Too bad.

Passed by a small margin (54% to 46%), Chavez removed term limits.

I feel sorry for the Venezuelan people.

Seems smart money does too
Venezuela Government Bonds Drop as Chavez Wins Bid to Run Again

Things must be getting bad in Venezuela

Analysts: Tapping reserves risky for Venezuela

Chavez has to take control of $12 billion in international reserves.

In doing so, he will have money for a while, but the odds of Venezuela getting more money in the future go waaaay down. The credit markets are supposed to be tight anyway, any movement to make someone trust you less is a bad idea.

Venezuela will end up with even higher inflation. 30.9% is EXTREMELY high if you ask me. (30.9% in 2008).

Chavez thinks that more cash for social spending will get him the votes to get to be president for life (ie: Dictator), but in the end, if the economy sucks and inflation is very very high, people will turn against him.

Venezuela comes a begging

Nationalizing commodity companies is normally a very bad thing. It has finally caught up with Venezuela, and now they want the people that they treated bad to come back so that they can steal from them again.

They want help from the "imperialist profiteers" (news article).

Chavez needs to learn that you can not steal a company from someone, run it into the ground, and then expect them to want to come back to fix the company, at which point, you can steal it again.

I am torn. High gas prices are good for the long term (we develop new techs and etc), but low gass prices are good in the short term, as Russia, Venezuela, and Iran all will have budget problems.

Food Shortage in Venezuela

So, Venezuela is relearning the lesson that they could have learned from history.

Meat, sugar scarce in Venezuela stores

There is no excuse for a government to make this mistake. You can not regulate prices to make them lower than would be profitable. If the inflation is that bad, maybe you should look at other reasons why. A government that only responds to crisis and does not take steps to avoid them is in trouble.

Looks like socialism and dictatorship aren't working out too well. Who would have thought?

The same thing is happening in Mexico, with many Mexicans unable to buy tortillas. The government tried to regulate prices, but that just means that no one will sell any because they won't make any profits. Interesting about the tortillas, is that our attempt to use green-er fuels has caused poor Mexicans to go hungry. The push for corn to ethanol drove up the prices of corn.

If you are going to try and regulate the price of a good, to at least have a chance you have to subsidize the good so that people continue to profit. The thing about subsidizing it is that you have to get the money from somewhere, guess where?! the people! You might as well just let prices rise, because in the end the people pay for it. If you just let the price rise, you don't incur the cost of having the money go through the government.