What do you think of Hugo Chavez?

[PALEHORSE]

what sid said and chavez gets extra credit for the military coup he originally planned.

and yea im pretty sure the people of venezuela support him considering hes been elected like 13 times in a row and when the establishment tried to overthrow him the soldiers who captured him are the ones who helped him escape...jus sayin

[PALEHORSE]

ps

Venezuela also paid off the IMF thanks to chavez

[Nick Fury]

some of the anti Chavez propaganda is hilarious

[SID]

Just as Bad as the anti cuban propaganda, i cant believe this shit still exists...

[Edgar Erebus]

ps

Venezuela also paid off the IMF thanks to chavez

^^ this.

And that's why awesome capitalist countries hate the guy, 'cause he doesn't owe them shit anymore.

I noticed that more a country is in debt to IMF, the more friendly relationship it has with the Land of the Free.

[RADIOACTIVE MAN]

chavez is that dude,let em hate,what I love about him is he is gonna do what he sees fit for his country regardless

[Sense-A]

Anything or anyone anti-American flies in this forum, including Castro and Hugo Chavez. Supporting wutang is the only thing we might have in common. Otherwise you guys all ride the anti-american-hollywood-bandwagon like simpleton angry rebellious teenagers.

I still challenge you, Sean Penn, Naomi Campbell, Michael Moore and the other Hugo Chavez adorers to leave behind your luscious lifestyles and mansions here in the USA and go move to your socialist paradise in Venezuela. Its cool to hate America, isn't it? I mean, as long as you get to live here and enjoy the wealth of capitalism and the protections of the bill of rights.

Besides raiding private property, Hugo Chavez also likes to raid people's food.

Hugo Chavez Spearheads Raids as Food Prices Skyrocket
Published: Friday, 18 Jun 2010 | 5:18 PM ET

By: Reuters
News Headlines
Mountains of rotting food found at a government warehouse, soaring prices and soldiers raiding wholesalers accused of hoarding: Food supply is the latest battle in President Hugo Chavez's socialist revolution.

Hugo Chavez
Howard Yanes / AP
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez says government-led raids of food markets will reverse exploitation of the poor, whom he needs for political support.
Venezuelan army soldiers swept through the working class, pro-Chavez neighborhood of Catia in Caracas last week, seizing 120 tons of rice along with coffee and powdered milk that officials said was to be sold above regulated prices.

"The battle for food is a matter of national security," said a red-shirted official from the Food Ministry, resting his arm on a pallet laden with bags of coffee.

It is also the latest issue to divide the Latin American country where Chavez has nationalized a wide swathe of the economy, he says to reverse years of exploitation of the poor.

Chavez supporters are grateful for a network of cheap state-run supermarkets and they say the raids will slow massive inflation.

Critics accuse him of steering the country toward a communist dictatorship and say he is destroying the private sector.

This is what Communists do. They just raid everything. Homes, property, food, the crops in your field and then the GOVERNMENT gets to decide who to hand it out to. What ends up happening is a downward spiral into poverty. Everyone becomes equal. Sure. But the wealth of the country dissipates into government-run poverty. Study the history of ANY communist nation and the pattern is distinct. Sure Chavez giving out free food and free oil and free land sounds cool to your short memory spanned potheads. But in the long run it is bad for the country. Stealing from the working class to give to the unworking class? Not good. People who work hard deserve more than people who don't work. Sorry but that's the beauty of capitalism.

So far all anyone has done is call me names and say lustful things about Chavez. Still no facts, statistics, nothing to indicate that Hugo Chavez is benefiting Venezuela except a few thumbs up from Palehorse's anonymous Venezuelan amigos.

