Sharmini Peries interviews Mark Weisbrot — Venezuela's President Maduro Presents New Economic Measures

Video and transcript. 

Mark Weisbrot is one of the most knowledgeable people writing about the economic situation in English.

SHARMINI PERIES: Mark, so let's start with President Maduro's economic policy announcements, which took place on Thursday night. From what you can tell so far, do you think they will work towards recovering Venezuela's economy here?

MARK WEISBROT: Well, I think probably not. I think there's some good things there. The try to increase the food distribution, which they have increased recently, I think is a good thing, but they do have these fundamental imbalances in the economy that have not been resolved, and have worsened pretty much continuously over the last five years....

Float the bolivar (VEF).

That's why I'm recommending that they let the currency float. It's not that I think that that's always the best thing, although you don't see really ... very few economies in this hemisphere have anything like that kind of system, and no economist in the world, that I can think of, would recommend the exchange rate system that they have.

Now, that's not to say that the vast majority of economists can't be wrong. You know, they are, but this is really almost anyone across the political spectrum, and you can see it again, they've had it for five years, and you can see exactly how it's destroyed the economy, so I think that those are the kind of reforms they're going to need, and they're probably going to need some outside help too. [Which Russia and China stand ready to provide.]

TRNN
Venezuela's President Maduro Presents New Economic Measures

Sharmini Peries interviews Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C, along with Dean Baker, and President of Just Foreign Policy, a non-governmental organization dedicated to reforming United States foreign policy

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Calling BS. Always against the adversaries of the Atlanticists and never against them or their allies. No credibility given the record.

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