The Media Barrage Continues (Updated)
Had great fun on NPR’s On Point just now, alongside Rory Carroll and Cynthia Arnson. I think the program is (or will be) online to listen again, if you’re so minded.
And my OpEd on Chávez’s economic legacy appeared in the Financial Times this morning. A taste:
Cronies found it easy to profit. A convoluted currency control regime resulted in multiple prices for the US dollar. The arbitrage opportunities this set-up created were legion: the well-connected could buy a dollar for one price on the official market, sell it for three or four times that price on the parallel market, then repeat it all over again. It was magical wealth, the kind of impossible conjuring trick only possible in a petrostate amid an oil boom. To those outside the magic circle, an immensely detailed, prescriptive and punitive regulatory regime stripped out the meaning of ownership even for those companies that were not expropriated outright.
And, last but not least, yes: you’re still supposed to buy our book!
Update: Juan has a post-mortem up on Americas Quarterly. Here, he dispenses with niceties…
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