Looking Into the Black Box of Venezuela’s Economy

Spotting evidence of the destruction that Venezuela’s politicians have inflicted on the economy isn’t terribly hard. In fact, you start to see it as soon as you get off the plane. The terminal of Caracas International Airport, a cavernous building built in the 1980s, is mostly empty. International carriers have largely abandoned the country. The combination of foreign exchange controls and the government’s refusal to let airlines repatriate earnings means that long-haul flights into the country have all but disappeared. The picture is the same on the streets of the city. The local currency, the bolívar, has lost 70 percent of its value in the black market this year, and “legal” dollars are hard to find. More…