LETTER TO NEW YORK TIMES:
A whole article [link below] on Venezuela's economic woes without a single mention of socialism?
You say Venezuela suffers...
"... violent street protests against the government of President Nicolas Madura and a deepening economic crisis fueled by Venezuela's heavy foreign debt and the retreat of world oil prices, which have slashed the country's main source of income."
Well, yes, but.
The reason for the "heavy foreign debt" is that Madura continued Chavez's failed socialist experiment, the so-called "Bolivarian Revolution". It was socialism that led Chavez to fritter away Venezuela's oil windfall by domestic give-always and grants to would-be client states in Latin America. It was socialism that led to expropriations of industry in the belief that the state can do better (it can't). It was socialism that led to the "heavy foreign debt". It is socialism that's taking foreign companies to the exit door.
As for the "retreat of oil prices", that hasn't affected Norway, another recipient of an oil bounty. In contrast to Venezuala, Norway saved and invested its oil income; it can now survive on the income from those investments even without a dollar more in oil income.
In short to ascribe Venezuela's economic problems to oil's price drop is to excuse its mismanagement, a mismanagement due entirely to the ideology of socialism.
Socialism has failed everywhere it has been tried, from the Soviet Union and China in the past to North Korea in the present.
About time this was acknowledged in the New York Times.
Peter Forsythe
9 Siena One
Discovery Bay
HK
+852 93080799
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