A Message For Bernie Sanders.

With Hillary Clinton's continuing and growing problems with Servergate, her general lack of credibility, and young voters flocking to Sanders, the possibility of her getting the rug of inevitability jerked out from under her once again is becoming very real.

Not that I won't be among the legions who will shed not a single tear over the (hopefully) final demise of her political career but I won't be joining the crowds of witless morons cheering on Bernie Sanders and his delusional dreams of an American socialist utopia.

Before anyone thinks that Bernie has or may inherit any inevitability they had best cast a careful examining eye across the Caribbean Sea to that other socialist utopia of the Americas, namely Venezuela.  It has not been a great secret that Venezuela's economy was heading into the dumper long before the former President Chavez succumbed to his appropriately diagnosed asshole cancer.

Startling shortages of basic commodities such as toilet paper, coffee and butter have many on edge and angry. Mix in collapsing prices for domesticly produced commodities like oil and copper and the means of obtaining the hard currency needed to purchace the everyday suppies of any functioning economy become even more strained.

Last year alone Venezuela suffered some 275% inflation and for 2016 the painful number is projected to rise to something in excess of 720%.

Another event in recent, but little noted Venezuelan history was the repatriation of its national gold reserves from storage vaults in Germany. At the time there was speculation as to what the government was going to do with some 58 tons of gold bullion. Rather than create even limited amounts of gold backed currency, they apparently had it earmarked for something more nefarious. One has to wonder how much of it was squandered on the contracting of some thirty seven Boing 747 carco plane loads hired to bring in, quite literally, hundreds of tons of freshly printed Venezuelan bank notes.

History has frequently shown massive hyperinflation often leads to social unrest and political/military coups. Somehow I don't think Muduro and his communist cabal are going to sit around waiting for that to happen anytime soon.

With the Venezuelan military having already declared their political loyalty to the communist/socialist presidential regime rather than to the National Constitution and the duely elected opposition controlled legislature, a defacto military dictatorship has been created.

Somehow I don't see Muduro and company using any of this newly printed currency to alleviate the public's pain and suffering. I can much more easily envision them following the Zimbabwe model. Keep the military well fed, well paid and loyal to El Presidenti. That way he can protect his back and step up the demonization of his enemies and his demands for the nationalization of any and all successful private business for "the good of the people".

It won't work of course because those bank notes will grow increasing worthless for any foreign exchange and their won't be any gold left to buy any more worthless paper. When the army stops getting paid then the real fun begins.

It looks like the communists in Caracas are in a race to see how quickly they can convert a mineral and oil rich nation into just another failed and impoverished state that will measure right up there with Bolivia.

Don't expect any of the current poorly educated college students supporting their new idol to see any relevance to this. Well at least not until Sanders's promises turn to the tast of bitter ashes in their mouths. Maybe not even then.