Is Venezuela lost for decades? Is it going to become a full blown pariah state? The opposition leader Guido seems like a moron. Looks like sanctions backfired for the 20th time in a row. If the generals are full blown Narcos, America's position is ****ed.

The documentary The Revolution will not be Televised had a big influence on me whenever I first saw it and I would still recommend it to anyone today. It chronicles the 2002 coup attempt against Chavez and the filmmakers had crazy access--both to Chavez and to the coup leaders. It showed how false flags and the media were used to paint Chavez in a bad light--and showed what real populism looks like.

In the beginning of the film Chavez is shown giving a speech where he says (and I'm paraphrasing from memory) "we were being ransacked by the savage project of neoliberalism, with its claim that there is a hidden hand that controls the market, but here in Venezuela we are showing that there is another way and that that is a lie, a thousand times a lie"

But it isn't a lie. You can't just do whatever you want to your economy, enact price controls, print money like crazy, etc.

In Colombia and throughout South America I'm pretty sure, Venezuelans are everywhere. Something like 4 million of them have fled the country. I saw a big refuge camp in Cali and Venezuelans on the streets in other major cities. The hyperinflation has had a devastating effect on people. The rich are able to keep their money in foreign currencies but the poor and those who live hand-to-mouth cannot.

What bothers me the most when I read things about Venezuela now is talk about how people who are against Maduro are swallowing "imperialist lies". Yes US imperialism is bad, but that doesn't mean that Maduro regime is then by default good. I would ask Venezuelans sometimes who they blamed more for the problems there, the West or the regime--thinking that the answer would be some mixture of both--but it is always just the regime and they'll talk about corruption from the regime that you don't hear a lot about in Western media even. PDVSA has been completely pillaged by the regime and their payroll has swelled while production has declined.

Venezuelans are really great people (the best people literally) and unfortunately things look like they will only continue to get worse before they get better. There is no political will in Colombia or Brazil for those countries to be a base of operations for any US led invasion (and I'm not advocating for that). And Russia seems to be digging itself in to support Maduro. So I don't know what will happen. Guaidó in interviews seems solid but the only hope is that the military turns on Maduro and that isn't happening.

According to the WashPost, Trump is now against any intervention in Venezuela, which has basically kneecapped Bolton.

The government made a bunch of arrests today, which included prominent opposition leader Zambrano, without any pushback from the US. Rubio hasn't tweeted about it, so I am guessing Trump undercut him as well.

Obviously the recent phone call between Trump and Putin had nothing to do with our sudden complete reversal.

Trump's foreign policy is basically a clown show wrapped in a sh*t show being pulled around by a dog and pony.

Kneecapping Bolton would normally be seen as a desirable thing.

No, Venezuela is not lost, all that needs to happen is a radical shift in policy. End the hyperinflation, end the price controls, end the rampant nationalization of industry, end the currency controls, and things would go back to normal in short order. The damage could be repaired almost as quickly as it was inflicted. Whether the Venezuelan people will be able to topple Maduro and then, having done so, found a leader who can find the proper path forward, is another question.

Everything that I've read about hyperinflation has stated that once it starts, that it is very hard to escape from. I'm not saying you're wrong because I have no idea, but it goes against everything I've read on it. Obviously it does have to end in one way or another and I'm not sure what the state of it is now. I know they lopped off like 5 zeroes from their currency sometime back but I would assume that is just a cosmetic thing so people don't have to use bricks of cash to buy bread.

Surprisingly, at least in recent times, hyperinflation can be dealt with IF you get a responsible government that has a credible plan to get out of it.

Probably the two primary examples would be Germany after WWI, where you went from a mark being worth about 25c to needing 4200000000000.00 marks to equal a dollar. The Hungarian hyperinflation was even worse; from a stating point of about 5 pengos to a dollar, at a max the conversion was 460000000000000000000000000000 to one.

In both cases, things got squared away in a couple of months once a new currency was issued. Makes for a lot of interesting stamps though (I'm a collector) Of course, pretty much everyone got crushed financially.

OTOH, you can go the Zimbabwe route and just keep printing money. That turns out not to work.

MM MD

It looks like there was a mini Bay of Pigs: https://time.com/5832009/venezuela-raid-americans/

The answer to all our oil problems.

If we import Oil from Saudi Arabia, we should import Oil from Venezuela.

Venezuela dictator Nicolás Maduro is a nice guy compared to the Saudi dictator.

'Venezuela has the world's largest proved oil reserves.'

"Russia exported about 540,000 barrels a day to the U.S. in 2021, a little under what Venezuela exported to American refineries in 2018 before sanctions shut off the spigot."

The third largest oil reserves sit in Canada . Their is absolutely no need for North America to import one drop of foreign oil if they choose to.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/09/world...ana/index.html

Venezuela and Guyana agree to talks. Bumping this thread as we were posting about it in 'Other News'

Yeah I had no clue they were trying to annex 1/2 of Guyana

It was after being briefed about Venezuela that trump started supporting the US Space force

There is enough supply of oil (too much actually). The problem with Venezuela was in 2007 they mostly kicked out ConocoPhillips, Chevron, Exxon Mobil and BP. If you aren't getting a cut of their oil then it's better they are embargoed which supports oil prices. Of course you can't say that's why you're doing the embargo.

US has been lightening sanctions quite recently. Unsurprisingly this follows increased cooperation between Venezuela's state run oil company and Chevron.

https://www.reuters.com/business/ene...se-2022-12-06/