| Shortly after he had been hiding under an overcoat as rebel soldiers tried to storm the Miraflores Palace, the Venezuelan president Carlos Andrés Pérez said: “Give them bullets. I want to be back in soon.” The attempted coup of February 1992 was the dramatic culmination of a sequence of collapsing oil prices, financial turmoil and the “Caracazo” anti-austerity riots of 1989 that left hundreds dead.
Venezuela defaulted on its debts in 1990, 1995 and 1998, following a well-established pattern. “Spikes in commodity prices are almost invariably followed by waves of new sovereign defaults,” note Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff in their authoritative survey of global financial crises. Countries dependent on commodity revenues run up their budgets during the good times. Their currencies are buoyed by exports, and they surf domestic housing and credit booms...............................................Full Article: Source
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