Every move that Chavez has made has weekened the Venezuelan currency - the Bolivar. He has set two different exchange rates for his government and the private market brokerages. Venezuela must pay MORE for foreign goods because they must buy them with bolivars instead of exchanging currencies for dollars which would get them more for their money. It's all part of Hugo's poverty scheme. The Bolivar is going down the fucking toilet and Chavez has his dirty hands on the printing press lever, printing more and more bolivars to cover up his failing economy. You can argue that the United States Treasury has taken similar measures to devalue the dollar, but international exchange rates tell otherwise. The US Dollar has recovered strongly since 2008 (despite obama/geithner/bernanke), yet the bolivar is still in the shitter. Another loss for Chavez and his pea-brain leadership.

President Hugo Chavez is tightening regulation of the financial industry after blaming currency speculators for weakening the bolivar in the unregulated market this year and a surge in consumer prices. Chavez said yesterday that brokerages are unnecessary in a socialist state and “private capitalists” still control the majority of economic power in the country.
Bolivar Plunged
The government moved to dismantle the parallel currency market after the bolivar plunged 26 percent this year to a record low of 8.2 per dollar on May 11. Chavez devalued the bolivar on Jan. 8 and created a multi-tiered exchange system in a bid to slow capital flight and to close a budget deficit.
Chavez blamed the private sector for accelerating inflation that quickened the most in seven years in April, rising 5.2 percent from March. Venezuela, which has the highest inflation rate of 78 countries tracked by Bloomberg, may see 40 percent inflation this year, according to RBS Securities Inc.
The central bank will now oversee the buying and selling of dollar-denominated securities within a trading band to substitute the previous parallel market operated by brokerages.
Venezuelan companies depended on the parallel market when they couldn’t get government approval to buy dollars at the official rates of 2.6 and 4.3 per dollar. Trading has been closed in the market since May 13 and the central bank may inaugurate the new system next week, bank director Armando Leon told Globovision yesterday.
Chavez said late yesterday that his government will increase pressure on private banks operating in the country and that brokerages aren’t necessary in a socialist country.
Chavez said last night that with volatile international markets, Venezuela is stable after government action. http://www.businessweek.com/news/201...-update2-.html

Did you read that? "capital flight." The people who actually run businesses, produce agriculture, and create jobs are LEAVING Venezuela. The only people who stay are the people who don't work and love the free handouts of stuff that Hugo stole from the working class to give to the poor. What if, in America, we just STOLE from everyone making above $50,000 and gave it to all the able-bodied people who are too lazy to work or think that they are too GOOD for the jobs that are available? The people who actually work would leave the country and the lazy poor people who depend on other people their whole lives would stay in a dysfunctional unsustainable country. Communism doesn't work and its sad you guys won't ever realize that until you've exhausted every attempt to turn America (still the most prosperous country in the entire world, no thanks to you) into a communist state.

After Chavez devalued his own currency, he made it illegal to raise prices on anything!! LOL what a ripoff!!! So if I am a business man and i sell widgets for $1.00 each and then my dictator president devalues the currency so that $1 is only worth 50 cents, I still must sell widgets for $1 even though the $1 is only 50cents now. What a joke. Socialist Venezuela, where Hugo Chavez TELLS YOU HOW MUCH TO SELL YOUR STUFF FOR! Price control on domestic goods. How can you support something like that? How is that representative of FREEDOM to you?

By keeping a subsidized dollar rate for importing food, medicine and essential items, Chavez removes any incentive for Venezuelans to produce what they need most. It will almost certainly remain cheaper to import beef from Brazil, for example, than to produce it, because Chavez is subsidizing the exchange rates for imports.

For example, during Hugo Chávez’s presidential period, we can see that since 1999 inflation has reached substantial levels. 11 years ago this rate was 20%, then in 2000 it was 13.40%; in 2001, 12.30%; in 2002, 31.20%; in 2003, 27.10%; in 2004, 19.19%; in 2005, 14.36%; in 2006, 17%; in 2007, 22.50%; in 2008 it reached 30.90% and by the end of 2009 it was 25.10%.
It is worth mentioning that compared to other Latin American countries Venezuela is amongst those with the highest inflation rate.

