Venezuela president Nicolás Maduro Looks to a Marxist Spaniard for an Economic Miracle
http://www.wsj.com/articles/venezuelas-nicolas-maduro-looks-to-a-marxist-spaniard-for-an-economic-miracle-1470678805
Alfredo Serrano’s calls for even more state controls have largely shaped the president’s response to the country’s economic crisis
CARACAS, Venezuela—President Nicolás Maduro, hoping for an economic miracle to salvage his country, has placed his trust in an obscure Marxist professor from Spain who holds so much sway the president calls him “the Jesus Christ of economics.”
Alfredo Serrano —a 40-year-old economist whose long hair and beard have also elicited the president’s comparison to Jesus—has become the central economic adviser to Mr. Maduro, according to a number of officials in the ruling United Socialist Party and other government consultants. His rise has come at the expense of advisers who, though also leftist, have urged the presiddent to undertake more conventional steps to address Venezuela’s dysfunctional economy, such as liberalizing the country’s tightly controlled currency, these people say.
Instead, Mr. Serrano’s calls for even more state controls on manufacturing and food supply have largely shaped the president’s response to the country’s economic crisis, the party officials say. Such moves, they argue, risk prolonging the deepest recession in the nation’s history—as well as the hyperinflation and severe food shortages that have accompanied it.
*sigh* Just when you thought they could sink no lower
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