“Ordinary people who rely on their salaries are just getting robbed.”Īnd even with the world’s cheapest Big Mac, increasingly few Venezuelans are able to afford McDonald’s. Some also resort to bartering, especially in the countryside where many grow crops or rear livestock. Most have to spend their pay as soon as they receive it. “They’re toying with hyperinflation but it’s actually very hard to get into the rogues’ gallery, along with the other 56,” Hanke says.īut beyond the numbers, the impact on ordinary folks is devastating. If Venezuela passes that milestone, it would become just the 57th recorded instance in history. Smashburger is heavily promoting the burgers on its. The economy is coming dangerously close to what economists call “hyperinflation,” when prices jump 50 percent or more in a single month. In-N-Out, a southern California-based chain, is suing Smashburger, based in Denver, over the use of the names Triple-Double for its burgers. Hanke, a world expert on out-of-control inflation, puts Venezuela’s current inflation rate at around 675 percent.
That would make the real cost of a double burger at Mickey D’s just 20 cents. But Delligatti, who spent some years in Southern California, acknowledged a debt to Bob Wian, who operated a Glendale, Calif. The current black market rate - the way ordinary Venezuelans buy greenbacks - is 646 bolivars to the dollar. The exchange rate it’s using, of 197 bolivars to the dollar, is “misleading,” he told GlobalPost.
Yet even the Economist’s calculation is understating how bad things are, says Johns Hopkins professor Steve Hanke. The situation is so bad that in February the administration of Chavez’s handpicked successor, Nicolas Maduro, stopped publishing official inflation figures. The inflation has been caused partly by the government desperately printing money to keep up - temporarily - with its debt payments.