Chavez Making Final Push

Page 1 of today's WSJ has an article about Hugo Chavez's final push to take full control of Venezuela's oil industry. No doubt he will succeed, but you can mark it as the beginning of the end of Venezuela's decline. The foreign oil companies will leave, and their money, technology and know-how will go along with them. Venezuela's oil infrastructure will decay and not be replaced or upgrade with the latest, more efficient gear. Production will fall off and the only sector of the Venezuelan economy that isn't already dead will itself decline rapidly. This will spread economic misery as Chavez will have less money to spread around to buy poor folks loyalty. This will put a strain on his power and he will have to be more ruthless and authoritarian to maintain power.

While I have been reluctant to blame average Venezuelans because they have shown a degree of courage in the face of Chavez's depredations, they know where this is going and they seem to want it to get worse before it gets better so as to increase the chances of Chavez's eventual demise. I'm not ready to claim that Venezuelans are getting the government they deserve but I am not sure they are doing enough to save themselves. We'll see.