FALSE, FALSE, FALSE...

For all the other readers... Look up Venevision, RCTV and Globovisión to name a few. Read what happened to them, their owners and so on. The Venezuelan government control about 90% of the media, either directly or indirectly through third parties. And the remaining 10% has such level of censorship that they don't broadcast many things if they want to stay a float.

Maduro NEVER won the election cleanly. He not only imprisoned many of his opponents, but also control 100% the electoral office, not to mention using all the government resources and money to buy votes by threatening people who were beneficiaries of social programs saying they were going to be canceled if they didn't vote for him.

I will also say follow the money, but follow the corruption money used by Maduro and his goons... that will tell the whole story.

I mostly agree with you, it's mostly Venezuelan's people fault who elected Chavez in 1998. But it's also true Chavez, and now Maduro, have stole and rigged many elections since then, not to mention changing all the state institutions to work on his favor, It's hard for the Venezuelan people to fight against this.

As for blaming the US for any of this, only the Chavistas do this, and they are only following Cuba's recipe, which as you know they're been using since Castro got into power.

As for Trump, I agree with you 100%...

This got to be another Chavista posing as a credible source with a couple of actual facts, (NPR, BBC, TeleSur owners)

Who do you expect would believe "the US and it's poodles haven't been deliberately ruining Venezuela's economy and impoverishing it's people" ?. Either you're so dumb you believe your own BS, or Maduro's BS, or you got to be part of Cuba's G2 infiltrated fake news generation machine established in Venezuela many years ago.

Blaming the US, or anyone else beside Chavez' / Maduro's crooks for their corruption / mismanagement and pure fascism is not only false but moronic, and part of the Cuba recipe to always blame someone else, specially the US, for their own inflicted problems for the last 20 years since Chavez got into power.

And to say the record straight, the people DID and DOES support Juan Guaidó as an interim president, which btw, is by the book, ie the constitution. Article 233 of the Venezuelan constitution is the one the National Assembly applied to name Guaidó as an interim president, the same article chavistas use in 2002 when there was actually a coup. So it was good for Chavistas but not for the 80%+ mayority who supports Guadó, right ??. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Venezuelan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat_attempt)

If Maduro is so sure he'll win any election, why doesn't he open the whole electoral process and office with independent people without putting in jail many of his opponents ? It's just another fact in a long list of fact he's a dictator, and a bad one since he bankrupted the country, badly. It's only the Chavistas who allowed the stated owned oil company, PDVSA, to become so inept, corrupt and mismanaged that production went from 3M+ barrels a day to around 1M, and by tripling the payroll. Before Chavez oil prices were around $10 and the country did NOT enter into hippeinflation. Yes, they did have some high inflation, but nothing compared as what happening today, not to mention the shortages of basic goods, which didn't happen before 1999.

All in all, go to your leftist café where you crawled from, or go back to the G2 bunker to come up with more G2 BS.

I agree with you that housing used to be more affordable, but I don't agree that buying is "almost always" better than renting. On average is actually worst. It might have worked for you, and it actually worked for me too, but we might be the exception, not the rule. It barely works for me now even though I bought my place in 2010. Only in the last 2 or 3 years my total expenditures have been below renting the same kind of place nearby.

If I sell today I can probably make around $160k after realtor commissions, mortgage balance and the $55k I put down (around 15%) back then.

On average and specially since the last 3 - 4 years renting is a better option in most areas, but as usual, there are always exceptions...

This... ^^^

Americans need to learn how to live within their means and don't buy shit they don't need just because it's the last trendy thing out there. Who needs an overpriced iPhone X for around $1000 ?, or the latest Nike shoes for over $100 ? The list is long...

And there you have people ramping up credit card debt just to buy this stuff, renting money left and right just to keep up with their spending habits.

Most people need to learn basic money management strategy meaning you don't spend more than your income is unless you're in a emergency, and for that people need to save some money for the rainy days. Long time ago I decided to save money and have a f...ck you fund to cover ALL my expenses for a year in case I get laid off or something else. Unfortunately this won't cover medical emergency if you don't have health insurance since the health system is so screwed up that an couple of days of an ER visit with put you back in the 10s of thousand of $$.

Some are millennials doing all this unnecessary buying, but they also have something going for them. From what I've read many millennials have decided not fall for the fantasy of the "american dream" on some stuff, like for example buying a house they're not even financially prepared to buy. Many people have fallen for the fallacy that buying a house is always better than renting a place to live. Many just compare the mortgage payment directly against rent payment, but they don't consider ALL the other owners expenses like regular and additional insurance (eg: earthquake for CA, flooding), property taxes, HOAs, maintenance, etc, etc. The buy houses with just 5% down and then have to pay PMI. Then they think the interest tax deduction will be huge, but many don't realize the deduction is tied to their tax bracket. Then they'll move to another place between 4 - 6 years which I think is the average, so money going to the mortgage principal will be minimum.

Again, people need to learn to live within their means...

They're probably going to f.... it up like many other software companies they've swallowed in the past, although it's a big chunk of money they're paying for Red Hat, so maybe the stakes are too high to mess it up. The IBM motto in the last decade or so has been to try to increase profits by cutting cost left and right and barely increasing revenue, including laying off people with higher salaries who actually knew something about their products, ie, mostly the more talented people. Yes, there was some fat in there, specially in mid management, but there was good people too. This is probably why their stock is finally going down after a much needed correction. I used to work for them and was part of one of these SW companies that got bought years ago. I still remember the first meeting at IBM with the new head of the division we were swallowed into. His "motivational" speech was something like this: "You guys make too much money, and this is going to change". My compensation package way higher not only for the equivalent IBM role, but way higher into their management chain. They try to fit everyone into their shitty Bands system (if they're still using it), which is a POS and only works when you have good political connections inside. The Band system motto: "Someone has to get lower evaluation/performance grade so we can get rid of he/she in case we need to". So one thing is certain, many of the good Red Hat employees are going to get fu... big time, being there....