Crude Nation Quotes

“Stringent regulations as well as price and capital controls cause many companies to lose money and, as such, make companies more dependent on the government’s good graces to stay in business.”
― Raúl Gallegos, Crude Nation: How Oil Riches Ruined Venezuela

“the boom-and-bust nature of Venezuela’s economy has taught most people that producing is too much of a headache—importing goods is an easier business. Or as Vollmer puts it: “We’re a nouveau riche country that never really had to work for what it has.”
― Raúl Gallegos, Crude Nation: How Oil Riches Ruined Venezuela

“Their name comes from bachaco, a large and industrious ant found in the Venezuelan Amazon. And it is a fitting name. After all, ants are known for the ability to carry several times their weight, just as Venezuelans haul away bags full of merchandise they later resell.”
― Raúl Gallegos, Crude Nation: How Oil Riches Ruined Venezuela

“Venezuela was experiencing the first pangs of what would become known as Dutch disease, the phenomenon that occurs when the success of one natural resource ruins the rest of a country’s economy.”
― Raúl Gallegos, Crude Nation: How Oil Riches Ruined Venezuela

“Many of these products come from state-owned retailers and prominently feature government propaganda printed on the plastic packaging. Cartoons depict political scenes that show, for instance, the heroes—dark-skinned, poor Venezuelans—kicking capitalists, portrayed as a pink-skinned Satan wearing a suit.”
― Raúl Gallegos, Crude Nation: How Oil Riches Ruined Venezuela

“Tune in to any Venezuelan television channel in January 2015, and you would see government-funded ads featuring famous singers, soap opera actors, and television personalities with one message for shoppers: “Cool it with the nervous purchases.”
― Raúl Gallegos, Crude Nation: How Oil Riches Ruined Venezuela

“As León sees it, price controls and the resulting bachaquero class “have built a system of economic redistribution from richer Venezuelans to the poor.”
― Raúl Gallegos, Crude Nation: How Oil Riches Ruined Venezuela

“In late January 2015 Venezuelan intelligence officers arrested the president and operations vice president of Farmatodo and charged them with “boycott and economic destabilization” for not having enough cash registers functioning in one of the chain’s pharmacies.26 The executives were held in jail for fifty-six days and given a conditional release that forced them to show up in court every fifteen days while the case continued.”
― Raúl Gallegos, Crude Nation: How Oil Riches Ruined Venezuela

“By making these menstrual pads at home “we avoid becoming a part of the commercial cycle of savage capitalism. We are more conscious and in harmony with the environment,” the woman says in the video. “Our ancestors, our grandmothers used pads made out of cloth.” The Venezuela state-sponsored video was asking people to turn back the clock almost a century to adapt to the country’s worsening economic reality.”
― Raúl Gallegos, Crude Nation: How Oil Riches Ruined Venezuela

“In the eyes of the government, there are three types of enemies: companies that intentionally produce less toilet paper, distributors who hoard the paper rolls hoping to sell them to desperate consumers for higher prices, and misguided Venezuelans who buy more rolls than they should. As far as the government is concerned, the mark of a revolutionary Venezuelan is to stoically wait and endure toilet tissue shortages while politicians work to erect a socialist system with the country’s oil wealth.”
― Raúl Gallegos, Crude Nation: How Oil Riches Ruined Venezuela

“Jorge Giordani, a seventy-six-year-old electronics engineer and the main architect of Venezuela’s economic policies under Chávez—known as “the Monk” for his ascetic ways and almost religious devotion to orthodox leftist ideas—famously admitted that US$20 billion, or one-third of the country’s total import bill, was lost to obscure enterprises in 2012 alone.”
― Raúl Gallegos, Crude Nation: How Oil Riches Ruined Venezuela

“Venezuela has more than 299 billion barrels in proved oil reserves trapped underground, the biggest known cache of crude on the planet. That is more oil than can be found under the sands of Saudi Arabia. Yet in 2016 Venezuela doesn’t have enough dollars to invest in its depleted oil sector. It doesn’t have enough so that it can finance the imports of milk, chicken, beef, cell phones, and even the polyester and cotton fiber local paper companies need to produce toilet paper.”
― Raúl Gallegos, Crude Nation: How Oil Riches Ruined Venezuela

“Put a price limit on any good, and chances are that increased demand will eventually make it scarce—dollars are no exception. The government’s dollar auctions are met with insatiable demand. Think of the free-for-all one sees on television when aid workers deliver food to a starved African community. People run over themselves for a share of what’s being given. The fast-rising price of the dollar in the black market is an indication of this madness.”
― Raúl Gallegos, Crude Nation: How Oil Riches Ruined Venezuela

“He is a human credit card for me and for scores of diplomats, oil executives, journalists, and any person living in Venezuela who needs to convert a dollar paycheck into bolivars. He buys dollars from those who have them and sells dollars to Venezuelans and companies who desperately need them. He operates in secret. As far as the government is concerned his business doesn’t exist.”
― Raúl Gallegos, Crude Nation: How Oil Riches Ruined Venezuela

“In Venezuela the price people pay for a dollar depends on who they are and what they do for a living. Venezuela’s leftist government sold dollars for 6.3 bolivars to an elite few.”
― Raúl Gallegos, Crude Nation: How Oil Riches Ruined Venezuela

“«el mal holandés», el fenómeno que ocurre cuando el éxito económico de un recurso natural arruina al resto de la economía de un país.”
― Raúl Gallegos, ¿Cuándo se jodió Venezuela?: Sobre cómo el país con las reservas petroleras más ricas del mundo acabó sumido en la ruina, otra vez (Deusto)