Fidel Castro, the Worst of the Worst
Fidel Castro died, finally. His life was consequential, but his death was anti-climactic. The world has been expecting Castro ’s demise for at least 10 years when he handed power to his brother Raul because of illness, and Cubans have been waiting far longer. But like Cuban communism, Castro seemingly refused to die, even when his ideas long ago failed to inspire widespread enthusiasm, and indeed led his country to ruin and generated resignation, fear and rejection among Cubans who had to live under the only totalitarian system this hemisphere has ever seen.Six years ago, Cuban dissident Yoani Sanchez captured the mindse...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - November 28, 2016 Category: American Health Authors: Ian V ásquez Source Type: blogs
Venezuela ’s Inflation – Zero Hedge Repeats the Errors Printed Ad Nauseam in the Financial Press
With each passing day, I find myself reading wildly inaccurate reports about Venezuela ’s inflation. I have already had to take no less than the Wall Street Journal to task for its misreporting. Now, it’s Zero Hedge’s one and only Tyler Durden’s time. On October 27th, he asserted that Venezuela was on the cusp of hyperinflation. Durden’s assertion is dead wrong.Durden relies on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for his inflation data, as well as estimates for Venezuela ’s inflation. This is a big blunder, as the IMF’s reports on Venezuela contain no indication of their methodology. Indeed, it’s clea...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - October 31, 2016 Category: American Health Authors: Steve H. Hanke Source Type: blogs
Venezuela ’s Inflation: The Wall Street Journal’s Reportage is Off, Way Off
This report projects Venezuela’s annual inflation to average 475.8 percent for 2016, a far cry from my current estimate of 55 percent. The IMF’s figure, though, gives the appearance of a finger-in-the-wind approach because n o methodology accompanies the IMF’s October report. The 95% rule reigns – 95% of what you read in the financial press is either wrong or irrelevant. So, how does one make an accurate estimate of inflation in countries experiencing elevated inflation levels? The Johns Hopkins-Cato Institute Troubled Currencies Project calculates reliable inflation estimates. These are based on changes in b...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - October 26, 2016 Category: American Health Authors: Steve H. Hanke Source Type: blogs
Economic Freedom and Infants ’ Lives
Recentreports that infants now die at a higher rate in Venezuela than in war-torn Syria were, sadly, unsurprising —the results ofsocialist economics are predictable. Venezuela ’s infant mortality rate has actually been above Syria’s since 2008. The big picture, fortunately, is happier. The global infant mortality rate has plummeted. Even Syria and Venezuela, despite the impact of war and failed policies, saw improvements up to as recently as last year. From 1960 to 2015, Syria ’s infant mortality rate fell by 91% and Venezuela’s by 78%. This year (not reflected in the graph above or below), Syria’s rate rose f...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - October 18, 2016 Category: American Health Authors: Chelsea Follett Source Type: blogs
Forced Labor In Venezuela -- and In Postwar Britain
As Venezuelan socialism descends intotyranny,hunger, and chaos, amilestone came in July when a government ministry announced Resolution No. 9855, under whose provisions,quoting CNBC, “workers can be forcefully moved from their jobs to work in farm fields or elsewhere in the agricultural sector for periods of 60 days.” Amnesty International says the decree “effectively amounts to forced labor.” Strongman Nicolas Maduro has likewise imposed harsh legal penalties on busines ses that close down their operations.It all echoes theDirective 10-289 (all workers “shall henceforth be attached to their jobs and shall...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - September 2, 2016 Category: American Health Authors: Walter Olson Source Type: blogs
AETNA, Poor People and Stuff
By MARGALIT GUR-ARIE
Discrimination in health care was institutionalized in Independence, Missouri on July 30, 1965 when President Johnson signed the Social Security Amendments of 1965 into law, creating “two moral frameworks for public financing of healthcare”. Medicare was supposedly an “earned” right for the elderly, while Medicaid was framed as a “welfare” program for the poor. It was a necessary political compromise. It was just a first step and bigger and better things would certainly be accomplished in due course. It was better than nothing. But fifty years later, and after taking yet another “first st...
