He traveled hard for the money
On Friday, January 2nd, Brent crude oil prices closed at around US$57 per barrel. Two days later, an alarmed Nicolás Maduro announced that he would travel to China...
Economy
The Dizzying Highs and Terrifying Lows of Living Off Somebody Else's Oil
My first post for FiveThirtyEight.com is up on their site now. Behold: It’s easy to lose sight of just how central Venezuela’s oil largesse has been to the...
Overcoming capitalist savagery at Farmatodo Bella Vista
From Hugo Chávez’s 2012 campaign platform (emphasis is mine): “We wish to continue building XXIst Century Bolivarian socialism in Venezuela as an alternative to the savage capitalist model, and...
Global crisis, personal impact
Over at the Transitions blog, I tried to convey how the oil crisis is hurting ordinary people in Venezuela. Here is the main point I was going for by...
Trampling the Food Minister to get to the food
As Venezuelans’ desperation for basic staples boils over (watch the video above if you don’t believe me), today the government had a little PR meltdown, courtesy of Food Minister Carlos...
Would you like a side of yuca with that tweet?
On Tuesday January 6th, we had yet another case of “I can’t believe he tweeted that”. Here’s what happened… The news that McDonald’s might stop selling its famous fries...
The crisis takes its toll
January 13th, 2008: The late comandante presidente orders the elimination of all tolls in Venezuelan roadways (then under the control of state governorships), blasting them for being “an assault...
Wistful about the Tower of David
I loved this piece by Boris Muñoz on the evacuation of the Tower of David. Painstakingly, Boris took the time to visit the Tower and get to know its...
Moron Risk
It’s hard to pick out which is the more munificent of the money quotes in Katia Porzecanski’s Bloomberg piece about Wall Street investment banker types mobbing the Manhattan law...
Latin American integration for sale (with a WSJ update)
Hugo Chávez was a man whose rhetoric could only be matched by his wallet. For example, he used to boast about how Petrocaribe, the financing scheme whereby Venezuela sold oil...
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