The three nations with the highest rate of inflation as of May 2010 are Venezuela, 31.2%; followed by Argentina (10.7%) and Uruguay (7.1%). http://www.money-marketuk.com/index....mer&Itemid=320

Awww but this contradicts how wonderful some of you claim that the Venezuelan economy is doing. Pretty soon a square sheet of my toilet paper is going to be worth more than a Bolivar.

Venezuela holds the somewhat dubious honour of having the highest inflation rate in Latin America and, according to several economists, there is no end to this trend in sight within the near future; yet the government is optimistic and believes that it will fall to single figures.

Whenever a country holds one of the highest inflation rates in the world, alarms must be raised for both the government - the public policy maker - and the entrepreneurs, who manufacture or import the consumables to meet the demand; but most of all for the consumer, who at the end of the day is hit the hardest by the increase in prices. http://www.money-marketuk.com/index....mer&Itemid=320

Okay okay enough about Venezuela's failing economy. Let's go back to analyzing what a FREEEEEEeeeee country it is. Would you enjoy all the glorious freedoms you have in the USA if you were to move Venezuela?!? Let's go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_indices_of_freedom and use four different indices of freedom to assess Venezuela and compare it to other world countries...


Freedom House rates it as a "partly free" country. This is the moderate rating for Freedom House. Other South American countries such as Chile, Argentina and Brazil are rated as FREE and of course America is FREE as well. Next index: Press Freedom. Oh yes the wonderful freedom of the press. The freedom to criticize George W Bush and criticize Barack Obama and not be imprisoned and lashed for it. Let's look at Venezuela now...They have the second worst rating. What did you expect when I already explained to you that Hugo Chavez has already seized all media outlets in the country? Okay next: Economic Freedom - Venezuela has the worst possible rating "repressed" lol. What do you expect when the Chavez is inflating the currency and fixing prices that you are allowed to sell your own goods for? And finally: Democracy rating. How much say to you have in government leadership, voting, etc.? Venezuela has the second worst rating as a "hybrid Regime" meaning that they still have elections but the elections really don't mean shit when Hugo Chavez' best friend is counting the votes.


Anyone want to provide some evidence that actually shows positive results of Hugo Chavez' pathetic leadership? Something other than "chavez is my hero" ? I didn't think so. Most of you guys don't even cite sources in this forum. Cue here for people to call me names. When you lose a debate and have no facts and only personal feelings, just resort to cheap attacks, call me a capitalist pig, call me a racist, do SOMETHING!! It's what American liberals do and it works for them...

[Sense-A]

As of 2/15/2009 Chavez is president for life. And he is fairly young. he should have enough time to run Venezuela deeper into shit than Castro was able to do Cuba.

Socialists failed in Honduras. Chavez was trying to help Zelaya become a socialist tyrant. It turns out the people of Honduras are smarter than the people of Venezuela.

I think that Thomas Friedman's laws on petropolitics are relevant in this topic.

Friedman’s proposed law suggests that there is a negative correlation between the “price of oil and pace of freedom,” which “always move in opposite directions in oil-rich petrolist states.” In his framework, the “pace of freedom” means the development of the elements of a democratic government, such as free speech, free press, free and fair elections, an independent judiciary, independent political parties, and general rule of law.2
The law of petropolitics seems logical for a number of reasons. As the price of oil rises and money floods into state treasuries, petrolist governments gain the upper hand in their relations with the international community. They are less dependent on maintaining positive diplomatic and trade relationships with other countries because other countries desperately need the natural resources they can provide.3 Free from such pressures, they can do what they please in the domestic sphere.
The historical record seems to provide strong evidence for Friedman’s law:

Suddenly, regimes such as those in Iran, Nigeria, Russia, and Venezuela are retreating from what once seemed like an unstoppable process of democratization, with elected autocrats in each country using their sudden oil windfalls to ensconce themselves in power, buy up opponents and supporters, and extend their state’s chokehold into the private sector. 4