Source: The Health Care Blog - September 1, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
Venezuelan Regime Kidnaps Yon Goicoechea, Friedman Prize Winner
Members of what was surely the Venezuelan regime ’s secret police yesterday kidnapped opposition leader and2008 Milton Friedman Prize winner Yon Goicoechea from his car after he left his home. Diosdado Cabello, the second most powerful person in the regime, publicly announced that the government had arrested Yon on the bogus claim that he was carrying explosives. In thevideo broadcast on national television, Cabello referred to the $500,000 Friedman Prize award that Yon received as evidence that Yon was some sort of foreign-employed agent bent on terrorism. “That man was trained by the U.S. empire for years,” he sa...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - August 30, 2016 Category: American Health Authors: Ian V ásquez Source Type: blogs
Venezuela's Death Spiral, Dollarization Is The Cure
With the arrival of President Hugo Chávez in 1999, Venezuela embraced Chavismo, a form of Andean socialism. In 2013, Chávez met the Grim Reaper and Nicolás Maduro assumed Chávez’s mantle.
Chavismo has not been confined to Venezuela, however. A form of it has been adopted by Rafael Correa – a leftist economist who became president of a dollarized Ecuador in 2007.
Even though the broad outlines of their economic models are the same, the performance of Venezuela and Ecuador are in stark contrast with one another.
The most telling contrast between Venezuela’s Chavismo and Ecuador’s Chavismo Dollarized can be seen i...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 28, 2016 Category: American Health Authors: Steve H. Hanke Source Type: blogs
Hunger in Venezuela
Hunger is very a strong word. It evokes images of famine and destitution in failed nations half a world away. I was hesitant to use it when describing the situation in Venezuela. I had visited that country four times in the last seven years and witnessed its economic decline first hand. During a trip to the industrial city of Barquisimeto in November 2014, I saw for the first time the effects of shortages, with hundreds of people lining up outside of a drugstore to get toilet paper and toothpaste. I knew things had deteriorated further since, with reports of widespread scarcity of food all over the country. But hunger?
I...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 20, 2016 Category: American Health Authors: Juan Carlos Hidalgo Source Type: blogs
Economic Lessons from Muhammad Ali
Since the passing of Muhammad Ali, the establishment has been working in overdrive to convince us that the great boxer was a member of their club. In doing so, the wisdom and wit of Ali has been on display.
Muhammad Ali’s lessons on economics, however, have been absent. Economics? Yes. The lessons were developed in a most edifying book by Donald Sull, The Upside of Turbulence: Seizing Opportunity in an Uncertain World. New York: Harper Collins, 2009 – a book that Mohamed El-Erian recommended to me.
The economic lessons are summarized in “The Boxer Matrix.” A boxer’s fate is determined by a combination of his a...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 14, 2016 Category: American Health Authors: Steve H. Hanke Source Type: blogs
Cuba, Venezuela, and the Eternal Shortage of Toilet Paper
Marketplace Radio takes a look at the challenge of filming movies and television shows in Cuba, focusing specifically on Showtime’s “House of Lies” starring Don Cheadle. The episode is titled “No es facil” – “It’s not easy.” The title appears to be a description of doing business in Cuba, and also of filming a show about doing business in Cuba. As Marketplace’s Adrienne Hill and show creator Matthew Carnahan explain:
Camera equipment was shipped from Germany because it couldn’t be sent directly from the U.S. Even basic supplies – “there’s not hammers and toilet paper, and things that people ne...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 13, 2016 Category: American Health Authors: David Boaz Source Type: blogs
Socialism Destroys Venezuela as its People Feel the “Bern”
Venezuela no longer can feed or care for its people. Yet many Americans have forgotten what socialism really is. Sen. Bernie Sanders campaigns as if Karl Marx was just another Santa Claus.
Real socialism largely disappeared decades ago. The collapse of the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites effectively ended the age of collectivism.
Nevertheless, oil-rich Venezuela since became a flamboyant exponent of socialism. Its travails should remind us how America’s power is built upon a prosperous economy. Prodigal spending at home and promiscuous intervention abroad are undermining our nation’s economic foundatio...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 7, 2016 Category: American Health Authors: Doug Bandow Source Type: blogs
The IMF's Feeding the Press Unreliable Inflation Figures on Venezuela
I have been saving bits of misreported statistical string about Venezuela’s inflation over the past couple of months, and it has become a giant ball. The bits all come from the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
The IMF’s World Economic Outlook (April 2016) forecasts inflation to rise to 720 percent by the end of 2016. This number, which is nothing more than a guestimate, is now carved in stone. The media, from Bloomberg, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, to countless other ostensibly credible sources, repeats that guestimate ad nauseam.
Instead of reporting pie-in-the-sky estimates for ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 7, 2016 Category: American Health Authors: Steve H. Hanke Source Type: blogs
