Caracas Chronicles

An anonymous reader points out an interesting paradox. Instead of rehashing it, I’ll just reproduce her point verbatim:

"I know you’ve already gone on at great length about the Fat Man’s slender grasp of basic economics. But I don’t think I’ve yet seen anyone point out the gaping hole in the President’s logic when it comes to the issue of supposed money-laundering.

Here, for instance, is Chávez yesterday:

‘Speculators … were killing several birds with one stone and made a killing in the meantime. They would launder dollars from the drug trade or counterfeit dollars, they made huge profits, and aside from that, they managed to ramp up the exchange rate by forcing it to go to eight or nine (BsFs per $), causing enormous harm to the country because, thanks to that they justified their speculation and caused inflation to soar.’

If I understand him correctly, the comandante-presidente is saying that by injecting large amounts of dollars of dubious origin into the permuta market, the evil capitalist running-dogs CAUSED THE PRICE OF THE DOLLAR TO RISE !

If so, we should track them down and recommend to the Nobel committee that the next economics prize go to Venezuelan money-launderers. This would surely be a ‘first’ comparable to yesterday’s announcement of the first artificial life form: the first time in history that prices of a given item have risen due to over-supply."

(Hat tip: you know who you are. As we’ve said before, our readers are the best thing about this blog).