The aggressive behavior of petrolist governments is in evidence in all of these countries. In Russia, former president Vladimir Putin renationalized the oil and natural gas sectors, attempted to crack down on the operations of foreign NGOs, exerted control over national media outlets, and otherwise undermined the independence of large segments of the Russian private sector. In Nigeria, the president was accused of using oil dollars to bribe legislators into amending the constitution to grant him a third term in office. Many such worrying developments could be cited. Friedman and others consider this trend a mounting threat to global stability.5

On the other hand, in the oil-rich Middle East region, some resource poor states, such as Bahrain, have made great strides toward democratic government. Bahrain was the first state in the Persian Gulf to hold free and fair elections in which women were allowed to vote. It was also the first state in the region to reform its labor laws in accordance with international standards and to sign a free trade agreement with the United States. It was forced to do these things, in Friedman’s opinion, because its oil supplies are already near exhaustion.6
http://www.globalization101.org/inde...s1=subs&id=356

and...

In addition to spending large amounts of money lulling people into a comfortable submission with welfare programs, petrolist governments can also take a more sinister approach by actively repressing the development of civil society. Oil money gives the state the freedom to “spend excessively on police, internal security, and intelligence forces that can be used to choke democratic movements.”3 Civil society is fragile enough in most petrol states. This kind of government activity can prevent a real civil society from ever developing or challenging the state’s power. http://www.globalization101.org/issu...trolist_states

Sounds exactly like what is happening in Venezuela. But Chavez called GWB the devil so I LOVE HIM!! That's about as deep as most socialist liberals' minds can delve into the issue.

Also I want to mention a few other important facts. Here in America there are separation of the powers of Federal, state, and local municipality. A sort of checks and balances. In Venezuela? No of course not. Chavez is your president, your state governor, and your city mayor all in one. Oh yeah and he doesn't serve terms anymore. President for life. A dictator of course... How successful and free have dictatorships been in the history of civilization? Did you sleep through history class for 12 years?

How is Hugo Chavez nationalizing his country's oil sector much different that Marxist Obama trying to nationalize the healthcare sector of the American economy? Marxism fails everytime folks. Name one country where Marxism worked.....zzzzzzzzzzzz Don't waste too much time thinking on that one, there isn't one.

Getting food in Venezuela is getting harder and harder:

The annual rate of food inflation slowed to 39.5% in August. http://en.mercopress.com/2010/09/10/...ional-election

slowed to 39.5% ? LOL! What was it before then? 50%? have fun eating imported rice. Venezuela imports most of its food. Guess what they use to import food? They can hardly find anyone that will sell them food for BOLIVARS! lol They have to use those evil AMERICAN US DOLLARS! hahaha

And in some old news, Venezuela tried to nationalize the oil rigs in their country. Now they are over 33% less efficient. hahah see folks, that is a lesson. Private companies operate more efficiently than big behemoth public companies.

PDVSA's annual plan for 2007 set a target for 191 active oil rigs to produce a projected 3.3 million barrels per day of crude oil. However, Vierma told the National Assembly that only 112 oil rigs (33 of which belong directly to PDVSA), are currently operational and it is estimated that only 120 will be up and running by the end of the year, a deficit of 36%.

PDVSA is the nationalized oil company in Venezuela.

PDVSA accounts for about half of government revenues and three quarters of export revenues and has been the backbone for funding the Chavez government's social programs.

Half your government revenue comes from one inefficiently run oil company in your country? Talking about putting all your eggs in one basket!!

I'm tired of destroying your wet dream fantasies of Hugo Chavez. This isn't even a debate. I feel like I'm lecturing juvenile delinquent 4th graders.

[Nick Fury]

lol its like someone took a hot steamy crap inside this guys brain

[drippie k]

he's kind of an asshole from what i've seen..he's got a big "don't give a fuck" attitude which is good to have sometimes but he does that ALL the time, even in his own country, he tries to run everything his own way even if that's not what his people want...he thinks he's the shit there but a lot of people are just scared not to vote for him

my favorite hugo chavez moment was when he was talkin shit about spain's former prime minister while it's current PM was talking and the king of spain leans forward, looks at him goes "why don't you just shut up?" hahaha

[Robert]

Chavez has his pros and cons. I've outlined what I think. To really understand, you need to go to South America and see what it's like.

