This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Venezuela Runs Out Of French Fries As Default Fears Mount
With Venezuelan bonds re-collapsing as belief in a 30c recovery floor fades rapidly (and hyperinflating Venezuelan stocks soar - whether oil prices are rising or falling), the people of Maduro's socialist utopia have a new problem to contend with. After running out of toilet paper, and finding soap and shampoo hard to come by, AP reports Venezuela's more than 100 McDonald's franchises have run out of potatoes and are now serving alternatives like deep-fried arepa flatbreads or yuca, "because of the situation here; it's a total debacle."
Venezuelan bonds have further to fall...
But CNBC Venezuela (should such a monstrosity be allowed to exist) would be loving the hyperinflation...
As CDS soar to record highs. But, as AP reports, now it's getting serious...
Venezuela's more than 100 McDonald's franchises have run out of potatoes and are now serving alternatives like deep-fried arepa flatbreads or yuca, a starchy staple of traditional South American cooking.
McDonald's is blaming a contract dispute with West Coast dock workers for halting the export of frozen fries to the country. The dispute also caused several days of French fry rationing in Japan last month. But Sonia Ruseler, an Argentina-based spokeswoman for Arcos Dorados, which runs McDonald's restaurants in Latin America, declined to say Tuesday why Venezuela's neighbors are not suffering from similar scarcity.
Accustomed to shortages of their favorite foods, and equally in the habit of grumbling about the government as they walk away empty-handed, many Venezuelans assume the embattled socialist administration is to blame.
"It's because of the situation here; it's a total debacle," said Maria Guerreiro, who huffed out of a Caracas McDonald's with her family when she found out they were serving only fries made of yuca, which is also known as cassava. Her daughter won't eat the super-starchy root, she said, and they'd come for the sole purpose of treating the two-year-old to a Happy Meal.
Ruseler said the corporation is working to resolve the shortages, and in the meantime, "will continue to give our clients the McDonald's experience, offering 100 percent Venezuelan options."
...
Most of the shortages in Venezuela are driven in part by the country's tight currency controls, which make it hard to get dollars at a subsidized rate for imports while creating a thriving black market for currency.
As a result, the country either has the most expensive Happy Meal in the world ($27 the official exchange rate) or the cheapest (90 cents at the black market rate).
McDonald's has likely been grappling with shortages in Venezuela for a while, according to Alixa Sharkey, a researcher with the market research company Euromonitor International. And while other countries might be able to adjust to hiccups at the ports by finding alternate solutions like flying in frozen potatoes, the dysfunction in Venezuela makes these workarounds impossible.
"This situation probably has little to do with the U.S. port dispute and is mostly the result of Venezuela's very difficult economic situation," she said.
While McDonald's may be the ultimate symbol of U.S. capitalism, the socialist government seems acutely aware that Venezuelans relish their Happy Meals. A state-sponsored news website posted a story this week assuring the situation "has nothing at all to do" with government policy.
* * *
But Venezuela has more problems, as Bloomberg reports, foreign companies working to develop some of Venezuela’s most prized oilfields are asking to be compensated with crude as a way to recover hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid cash owed to them, a person with direct knowledge of the request said...
The money is owed by Venezuela’s state oil company to partners including Spain’s Repsol SA (REP) and India’s Oil & Natural Gas Corp., the person said, asking not to be named as the matter is private. One of the companies is owed $500 million, the person said. Output at the Carabobo and San Cristobal fields in the Orinoco heavy oil belt, meanwhile, is trailing targets.
The request to be reimbursed with oil is shining a light on the growing severity of Venezuela’s financial predicament. Boasting the world’s biggest oil reserves, the Latin American nation has seen its crude output slump since 2008 and imports of refined products surge as Petroleos de Venezuela SA revenue is diverted to social programs and fuel subsidies. Tumbling crude prices, dwindling foreign reserves and surging inflation made Venezuelan bonds the worst performers in emerging markets last year, with the implied probability of default over the next five years at 90 percent, the highest in the world.
“To the extent that PDVSA is being pulled in different directions and being used as a social financial arm, then it’s certainly an impediment to its ability to meet investment commitments,” Eurasia Group analyst Risa Grais-Targow said by telephone from Washington.
