Rich In Oil, Venezuela Is Now Poor In Most Everything Else

Venezuela is facing a major economic crisis that continues to worsen. The country is hugely dependent on oil exports, and prices are now less than half of what they were last summer. The good news is that subsidized gasoline in Venezuela costs less than two cents a gallon, the cheapest in the world. The bad news is that almost every other part of the economy is in trouble. There are shortages of many basic goods and supermarket shelves are often empty. Imports have been slashed. There's no official inflation rate, but most estimates put it 50 percent a year or higher. More…