Noel King

It's a massive amount of money for any of the countries of the hemisphere outside of the United States.

Venezuela was almost like an extension of the United States.

They were

Of course, there were the poor.

There were the poor in the hills.

And the hinterland was basically undeveloped.

But the oil prices in the world, you know, they went up to $150 a barrel at one point.

They dropped precipitously right around the time Nicolas Maduro succeeded Chavez in office.

And it went from, let's say, 120 to 40 or something.

It was a real drop in their income.

As oil prices went up, Venezuela spent it all.

the effect on Venezuelan society was immediate.

Madhuda showed an incapacity, an inability to sort of, to turn on a dime.

You know, he tried to bludgeon forward using rhetoric and eventually the army or paramilitaries to really push their case and try to acquire power.

So it's been this kind of push me, pull you mentality.

very no-holds-barred, very polarized environment ever since.

And look, one doesn't know the ultimate truth, but basically there's a consensus that he's stolen every election ever since.

So ever since then, Maduro's sort of been in a corner.

There's very little to find in the way of infrastructure and investment.

Where did those trillion dollars go?