Monthly Archives: October 2009

A longer version of this post appears on The New Republic’s blog, The Plank. Juan Cristóbal and Quico say: The Honduran tragicomedy that has consumed the hemisphere’s diplomats for months is at an end (read the details here). Barring the … Continue reading →

Reading, Pennsylvania, USA. 10 AM. Send us the View from Your Window: caracaschronicles at fastmail dot fm, or nageljuan at gmail dot com. Please ensure the window frame is visible, and tell us the place and time the picture was … Continue reading →

Juan Cristóbal says: – Venezuela is in the grips of an unprecedented electricity crisis, and much of it has to do with festering corruption and boundless incompetence. Since Hugo Chávez nationalized the electricity sector, blackouts have become the norm in … Continue reading →

Quico says: I was about to send this as an email to an editor who asked me to write something about Chávez’s hypertrophied presidential office budget. But as the rant took shape, I found myself thinking… “hmmmm, did I just … Continue reading →

Juan Cristóbal says: – Hugo Chávez’s administration introduced a draft 2010 budget a few days ago. The project promises a whopping $84 billion in spending that somehow manages to disappoint. It is lower than the 2009 budget in real terms, … Continue reading →

Quico says: As Chávez takes to blaming more and more of the nation’s problems on you, the latest Datanalisis poll confirms it: 23.9% of respondents identify “la gente” (the people) as the main culprit for the nation’s problems, just beating … Continue reading →

Quico says: Hernando de Soto’s conception of “dead capital” is one of the genuinely intriguing ideas spawned by the development literature in recent years. For de Soto, the problem facing the third-world poor is not just that they own too … Continue reading →

Juan Cristóbal says: – Not content with issuing debt to finance capital flight, as they did a few weeks ago, the Chávez administration recently announced a new round of debt to finance even more capital flight, this time backed by … Continue reading →

Juan Cristóbal says: – The well-deserved, near-universal praise heaped on Venezuela’s Youth Orchestra Program (“El Sistema”) is a source of pride for all Venezuelans. And yet, reading the latest article to sing its praises, this time courtesy of The Toronto … Continue reading →

Juan Cristóbal says: – The two short videos are fascinating. In a few short minutes, you can see Chávez the deranged (hiring “planes” to bomb the clouds and create rain), Chávez the amusing (telling people three minutes are more than … Continue reading →

Quico says: Chavismo has surely entered its churrigueresque period when the government decrees a gas station as a protected historical site, an irreducible part of the nation’s cultural and ethnic heritage. Yet there it is, in the official black and … Continue reading →

Quico says: Read this and tell me Eva Golinger hasn’t lost her marbles completely. I can’t even piece together what the specific offense she’s accusing MM of was in the first place. Seriously!

Quico says: OK, I admit it: I haven’t been posting very much recently cuz I’ve been…gasp…two-timin’ this blog! The shame! The other blog project is, erm…a lot different.

Juan Cristóbal says: – Loyal reader Kepler has a post on his blog about Amazonas state. It’s well worth a read, if anything for the links and the work he has put in mapping demographic and political trends in the … Continue reading →

Quico says: For the longest time, the conventional wisdom was that it would be senseless for Iran to seek uranium supplies outside its own territory, because they could source plenty of the stuff domestically. It now turns out that impurities … Continue reading →