{"id":20374,"date":"2016-05-02T05:50:43","date_gmt":"2016-05-02T10:50:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=20374"},"modified":"2016-05-02T05:50:43","modified_gmt":"2016-05-02T10:50:43","slug":"venezuela-at-risk-of-unravelling-as-economic-energy-turmoil-deepens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=20374","title":{"rendered":"Venezuela at risk of unravelling as economic, energy turmoil deepens"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Venezuela at risk of unravelling as economic, energy turmoil deepens<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n

Violent protests follow decision to ration energy, cut work week for public employees<\/strong>\"SoSo much is riding on the onset of the rainy season in Venezuela, where people across the drought-stricken country lined up on April 28, 2016, to buy food. So far, Caracas is being spared from energy-saving blackouts but its suburbs are increasingly being left in the dark. (Marco Bello\/Reuters)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A devastating drought has brought\u00a0Venezuela,\u00a0already\u00a0facing\u00a0economic and energy crises amid simmering political\u00a0unrest,\u00a0to the brink and\u00a0threatens the future of the oil-rich nation.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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“Simply put, a\u00a0natural disaster is making a\u00a0man-made disaster much worse,” said\u00a0Donald Kingsbury, a professor of political science and Latin American studies at the University of Toronto.<\/p>\n

The “man-made disaster,” in this case, is a heavily\u00a0petroleum-dependent, state-run economy gutted by the precipitous drop in crude oil prices.<\/p>\n

Inflation will reach\u00a0720 per cent some time this year, the International\u00a0Monetary Fund estimates, and the economy will contract another 10 per cent. Food staples and essential medicines\u00a0are increasingly scarce.\u00a0The costs of basic goods and services has skyrocketed. Incomes, for those lucky enough to still\u00a0have one,\u00a0are stagnant.<\/div>\n

Further, crime rates have reached troubling levels. Venezuela now boasts the world’s second-highest per capita homicide rate after Honduras.<\/p>\n

\"Venezuela<\/p>\n

A man holds a picture of Venezuela’s late president Hugo Chavez, whose time in power still looms large over the country’s politics. (Ariana Cubillos\/Reuters)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

“People are fed up, from all over the political and social spectrum. At this point, it may not take much for things to erupt,” said Kingsbury.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0worst drought to hit Venezuela in almost half a\u00a0century could be the\u00a0catalyst, he said.<\/p>\n

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…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Venezuela at risk of unravelling as economic, energy turmoil deepens Violent protests follow decision to ration energy, cut work week for public employeesSo much is riding on the onset of the rainy season in Venezuela, where people across the drought-stricken country lined up on April 28, 2016, to buy food. So far, Caracas is being […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[3544,3000,2346,263,13694,418,426,434,12349,851],"class_list":["post-20374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","tag-cbc","tag-cbc-news","tag-crime","tag-energy","tag-energy-rationing","tag-imf","tag-inflation","tag-international-monetary-fund","tag-lucas-powers","tag-venezuela"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20374"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20375,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20374\/revisions\/20375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}