The present situation isn't looking to good with food shortages and an ever-present high inflation rate hurting the people Chavez was meant to help in the first place.
Naturally Chavez, not one to back-track, is continuing his socialist experiment with a yet a new wave of takeovers of private companies in whole range of sectors. Some would argue that he is merely reversing some of the privatisation that took place in the 'dark neoliberal ages' of the 1990s, and that the Venezuelan economy is still made up of a healthy mixture of both state- and privately-owned companies.
However desirable nationalisation may be - given your ideological stance - that fact is that foreign investment is running away from Venezuela. What's the point of investing in a country when a few years down the line you might find government officials at your factory gate with a piece of paper (signed by Chavez) that your assets now belong to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. And despite the government offering compensation, these are often far less than what would be deemed acceptable.
To bridge this investor gap, Chavez is seeking out joint ventures with the likes of Cuba and Iran. As much as I disagree with US paranoid-driven stance towards these countries, you're honestly not making life much easier for yourself when you specifically go out of your way to befriend Washington's arch enemies. And it's not like Cuba and Iran are the economic power houses of the world either.
Otherwise the article list a whole list of policy measures that signify the increased entrenchment Chavez.
Question remains: is there going to be a peaceful conclusion to all this?
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