More "curse of oil"

Brazil is apparently doing quite well. I wanted to compare to the basket cases and the folks at the Economist Intelligence Unit let me look at their Venezuela Country Report. The consequences of Hugo Chavez rule have been much worse than I had expected. Start with 3 years of negative GDP growth. And we call two negative growth quarters a "recession". There is also crime, inflation, press censorship, devaluation and on it goes. It is easily the region's disaster. Just when Brazil is taking off.

So sad. I did some work there in the 1980s and saw reasons to be optimistic. Upended by the "curse of oil"?

The EIU also forecasts declining 2011 GDP growth for the world, the OECD, the EU27 as well as the U.S. Not good.