{"id":9364,"date":"2016-10-21T14:52:04","date_gmt":"2016-10-21T22:52:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/associatednews.info\/content\/episode-731-how-venezuela-imploded\/"},"modified":"2016-10-21T14:52:04","modified_gmt":"2016-10-21T22:52:04","slug":"episode-731-how-venezuela-imploded","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/associatednews.info\/content\/episode-731-how-venezuela-imploded\/","title":{"rendered":"Episode 731: How Venezuela Imploded"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"ftpimagefix\" style=\"float:left\"><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/money\/2016\/10\/21\/498867764\/episode-731-how-venezuela-imploded?utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=business\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/media.npr.org\/assets\/img\/2016\/10\/21\/venezuela-1-73487625e2ce8950716f9caf2810bb46d35ba288-s1100-c15.jpg\" alt=\"People queue to buy basic food and household items outside a supermarket in Caracas.\"><\/a><\/div>\n<div>\n<div><button>Enlarge this image<\/button><\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><span>Federico Parrra\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Things are pretty bad right now in Venezuela. Grocery stores don&#8217;t have enough food. Hospitals don&#8217;t have basic supplies, like gauze. Child mortality is spiking. Businesses are shuttering.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s one of the epic economic collapses of our time. And it was totally avoidable.<\/p>\n<p>Venezuela used to be a relatively rich country. It has just about all the economic advantages a country could ask for: beautiful beaches and mountains ready for tourism, fertile land good for farming, an educated population, and oil, lots and lots of oil.<\/p>\n<p>During the boom years, the Venezuelan government made some choices that add up to an economic time bomb.<\/p>\n<p>Venezuela didn&#8217;t save its oil money. It used it to subsidize goods and services for the people, but in some unusual ways. Another choice: instead of making stuff at home, Venezuela imported almost everything it could. The government also kept tight control on the exchange rate between Venezuelan bolivars and U.S. dollars.<\/p>\n<p>As long as the price of oil was high, there weren&#8217;t serious problems. Then oil prices came down.<\/p>\n<p>Today on the show, we have an economic horror story about a country that made all the wrong decisions with its oil money. It&#8217;s a window into the fundamental way that money works and how when you try to control it, you can lose everything.<\/p>\n<p><em>Music: &#8220;<a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.firstcom.com\/#!\/browse\/browsed-results.aspx?SelectedCDId=9970\">Deserted<\/a>&#8221; and &#8220;<a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.firstcom.com\/#!\/BROWSE\/browsed-results.aspx?selectedLabelId=-2&amp;SelectedCDId=9856\">Faded Dreams<\/a>.&#8221;Find us:<\/em> <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/planetmoney\"><em>Twitter<\/em><\/a><em>\/<\/em> <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/home.php?ref=home#%21\/planetmoney?ref=ts\"><em>Facebook<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/blockads.fivefilters.org\/\">Let&#8217;s block ads!<\/a><\/strong> <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/fivefilters\/block-ads\/wiki\/There-are-no-acceptable-ads\">(Why?)<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source:: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/money\/2016\/10\/21\/498867764\/episode-731-how-venezuela-imploded?utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=business\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Episode 731: How Venezuela Imploded\" rel=\"nofollow\">http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/money\/2016\/10\/21\/498867764\/episode-731-how-venezuela-imploded?utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=business<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"ftpimagefix\" style=\"float:left\"><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/money\/2016\/10\/21\/498867764\/episode-731-how-venezuela-imploded?utm_medium=RSS&amp;utm_campaign=business\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/media.npr.org\/assets\/img\/2016\/10\/21\/venezuela-1-73487625e2ce8950716f9caf2810bb46d35ba288-s1100-c15.jpg\" alt=\"People queue to buy basic food and household items outside a supermarket in Caracas.\"><\/a><\/div>\n<div>\n<div><button>Enlarge this image<\/button><\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><span>Federico Parrra\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Things are pretty bad right now in Venezuela. Grocery stores don&#8217;t have enough food. Hospitals don&#8217;t have basic supplies, like gauze. Child mortality is spiking. Businesses are shuttering.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s one of the epic economic collapses of our time. And it was totally avoidable.<\/p>\n<p>Venezuela used to be a relatively rich country. It has just about all the economic advantages a country could ask for: beautiful beaches and mountains ready for tourism, fertile land good for farming, an educated population, and oil, lots and lots of oil.<\/p>\n<p>During the boom years, the Venezuelan government made some choices that add up to an economic time bomb.<\/p>\n<p>Venezuela didn&#8217;t save its oil money. It used it to subsidize goods and services for the people, but in some unusual ways. Another choice: instead of making stuff at home, Venezuela imported almost everything it could. The government also kept tight control on the exchange rate between Venezuelan bolivars and U.S. dollars.<\/p>\n<p>As long as the price of oil was high, there weren&#8217;t serious problems. Then oil prices came down.<\/p>\n<p>Today on the show, we have an economic horror story about a country that made all the wrong decisions with its oil money. It&#8217;s a window into the fundamental way that money works and how when you try to control it, you can lose everything.<\/p>\n<p><em>Music: &#8220;<a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.firstcom.com\/#!\/browse\/browsed-results.aspx?SelectedCDId=9970\">Deserted<\/a>&#8221; and &#8220;<a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.firstcom.com\/#!\/BROWSE\/browsed-results.aspx?selectedLabelId=-2&amp;SelectedCDId=9856\">Faded Dreams<\/a>.&#8221;Find us:<\/em> <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/planetmoney\"><em>Twitter<\/em><\/a><em>\/<\/em> <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/home.php?ref=home#%21\/planetmoney?ref=ts\"><em>Facebook<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/blockads.fivefilters.org\/\">Let&#8217;s block ads!<\/a><\/strong> <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/fivefilters\/block-ads\/wiki\/There-are-no-acceptable-ads\">(Why?)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.info\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.info\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.info\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.info\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.info\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.info\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9364\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.info\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.info\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.info\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}