* * *
Not good.
»
- 10493 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
Next up, Mud Cookies for their Happy Meal Treat.
pods
Has France delayed shipments?
What, they can't grow potatos in Venezula?
Turns out there's more money in coca.
They have the world's biggest oil reserves and can't get french fries. Something ain't right!
Obama is in the mix somewhere. Based on history you can bet on it. Maybe Michelle's "healthy meal" initiative.
Maybe the Fed didn't tell them they can buy a top of the line money printing machine on Alibaba for less than $50,000
http://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?fsb=y&IndexArea=product_en&CatId=43&...
Deep fried yuca is vastly superior to French fries.
If you haven't tried it you should.
I hope they don't run out of burrito coverings!
They don't eat them, yucca is the more standard local product. This is after all, McDonalds, an americaniztion that no one really gives a shit about not having down there.
McDonalds and Wendy's are everywhere down there. Maybe grandma does't care but the teenagers damn sure do.
Aunt Hilda's Prison Camp Soup, the Daily Special at Camp 17.
Warm water and rocks
See you fucking Progressive assholes world wide, this is exactly where your central planning, rat ass bastard Commie Socialist world ends. Y'all belong dying in Hell right aside your Harvard, Princeton and Yalie seers and so called educators, prophesying your sophist rubbish, lies and falsehoods worshiping your statist funding and false Gods while people starve. Fuck Socialists (whether business socialism or calls/economic/people socialism) because you steal enough form everybody for somebody else and soon nothings left after its been stolen. Y'all hear that "Leadership"?
Perhaps just one last serving, a final treat for all the masses of One Last .... Mary's Happy Singing Escargot, no?
No Escargot for You!
Seriously Knuckles, what is your opinion. LOL.
PS: I totally agree.
"They are a leaderless group without a leader" Nikki Haley, SC gov.
I came to the conclusion that to them we are not worthy of their failures long time ago.
Even in Venezuela, just BTFD. Nuff said.
If you don't have french fries, you don't need toilet paper, right?
Just move to Japan where the toilets are designed with no TP in mind.
No Mac fries.....some folk just don't know when they are well off......!
As McDonalds goes so goes the Country
Sell your land Maduro
Free and clear
Especially clear of Venezuelans
Come on you statist junkie, you know you want the hit, you need it, take the money
No Freedom Fries - WTF.
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Getting like the old Soviet block countries. The US is slowly getting there.
Like slowly boiling a frog. As designed by the New World Order.
I love Arepas.
Um, this is making it sound like it's a bad thing to not have greasy, heart attck causing McDonald's french fries.
Fat does not clog arteries, carbs that become sugars and are then stored as FAT do. Read up on Wheat Belly and Wheat Brain, why do you suppose so many people are acting like sheep in a herd? You most certainly ARE what you EAT.
Yuca is an improvement over potatoes
Yuca is a huge improvement. Cactus has a fantastic balance of fiber, protein and a delicious blend of sweet & salty juices.
of course, after the sticklers are removed -
Nova
Yuca as known in S America is not a cactus
Plenty of it, local jobs, probably cheaper than imported potatoes. Tasty.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassava
Its really getting bad there....just the oil companies not producing...their income..and not paying their bills...stealing their income.....this will get worse and worse....you will see the fields production crash as no company is going to spend money when they will not get paid for it...I expect a coup this year...to save the country
A coup led by who? The military?
Will that level of internal strife cause all Venezuelan oil to go offline, decreasing supply in the market, raising prices?
"A coup led by who? The military?"
ISIS?
CIA is already all over it. They love doing that stuff.
Looks like our plan to crush oil producing countries, with major assistance from ally and 9/11 veteran Saudi Arabia ( Motherland of Osama) is working great. There may be collateral damage for a few million foreigners, , but, hey,, mayhem is our middle name.
For a moment I read that comment as Saudi Arabia ( Motherland of Obama). Still has that ring of truth.
Can you imagine the riots in the streets if McD's ran out of fries in America?
I don't see a problem. You could always just go to Burger King.
