"The Maduro Diet" - Venezuelans Suffer Drastic Weight Loss As Hunger Crisis Strikes

Shortages are becoming ever more severe in Venezuela. As Deutsche Welle reports, according to the World Health Organization, hospitals lack 95% of necessary medicines. Many people are undernourished and they receive no help from the government.

"An estimated 75% of Venezuelans lost at least 10 kilos last year because there is not enough food to go around... people here call it "The Maduro Diet"...

"When we say people are eating from the garbage, we are not joing, it"s our reality... people don"t have enough to eat."

Furthermore, a lack of food and basic services is also creating an education crisis with more than 1 million children no longer attending school due to a lack of food, running water and/or electricity.

About 30 percent of students who now stay home do not attend school because of water problems at home or on campus, 22 percent do not attend because of electricity blackouts and 15 percent do not attend due to school strikes, the survey found.

About 10 percent said a lack of food at home or in school was the reason for their absence. The survey said those in that category are considered among the poorest who previously never skipped school because they did not have food at home.

Of course, the failure of Venezuela"s socialist utopia likely means that civil war is all but inevitable at some point in the future absent a quick doubling of crude prices...

Recovery? Italy's Poor Population Has Tripled In Last Decade

Is it any wonder the Italians are revolting against the European Union?

Italians living below the level of absolute poverty almost tripled over the last decade as the country went through a double-dip, record-long recession. As Bloomberg reports, the absolute poor, or those unable to purchase a basket of necessary goods and services, reached 4.7 million last year, up from almost 1.7 million in 2006, national statistics agency Istat said Thursday. That is 7.9 percent of the population, with many of them concentrated in the nation’s southern regions.

For decades, Italy has grappled with a low fertility rate -- just 1.35 children per woman compared with a 1.58 average across the 28-nation European union as of 2015, the last year for which comparable data are available.

“The poverty report shows how it is pointless to wonder why there are fewer newborn in Italy,” said Gigi De Palo, head of Italy’s Forum of Family Associations.

“Making a child means becoming poor, it seems like in Italy children are not seen as a common good.”

The number of absolute poor rose last year in the younger-age classes, reaching 10 percent in the group of those between 18 and 34 years old. It fell among seniors to 3.8 percent in the age group of 65 and older, the Istat report also showed.

Just a good job the government spent the equivalent of its entire defense budget bailing-out the bankers...