How Venezuela Imploded (Update) | NCPR News

People line up outside a supermarket in Caracas on September 28, 2016 to buy basic food and household items. Venezuela is facing an extremely tense political crisis as the South American oil-exporting nation suffers from low crude oil prices, inflation, food shortages and violence. Image: Federico Parra/AFP via Getty Images

How Venezuela Imploded (Update)

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

Things were going pretty bad in Venezuela in 2016. Grocery stores didn't have enough food. Hospitals did not have basic supplies like gauze. Child mortality rose sharply. Shops had to close. It is one of the epic economic collapses of our time. And it was completely avoidable.

Venezuela used to be a relatively rich country. It offers just about every economic advantage a country could want: beautiful beaches and mountains ready for tourism, fertile land well-suited to agriculture, an educated population, and oil, lots of oil.

But during the boom years, the Venezuelan government made a number of decisions that added up to an economic time bomb.

Today on the show we have an economic horror story about a country that made completely wrong decisions with its oil money. It's an insight into the basic workings of money and how you can lose everything if you try to control it.

Then today an update on Venezuela. How we went from a downward spiral to tentative economic stabilization… amidst political unrest.

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 developed by Neal Rauch. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.

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