BY the calculation of the International Monetary Fund, Venezuela’s inflation is running at one million percent. The left-wing government of president Nicolas Maduro has introduced yet another package of emergency economic measures which are every bit as astonishing as the country’s inflation rate. The minimum wage is being increased by three thousand percent, fuel subsidies, which meant gas cost just one cent a gallon, are being abolished, value-added tax is being hiked and a new currency has been introduced which lops five zeros off the old banknotes.

The desperate nature of the re-monetization is demonstrated by the fact that the old currency was called the “strong bolivar”, while the new, in a reference to Maduro’s claim that his country has been undermined by malign foreign powers, is named the “sovereign bolivar”. This new money is pinned to a crypto-currency dubbed the “Petro” which is supposed to be based on the country’s oil income. Yet so far this year, thanks to bad management, incompetence and it is alleged, spiraling corruption, oil production has dropped by a quarter to 1.4 million barrels a day, a level last seen almost 80 years ago. Given that the government’s deficit, what it spends against its income, is estimated to be running at around 20 percent, it is hard to see how the “Petro” can underpin anything except the growing despair of the rising majority of Venezuelans. These include the poor who were once the bedrock of support for Maduro and his charismatic predecessor, the late Hugo Chavez.

Moreover, since the economy has shrunk by half in the last five years, businesses are in deep trouble. Government inspectors have tried to stop them raising the prices of goods to keep up with inflation. The increase in sales tax will make their wares even less affordable. The effective 95 percent devaluation that came with the introduction of the “sovereign bolivar” is going to make any remaining essential imports unsustainably expensive. Indeed, given the expense of the whole new currency exercise, it is already being alleged that it cost the Maduro government more to print the bank notes than they are actually worth.

Since 2014, 2.3 million Venezuelans, seven percent of the population, have crossed into Colombia, Peru, Brazil and Ecuador, the last country receiving half a million people so far this year alone. It has now closed its border. In Brazil, there have been attacks on Venezuelan asylum seekers in refugee camps close to the border. The UN High Commission for Refugees says this is the biggest ever mass-movement of population in Latin America. It is certainly also to largest mass migration in the Western hemisphere since the end of the World War II.

To add to the extremity of the country’s woes, there has been a strong earthquake in the east of the country. It is as yet unclear what damage the magnitude 7 quake has done and what resources the government can actually divert to help stricken locals.

For everyone, except Maduro and his ruling coterie, it is all to painfully easy to appreciate the extent of the economic disaster that is striking this country. Currencies and indeed governments depend on confidence to survive. It now seems clear that few Venezuelans still believe their government has any new ideas that will work. Maduro is trying vainly to push water uphill.