Required reading of the week

I am a little bit in a rush to comment on these two articles, but the links must go up. Comments later.

The first is the long awaited article, in English, by Francisco Rodriguez, former economic manager of the pro Chavez National Assembly in the years where there was still some discussion in it. As an indictment of the failed Chavez policies to effectively reduce poverty for the long term, it cannot be harsher, and to the point (even if long).

The second is an interview of Maza Zavala for the Spanish journal La Vanguardia. The former Central Bank head, another Chavez appointee, who tried to excuse for a while the loss of independence of the Central Bank now blasts the current economic policies and predicts years of food shortages until the damage to the production system can be repaired.

What is important for the reader to note is that these two articles are based on people who come from the Venezuelan democratic left, a left that tried for the longest time to turn a blind eye on Chavez and chavismo under the excuse that some of the excesses would be only temporary. Well, they were not, and now their permanence is causing great, great damage to the economic future of Venezuela. These two men are not pamphleteers from some right wing rag, they are well established economists with quite a career behind, even if one does not want to agree with some of their past proposals. On the other hand if you want to read a pamphlet on the economic successes of Chavez you can go to the Weisbrot propaganda pieces published a little bit before the December 2 Referendum (here and here).

-The end-