Swerves and skids by the Venezuelan economy

Now that the neoliberal economic model, under whose sway Latin America is seeing out the present millennium, has been in force for several years, this is a particularly good time to take stock of the experience accumulated so far. Economists normally set about this task by breaking down and analysing the characteristics and components of the programmes applied in the various countries. An aspect which is often neglected in these assessments, however, is that of the social and political viability of the measures adopted, which does not only depend on their technical merits.