Another rather confusing article. There is very little use regurgitating talking points from Washington Post. The "protests" against Hugo Chavez are the most poorly staged events in recent years. Sure, the people just "spontaneously" showed up on streets accross many countries. This is an event that every serious commentator would not even mention, let alone give it some credence. The lack of investments in Venezuela,. being attributed to the ousting of some energy companies makes zero sense. The energy companies come from countries that would pull back on their other investments --- that is most surely expected. But what is being overlooked are hard facts. The profits from the energy revenues, and the re-investment of the profit money into the improvement of production and capacities, offsets by far the loss of investments. Let us remember that the investments, as important as they are, take the profits right out of the country. Such investors for sure employ people, and pay taxes. But very little of the profit ends in domestic banks, or is being reinvested into the business locally. The bottom line, Venezuela, like all other countries with natural resources, is much better off hanging on the to profits that end up fueling the reinvestment in the industry and infrastructure. The levels of investment in education and health care are the BEST indicator of the real productivity of any country, not GDP. It is not how much a country makes, but how much it keeps that counts. And of the money that the country keeps, it is important to see how much goes to the interest on repaying foreign debt, vs. expenditure on health, education and infrastructure. As recently commented by the King of Bhutan, it is not GDP that counts, but GDH, or Gross Domestic Happiness. As events in Honduras show, it is easy to loose whatever happiness you get. About ten families, along with a few generals schooled in the School for the Assasins --- that is it!