Anatomy of an economic suicide: Venezuela under Maduro (Amirreza Etasi, January 4, 2026, asia Times)
This report is not a political manifesto; it is an economic autopsy. It’s about the arithmetic of ruin. Between 2013 and 2025, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela experienced the single largest economic contraction in modern history for a country not at war. According to data from the World Bank and the IMF, the economy evaporated approximately 80% of its GDP, a figure that dwarfs what happened to the United States in the Great Depression (29%) and to the Soviet Union during its collapse.For the international observer, particularly in Asia, this collapse offers a critical case study in “fiscal dominance” and the destruction of the price mechanism. It was not merely the result of falling oil prices, or external sanctions, but the mathematical inevitability of specific technical decisions: the monetization of deficits, the expropriation of supply chains and the decapitalization of the state oil company (PDVSA).