Tina Rosenberg wrote for the NYT Sunday Magazine a great review article on Venezuela economy, namely PDVSA fate. A must read for anyone that tries to figure out the mess Venezuela is in.
I loved this part, which illustrates how corruption worked in the 70 ies and 80ies and how it works today (explaining to us by the way how come we have reached unthinkable levels of corruption today)
“If Pérez (1973-78 and 88-92) wanted money from his oil boom, he had to wait for Pdvsa to pay taxes, and he had to go to Congress and approve extraordinary spending,” one Venezuelan economist told me. “Today, the president gets on the phone with Ramírez and in an hour can get $200 million.”
She was nonplussed by the misiones either.... I suppose that if Tina Rosenberg says what Venezuelan English language bloggers have been saying for quite a while, then maybe, for example, the scarcity of milk is true (she even reports that she did not find milk in stores! the nerve!)
-The end-