It's the economic war, stupid!
Ever since scarcity began, Venezuelans were presented with a new phenomenon: “economic war.” Hazily defined and poorly communicated, economic war basically says that someone – the opposition, private industry,...
Economy
The Sound of 1.1 Trillion Pennies Dropping
People are starting to put 2 and 2 together. This Reuters report finds that 40 major U.S. companies have big-time exposure to the Venezuelan shitshow, in the form of...
Nicolás Maduro cracks down on Farmatodo
Farmatodo is one of the largest pharmacy chains in Venezuela. To our foreign friends, the Venezuelan equivalent to a Walgreens or a CVS. A productive family business that has...
The tale of the lonely airport
Back in March 2014, Vice-President Jorge Arreaza formally re-opened the Bartolome Salom Airport in Puerto Cabello, after spending ten years closed. With almost a year or remodelling works...
UN confirms poverty on the rise in Venezuela
The UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America is finally catching on to what we wrote about months ago: poverty is on a quick ascendancy in Venezuela. The worst part of...
Maduro's stealth devaluation
It’s easy to be dispirited by Maduro’s address last night. The three-hour rant was only occasionally peppered with substantive announcements, and none of them were clear enough to...
Live-blogging Maduro's State-of-our-chaos address
Maduro gives his “State of the Union” address tonight. What is the state of our country? I think the video above speaks for itself. As we await the event,...
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...
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...
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