How Venezuela imploded (update)

Planet Money

NPR

Business, News

4.6 • 29.8K Ratings

🗓️ 2 October 2024

⏱️ 26 minutes

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Summary

(Note: A version of this episode originally ran in 2016.)

Back in 2016, things were pretty bad in Venezuela. Grocery stores didn't have enough food. Hospitals didn't have basic supplies, like gauze. Child mortality was spiking. Businesses were shuttering. It's one of the epic economic collapses of our time. And it was totally avoidable.

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.

But during the boom years, the Venezuelan government made some choices that add up to an economic time bomb.

Today on the show, we have an economic horror story about a country that made all the wrong decisions with its oil money. It's a window into the fundamental way that money works and how when you try to control it, you can lose everything.

Then, an update on Venezuela today. How it went from a downward spiral, to a tentative economic stabilization... amidst political upheaval.

This original episode is hosted by Robert Smith and Noel King. It was produced by Nick Fountain and Sally Helm. Today's update was hosted by Amanda Aronczyk, produced by Sean Saldana, fact checked by Sierra Juarez, and engineered by Neal Rauch. Alex Goldmark is our Executive Producer.

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Transcript

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0:25.0	This is Planet Money from NPR.
0:30.0	Hey everybody, it's Amanda Aranchik. Today a kind of
0:34.4	undercovered and unexpected update to one of the biggest economic
0:39.8	meltdowns in recent history, the Venezuelan comeback. Back in 2016,
0:45.0	Robert Smith and Noel King explained how the Venezuelan economy collapsed.
0:49.0	We will start there, and then we will come back with an update how the Venezuelan
0:55.1	economy stabilized here are Noel and Robert from 2016 when the economy of
1:00.8	Venezuela was still in free fall.
1:04.1	I talked with a doctor in Venezuela the other day, a neurosurgeon.
1:08.2	He'd been working in the public hospitals in Caracas for free, I should say bono and recently he just had to quit the conditions in the public hospital were getting too dangerous.
1:20.0	I didn't want to jeopardize anybody's life because of being irresponsible.
1:25.0	I'm sure you've heard about the situation in Venezuela right now.
1:28.0	It's in the midst of this economic crisis.
1:31.0	Claps is probably a better word. There's almost no food on the shelves of the
1:35.2	supermarkets. There are riots. Inflation is estimated at 500 percent. And there are these
	...

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