Maduro’s balancing act

IT IS a remarkable achievement. Amid the longest oil boom in history Venezuela has in many respects the worst-performing economy in the Americas, even though it has (it claims) the world’s biggest reserves of the black stuff and gets 94% of its export earnings from it. That is the legacy of 14 years of “21st-century socialism” under the late Hugo Chávez. Inflation is over 45% a year and supermarket shelves are bare of many staple goods. Even Nelson Merentes, the finance minister, concedes that Mr Chávez’s revolution has yet to achieve economic success. But oil revenues of $90 billion a year allow Nicolás Maduro, Mr Chávez’s successor as president, the luxury of debating whether or not to change course.