Facing an economic crisis, Venezuela is throwing everything at the wall, in the hopes that something sticks.

When a ship is about to sink, everybody races for the lifeboats. When a Government starts to sink, they employ various versions of witchcraft.

Printing money is a popular one. Unfortunately, that starts leading to runaway inflation, and the government has to print even more. Rinse, Repeat. There are classic photos of wheelbarrows of cash being taken to market in pre-WWII Germany to buy a loaf of bread. For about twenty five bucks you can get a Trillion Dollar Bill from Zimbabwe.

But that’s no longer possible in Venezuela. Their money has become so worthless, they no longer have enough money to print more money. They’ve asked the Genie for so many extra wishes, that they’ve used up all three wishes. Venezualan currency is now linked to the value of printer ink. (Which, in their defense, isn’t worth much less than gold.)

Left with few options, they’ve decided to move the clocks ahead one half hour.

The move, effective May 1, will scrap a half-hour subtraction to the clocks Venezuela’s late former president Hugo Chavez introduced in 2007 that gave his country a slight offset to its neighbors.

The modified time will see Caracas go back to four hours behind Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) — sharing the same hour as Havana and Washington (on Eastern Daylight Time) — according to Science and Technology Minister Jorge Arreaza. (full story)

Their rationale is that the additional daylight will put less of a burden on the overtaxed electrical grid. Richard Nixon tried the same thing in the seventies, and found that it didn’t change a thing, you still get the same amount of dark, no matter what time it is. So I suspect their reasoning is,  it will get everyone a half hour closer to pay day. It’s going to get next weeks money into everyone’s pocket a half hour earlier. And if clock moving follows the same course as printing currency, Venezuela will very shortly be into June.

I’m guessing the ability to keep moving their clocks forward will likewise be limited to the amount of 2017 calendars available.

Ultimately, Venezuela will have admit a reality, that everyone should have learned at the end of the last Century: Socialism Doesn’t Work.