For all the good things Chavez has done, I think he has done some equally bad things although he is faced with an impossible situation in his country. The fact is, his country is the most dangerous place in South America, and certainly one of the most currupt. These things have happened under his watch and I don't really buy the arguement that they are the result of outside influences, just from my discussions with local people.

"and when america becomes too unbearable for me to live in , im seriously thinking of escaping to south america"

What you need to understand is South Americans in general, hate Americans. I met a lot of ex-pats living across the continent, and they had all had mixed experiences with the people.

Ecuador or Peru would be great places to live, but you have to keep in mind these places are developing countries and not everything is as peachy as it might seem from the outside. I would love to go back and live in Ecuador for some time, but I'm aware that it would certainly not be a walk in the park.

[SL33]

ps

Venezuela also paid off the IMF thanks to chavez

very true.

Venezuela is an independent country, thanks to chavez.

[Sense-A]

The IMF isn't some secret illuminati group of people that rule the world. It is an organization with members from 187 countries. Each country gets to elect its own governor. Ours is Geithner right now with Bernanke as a backup i believe. Each country is also assigned voting power.

Here are the members:http://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/memdir/members.htm

Here is the Articles of their Agreement http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/aa/index.htm

The IMF has a lot of authority when it comes to establishing exchange rates between countries. Now the reason Chavez is so pussy and backed out is because Bolivia had a shitty exchange rate because no one wants a fucking Bolivar. I am not going to trade my DOLLARS for Bolivars and I challenge you to go to the bank and request to have all your dollars traded in for Bolivars. Chavez ran his country's economy into the hole and I could go down there and buy a huge house for $20,000 that I'd have to pay $200,000 for in the USA. The dollar buys lots of bolivars.

type in "exchange rate bolivar" in a search

What do you see?

1bolivar = 0.0005 US Dollars !!! That's laughable. Pathetic.

People trust that the USA economy, as bad as it is, is still the best one in the world. So they trust our government backed dollars. Our currency is more reliable than any other currency in the world. People know that Dictator Chavez could be overthrown as soon as the oil resevoir runs dry so the bolivar could collapse at any minute and become fucking worthless.

This doesn't mean that the IMF is evil or that Venezuela is any more FREE than the USA. They are not free at all. I already explained the lack of freedom of the press and the lack of sufficient property rights. What can I say though? Keep idolizing your Chavez poster in your bedroom.

Latest news:

Seeking cash, Chavez looks to sell Citgo

Email this Story

Nov 28, 10:24 AM (ET)

By CHRISTOPHER TOOTHAKER

ACAS, Venezuela (AP) - President Hugo Chavez is promising to build new public housing complexes, boost social programs and renovate the long-neglected Caracas subway - and he needs money.


The ambitious plans will squeeze Venezuela's coffers at a time when oil earnings have slipped and Chavez is sending his foreign allies generous amounts of crude on credit. So he has raised a possibility that once seemed remote: selling off Venezuela's U.S.-based oil company, Citgo Petroleum Corp.


