Caracas Chronicles

Regardless of Nicolás Maduro’s rhetoric, the facts simply speak for themselves:

We’re not just dependent on the U.S. as a market for the oil exports that pay for the import of, um, pretty much everything that can be imported.

Now we’re also dependent on them for the import – at full international price, bien sur – of 100,000 barrels per day of gasoline that we can no longer refine ourselves (since Amuay blew up) and that we then give away largely to middle-class car drivers, forcing us to devalue our currency not once, but twice in two months to the direct detriment of poorer consumers’ purchasing power.

Somehow, Bolivarian anti-imperialism requires transferring $10 million a day more or less directly from Venezuela’s poor to U.S. gasoline refiners… ¡así, así, así es que se gobierna!