Kenny Malone

It was actually around this time that Stanford political economist Terry Carl first went to Venezuela as a graduate student.

He said lover.

She said it was the lover.

So Venezuela was richer than ever.

But there was one problem.

Those riches were being mismanaged, many would argue.

Terry told us this story of a visit with Juan Pablo Perez Alfonso, that key oil minister who had driven so much of Venezuela's oil policy in the past.

Juan Pablo was out of office at this point.

And when Terry told him that she was planning to do some research on OPEC, Juan Pablo told her, no, no, look elsewhere.

Yes, yes, yes.

Yes.

That one translates pretty clearly.

Corruption is another classic feature of the resource curse.

And Terry was seeing some of this up close.

Nothing.

The most striking thing she saw out there?

was what looked like a big old tire on the ground.

In Terry's defense, it is the name of a copper company, and the groundbreaking Ice Cube movie, Anaconda, had not come out yet.

So how was she to know?

In the 80s, oil prices dropped.