For Chavez, it's an idea driven both by hard-money realities and by politics.
Getting rid of the company and its refineries in the U.S. would give Chavez billions of dollars for domestic spending as approaches his 2012 re-election bid and seeks to remedy problems including an acute shortage of affordable housing. A sale would also fit with the leftist leader's interest in distancing Venezuela from the U.S. while building stronger ties with allies such as Russia, China and Iran.
Citgo has delivered oil to Venezuela's No. 1 client for two decades, but judging by Chavez's complaints about Citgo not turning a profit, he seems more than ready to sell it, if a buyer can be found.
"Citgo is a bad business, and we haven't been able to get out of it," Chavez said in a televised speech late last month. He ordered his oil minister, Rafael Ramirez, to look at options for selling off the state oil company's assets in the United States.
Chavez says the Houston-based company could be worth at least $10 billion, but analysts say it would likely fetch much less - perhaps half that - and it might be hard to find a buyer in a difficult economic climate.
The government's budget next year - not counting the additional spending often approved by Chavez's congressional allies - is the equivalent of $47.5 billion, making the possible sale of Citgo a potential shot in the arm for the president's efforts to shore up support.
Critics say that selling Citgo could endanger Venezuela's long-term business interests since oil is the lifeblood of the economy and much of the earnings come from the U.S. Chavez, meanwhile, has increasingly sold oil elsewhere under less profitable deals aimed at winning friends abroad.
"It's hard for rational observers to understand that (Chavez) would take oil away from U.S. clients that pay cash for Venezuelan oil, in order to supply countries that consider Venezuelan oil almost as a right or as a political gift," said Gustavo Coronel, an energy consultant and former executive of state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA). "However, Chavez is no longer driven by economics but by ideology."
If Chavez were to go ahead with a sale, Venezuela would likely seek to negotiate a supply contract to keep selling crude to U.S. refineries.
Even so, Venezuela's oil exports to the U.S. have been declining while Chavez has sought to diversify the country's markets, shipping more crude under preferential deals to allies including Belarus, Cuba and other Caribbean islands. Some buyers are granted low-interest loans, decreasing upfront revenue.
Oil shipments to the U.S. declined from 49 million barrels in February 1999, when Chavez took office, to 31.9 million barrels during the same month last year.
Venezuela's overall oil output has also been declining due to lower OPEC quotas and - experts say - inadequate maintenance at some oil fields. While Venezuela says it produces about 3 million barrels of oil a day, the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates 2.2 million barrels a day in 2009, down about 190,000 barrels from 2008.
Coronel said that when Venezuela bought Citgo, it was a good deal. PDVSA purchased 50 percent of the company in 1986 from Southland Corp. for $290 million as part of a drive to have its own refineries and other facilities in its key markets, the U.S. and Europe. The state oil company purchased the remaining 50 percent of Southland's shares in Citgo in 1990 for $675 million.
Since then, Citgo has grown. It now operates three refineries in Texas, Louisiana and Illinois, and sells fuel through thousands of gas stations. Citgo has been used by Chavez to distribute discounted heating oil to poor American families in a high-profile program aimed at criticizing Washington's approach to the needy.
Another motive for selling Citgo could be to reduce Venezuela's exposure to U.S. court suits over Chavez's expropriations of U.S. company assets.
U.S.-based Exxon Mobil Corp. has sought international arbitration to claim billions of dollars in compensation after it refused to accept the government's terms for a 2007 nationalization of an oil project in which it had invested heavily.
Citgo, for its part, took a $201 million loss last year, and issued $3.5 billion in bonds this year as its profits plummeted. Profits were battered by lower world prices and a declining flow of heavy, sulfur-laden crude.
"I don't think there would be much interest now" in buying Citgo, said Lou Pugliaresi, president of the Energy Policy Research Foundation, a Washington-based think tank. "But Chavez might find a buyer at the right price."
None has publicly stepped forward yet. Exxon and other major U.S. refiners such as Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips (COP) might end up being interested in Citgo or some of its assets, said Guaicaipuro Lameda, a former PDVSA president and government critic.
"It has the potential to be a good business if it's well managed," Lameda said. "But it's not being well managed, and that's causing problems." http://apnews.myway.com//article/201...D9JP78EO0.html

Citgo is not a bad business. Chavez is an idiot and is getting desperate for money. He is using oil to buy things from foreign countries that he still needs. I already explained how Venezuela doesn't produce enough of its own food and how it depends on the world economy whether Chavez likes it or not. All he did by quitting the IMF is give up his voting rights, sort of like you do when you don't participate in elections because you have a bad attitude that your vote doesn't make a difference.

[Sense-A]

This article is a bit dated but it is well written and predicted the drop in the price of oil and the (now current) decline of the Venezuelan economy. A country with all its eggs in one basket.