Maybe the Venezuelans will figure this out?
run out of fries and they might actually burn down police stations and .gov buildings.
Meh... french fries are just an excuse to eat ketchup anyway.
Have you noticed how silky smooth the Heinz Ketchup is these days, no texture at all. I wonder what it is really made of? I can still recall the "anticipation" commercial where it actually looked like something made of tomato, oh well lots of recipes out there to make your own REAL ketchup...
I know shit's bad right now. With all that starving bullshit... And the dust storms.... And us running out of french fries and burrito coverings...
No French-Fries? This is disastrous on a Biblical scale.
The End is Truly Near!
Its obvious that the US and the CIA is pulling VZ down. The secret info is "squirrel melts". An Army marches on its stomach..so..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RlK0Xd4c2c
Aw, gee having to server fried yucca which is the native product instead of frozen potatoes from the US, too bad so sad. Who gives a shit? Not Venezuelans that is for sure. I would rather have the local product anyway. As to the running out of toilet paper, not sure how that happens since they have lot's of trees there that are exported here at cheap rates. Most of the reporting about how bad it is down there is just yellow journalism intended to give the impression to people here that low oil is killing the enemies of the US govt while not harming the US. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Not wishing to appear pendantic, I must remind you that potatos are a tuber indigenous to the Americas.
They have potatos up the ass*, frozen or otherwise.
The problem is having something to exchange for them.
*figurativly speaking.
"As to the running out of toilet paper, not sure how that happens since they have lot's of trees there that are exported here at cheap rates."
If you're not sure how that happens, then you don't understand how centrally planned economies work. There are few native TP factories, and the ones that exist can't pay their employees. There's a reason for the old joke about socialists running the Sahara and experiencing a sand shortage.
No freedom fries!? That would be the staw that broke the USA camels back.
We need to send another $2 billion to V, this time not just to subsidize oil exploration but an allocation towards fries that stand for freedom.....like a Sony flick.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970203863204574346610120524166
$.40 on the dollar for VZ bonds? Maybe its time to gamble a few bucks that I don't mind losing. Blood in the streets right?
Saudi realises that OPEC does not now contain all the major producers.
The current stance seems to be that Saudi should cut so everyone can enjoy high oil prices with more US oil coming on line.
This doesn't work for Saudi, though it would be nice for the US .
Saudi, not having to worry about Wall Street short termism, can play the long game.
It can, and is, closing down a lot of US shale, Canada tar sands and other future projects.
But in the long term it is in everyone's interests to have some stability in oil prices.
The current strategy could be just what is needed to help the US realise that leaving oil prices to the instability of market forces is in no one’s interests.
It will also help Canada and Russia to realise the importance of working together in a Cartel to keep prices stable.
A cartel, in this case, seems a better option than turbulent markets (i.e. OPEC expands).
The over-supply is quite small and an agreed cut back by all producers could restore stability very quickly.
Or
We can go through the chaos of letting the market do the job.
Might I suggest some Harvard and Princton trained economists (not the killy kind) advise the Govt. on some price controls on oil and it's related thousands of products?
Far more efficient and less turbulent than a free market solution.
These guys are really smart.
Interesting that the two countries that have devalued their currency the most (Japan and Venezuela) are the ones without fries. I suspect the real reason is that the disributors in both countries arranged to pay for them in their local currencies -- such that the suppliers are being paid is the new weaker currencies, effectively making the suppliers sell potatoes to these two countries at a loss!
Time for a French Fries ETF....
Hang on a minute.... McD in Japan also ran out of fries.
Is this some kind of conspiracy?
Less crappy food from McDonalds? Im Lovin' It!
http://dilbert.com/dyn/str_strip/000000000/00000000/0000000/000000/20000...
Venezuela is in a deflationary spiral which has only just begun,
http://www.globaldeflationnews.com/just-give-us-the-crude-say-venezuelas...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wW-4LU79qbU
Curious that there are no chair throwing vids to accoompany the spud armageddon story. Maybe, in this case, chairs tossing is warranted. That, and a bit more.
I didn't know we had west coast dock issues
Wendy's was waffling over the situation