This Is What The Death Of A Nation Looks Like: Venezuela Prepares For 720% Hyperinflation
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
01/22/2016
For citizens of Nicholas Maduro’s socialist paradise the news is terrible, and getting worse with every passing day.
Yesterday, we reported that one year after our November 2014 forecast, Barclays has decided that Venezuela is now past the “point of no return”, and a bankruptcy in 2016 will be “difficult to avoid.” But while some may have thought that this dramatic impact, while welcome by the rest of OPEC and oil bulls around the globe, would only impact the government, the reality is that this latest hit means a total disintegration of the economy and will take the country’s already staggering hyperinflation to previously unprecedented levels.
According to the latest IMF estimate, Venezuela’s consumer inflation, already the world’s highest, will triple this year to a level above all estimates from economists surveyed by Bloomberg.
This is because the IMF, which until recently had predicted “only” 204% inflation for Venezuela, already higher than the 140% consensus, revised its numbers and now sees a mindblowing 750% hyperinflation in 2016: this means that the average price of products and services will increase over eight times over the span of the next 12 months.
Bloomberg reports that inflation will surge to 720 percent in 2016 from 275 percent last year, according to a note published by the IMF’s Western Hemisphere Director, Alejandro Werner. That’s nearly quadruple the median 184 percent estimate from 12 economists surveyed by Bloomberg, and exceeding the highest forecast of 700 percent from Nomura Securities.
Venezuela’s central bank published economic statistics Jan. 15 for the first time in a year, confirming that inflation had reached triple digits and closed the third quarter at 141.5 percent on an annual basis. As of December 2014, the last time data was released, inflation was 68.5 percent.
It has gotten so surreal, that the local central bank accused websites that track the dollar’s street value of “destroying prices” and installing a “savage” form of capitalism in the country, adding that 60 percent of inflation was the result of currency manipulation.
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