Chavez explains away the Venezuelan recession:
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Wednesday he plans to come up with a new, socialist-friendly way of measuring economic growth, one day after gross domestic product data indicated his country is in recession.
Oil-rich Venezuela’s economy shrank 4.5% in the third quarter, the country’s central bank reported Tuesday. This comes after the economy shrank 2.4% in the second quarter.
“We simply can’t permit that they continue calculating GDP with the old capitalist method,” President Chavez said in a televised speech before members of his socialist party. “It’s harmful.”
[…]
But Chavez, in his speech Wednesday, said the weak economic growth numbers are mostly the result of “capitalist calculations” that don’t give proper credit to economic activity in a socialist setting.In Venezuela, he said, a citizen who goes to a medical center for a visit can get free service that never shows up as economic activity because money doesn’t change hands
Perhaps he can tell people to be happy?
