Who produces vastly more energy than it needs right now? The United States. So who needs Venezuela’s oil? Basically, nobody. That cold fact, writes Ben Cahill in Barron’s, is enabling the Trump Administration to further squeeze dictator Nicolas Maduro by blockading the nation’s oil exports. For decades, other countries used oil as a weapon against the U.S. Today the tables are turned and, Cahill notes, Venezuela’s decrepit industry is the one crying out for reinvestment.
At Least He Paid his Losing Bet
Paul Ehrlich, author of the spectacularly incorrect 1968 best-seller The Population Bomb, recently died at 93. Despite his longevity, Ronald Bailey points out in Reason, Ehrlich did not live to see even one of his numerous apocalyptic predictions come true. The world’s population certainly grew, but not merely larger, richer and fatter too. Most famously, Ehrlich once bet economist Julian Simon that the world was approaching economic collapse – but in 1990 had to mail Simon a cheque.
