Waste born of corruption, amplified by mismanagement and entrenched by lack of accountability and ideological rigidity.

Over on FP.com, pivoting off of that Reuters’ report on Fonden, I try to explain the way your morning paper will lie to you about Venezuela this week....

Allegory of the Chavista Public Sector Management Approach

Over on FP.com, pivoting off of that Reuters’ report on Fonden, I try to explain the way your morning paper will lie to you about Venezuela this week.

More and more, I get the sense that the big unreported story of the Chávez era is about waste. Corruption is comparatively easy enough to explain: it has clear motives, clear bad guys, a built in moral narrative – and so, it gets a fair bit of ink.

What’s much harder to get across is sheer waste – resources that simply go up in smoke because nobody is competent enough to spend them semi-rationally. That’s where a huge proportion of the oil windfall has ended up. And not through venality, simply through cluelessness.