...to hear that Venezuela's currency is collapsing. Such are the wages of socialism. No doubt he'll blame it on George Bush.

Let's hope that it leads to the collapse of Hugo's government. I would think, at a minimum, that it bodes well for lower oil prices, because he's going to have to start selling it off faster to prop up his national shell game.

Historically, the next step is to blame the collapsing economy on counter revolutionaries, capitalist saboteurs and behind the scenes US meddling. Which calls, of course, for more crack downs on the opposition, expansion of secret poliice powers, re-education camps, election rigging and a constant de facto war status against the imperialist aggressors.

That and more fawning visits by Hollywood celebrities.

I thought the next step was to blame the Jews...

Jason,

counter-revolutionaries = Jews
capitalist saboteurs = Jews
behind the scenes US meddlers = Jews

Ya see, it is all a Jewish conspiracy to hold us all down. Marx, Trotsky, Reagan... it is all part of the Jewish conspiracy. Heck, even CHAVEZ is part of it.

Fortunately, I am already circumcised, so I will receive a suitably compensated position when our new Jewish Overlords (TM) complete their grand, conspiratorial scheme.

Ya dig?

How can people be so dumb? How can they not understand such basic economics?

Why are we ruled by idiots that speak well?

Hugo's gonna have trouble selling much more oil, or even as much as he is now. He's been doing that usual socialist thing of taking over industry, robbing the till, and running it into the ground.

Oil R&D, new exploration, even maintenance accounts have been stripped bare, and Venezuela is starting to look like a poster child for Peak Oil despite having huge amounts still in the ground.

People should have learned long ago that economic difficulties (or even collapse) do not lead to the fall of socialist, communist, and other brutal governments. If they did, we'd have had Fidel gone 30 years ago, not to mention Mugabe and Kim Chen Ir. The only hope of people of Venezuela at this point is external intervention (not necesserily a military intervention, but anyway). The Soviet Union has fallen for two reasons: Gorbachev and Reagan. If Reagan didn't apply external pressure, it would've been doing just fine, for certain values of "fine". So I'm not going to join Rand and hope for Chavez going away by himself. It's completely futile and will only lead to disappointment.

I am shocked - I thought it had already collapsed.

Collapsed from what...into what?