inflation.
At 480% per annum, Venezuela’s inflation is currently the world’s highest. The Bolivarian Revolution is pushing prices up at a rate of 36% per month. Will these punishing inflation numbers spell the end of President Nicolás Maduro’s reign? Maybe not. Milosevic’s Yugoslavia and Mugabe’s Zimbabwe witnessed much higher inflation rates, and both hung on for many years.
Slobodan Milosevic was in the saddle when inflation gutted the rump Yugoslavia. Milosevic’s inflationary madness reached its peak i...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 16, 2015 Category: American Health Authors: Steve H. Hanke Source Type: blogs
