<i>THE queue is perhaps a thousand people long. It snakes around the dusty, rubbish-strewn back lot of a giant supermarket in the heart of Caracas, Venezuela’s capital.  ... “I came here for milk,” says a young mother from El Valle, a working-class district a few kilometres to the south-west. “In El Valle, there’s nothing.” She is carrying a tiny baby, while her four-year-old daughter helps with the modest purchases she has managed to make. Today the Bicentenario has sugar, maize flour, chicken and toilet paper at giveaway, government-controlled prices—but no milk. It is 9.30am and customers who began queuing at six o’clock are just emerging. Hundreds more wait outside a narrow gate in the 3-metre-high railings around the lot. Uniformed police keep order; most customers seem resigned rather than belligerent.</i><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.economist.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;americas&#x2F;21640395-government-offers-no-solutions-mounting-economic-crisis-empty-shelves-and-rhetoric" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.economist.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;americas&#x2F;21640395-government-o...</a>