The bizarre thing is that the Venezuelan government is in utter denial about the crisis. It's not even about socialism; the government is utterly incompetent. The government whines endlessly about the US conspiring to destroy their economy and yet remains happy for the United States being its largest trading partner. Venezuela still owns
Citgo, which is a major US oil company. Socialism.
The government has instituted widespread price controls and then discovers that there are widespread shortages. They have three different exchange rates because their currency is
so broken; prices are rising 50% a year. Venezuela has the world's largest oil reserves and yet they've been so busy looting the state oil company that in spite of record oil prices, production has declined since Chavez took over. The economy is shrinking at 5% a year.
The country has
already stopped paying for many of its imports; it continues to pay interest on its debt, inexplicably, but probably won't be able to do so for long. Financial markets say that they have a 93% chance of defaulting in the next five years. Also, the guy who wrote that article
was threatened by the Venezuelan government for saying what he said.
I cannot think of any defense of this. The Venezuelan economy is broken, the Chavistas have broken it. I believe Maduro is speaking what he thinks when he says this is all an American plot - they don't understand how or why the thing is broken. They don't understand capitalism or socialism.