Venezuela's deficient self-esteem also explains Chavez's quest for global status. In today's supposedly unipolar world, this means opposition to the United States and all its works. But since anti-Americanism (or anti-Bushism, or both) is a widespread, indeed almost universal phenomenon, Chavez is forced into some exaggerated feints to pull to the head of the pack. His trips to Iran and Syria are a case in point; if the United States were mainly concerned at this point with Mali or New Caledonia his itinerary clearly would have been Bamako and Noumea instead of Tehran and Damascus. To be sure, not all of these journeys have proven to be ideologically productive; in the case of Vietnam, for example, his hosts -- who now enjoy an embarrassingly good relationship with the United States -- deftly deflected Chavez's plans during a recent stay to visit a museum which harbors relics of U.S. bombing raids or a "peace village" which looks after children with health problems blamed on defoliating chemicals used in the war. His quest for a seat on the UN Security Council was conducted so gracelessly as to cost him the support of Chile, the holder of the outgoing Latin American seat. His efforts to buy political influence in Peru have led that country's president to publicly call him "a midget dictator with a fat wallet."
Although Chavez styles himself a revolutionary, there is very little new in his approach to the use of oil money to buy political support (or for that matter, influence abroad). Boom-and-spend populism has been the favoured recipe of every Venezuelan government in recent times; the only reason that Chavez came to power at all is that oil prices plunged in the early 1980s and did not recover until the very end of the next decade. And while the traditional political class had admittedly grown increasingly corrupt and out of touch over the last quarter-century, it was not the mediocre quality of its stewardship which led to its downfall. As Moises Naim, a Venezuelan and editor of Foreign Policy magazine, points in a little book published more than a decade ago, "for more than 30 years, Venezuela spent 10% to 14% of its total GDP on so-called social programs." It spent three times more per capita in 1985 than Chile, Jamaica or Panama. "But," he adds, "Venezuela's infant mortality was 20% higher than Jamaica's, 80% higher than Chile's and 30% higher than Panama's." As long as oil prices held firm, however, nobody seemed to think this was a problem.
In spite of Chavez's claims to be vigorously addressing his country's need for better health and education, he is simply repeating many of the errors of his predecessors, this time on an incomparably larger financial scale. The social indicators are already beginning to confirm as much. As Francisco Rodriguez recently pointed out in an article in the Guardian, after six years of a new oil boom and allegedly unprecedented deployment of medical services under Chavez, the percentage of underweight and under height babies has actually increased. Moreover, a careful examination of the government budget reveals that --once you take out social security, which benefits mainly the middle and upper classes, who work in the formal sector -- the fraction of social spending as a whole has actually decreased. Despite the government's claims of having eradicated illiteracy, its own surveys, Rodriguez writes, revealed the country "at the close of 2005 barely down from pre-Chavez levels." Meanwhile, Transparency International ranks Venezuela the second most corrupt country in the world after Haiti. This last statistic bodes particularly ill for the future in light of the government's grandiose plans to spend untold billions to construct a gas line all the way down South America.
Perhaps the greatest paradox of all is that in spite of Hugo Chavez's incendiary rhetoric against Washington, the United States remains Venezuela's most important single customer. To be sure, the dependency runs in both directions. At present Venezuela provides its powerful northern neighbor with fully 14% of its imported oil. This undoubtedly restrains American policymakers from responding more energetically to Chavez's deliberate provocations.
That is just as well. Like all Venezuelan governments that have preceded him, Chavez's future is mortgaged to perpetually high prices of his primary export. But unless the law of markets is miraculously repealed, at some point in the future oil prices will drop. When that happens Venezuela's strongman will stand revealed as having systematically squandered the nation's largest oil boom in 30 years, bequeathing a social balance as deficient (or perhaps even more deficient) than when he assumed office. What Venezuelans decide to do after that is their problem. http://www.canada.com/story_print.ht...f3732&sponsor=

When oil prices are $4.00 a gallon, a monkey could successfully run Venezuela. But when the oil price drops to $2.50/gallon the shit starts flying out of the fan.