With oil prices off their highs, his country in a recession and prices soaring, President Hugo Chavez devalued the bolivar and “vowed to fight speculation and price increases that could result from the devaluation.”
At Caracas’s middle-class Sambil shopping mall, lines at cashiers reached 50-deep. Carmen Blanco, a 28-year-old accountant, waited to buy a 42-inch flat-screen television she doesn’t need because she already has one at home.
“It doesn’t make any sense to keep my savings,” Ms. Blanco said Saturday. “I’d love to see how things work in a normal country.”
Rothbard described this in The Mystery of Banking : “Chaos ensues, for now the psychology of the public is not merely inflationary, but hyperinflationary, and Phase III’s runaway psychology is as follows: “The value of money is disappearing even as I sit here and contemplate it. I must get rid of money right away, and buy anything, it matters not what, so long as it isn’t money.” A frantic rush ensues to get rid of money at all costs and to buy anything else.”
