Venezuela is Collapsing

Venezuela is on a rapid and precipitous decline. You might even say, as my guest today Francisco Toro wrote in a recent piece in The Atlantic that Venezuela is falling apart. Between food, fuel, medicine and commodity shortages, corruption and rampant crime, this one-time middle income country is struggling mightily. There's an incipient humanitarian crisis and instability of Valenzuela could effect the entire region.

Fransisco Toro is the proprietor of the blog Caracas Chronicles and co-authored the Atlantic piece, with Moises Naim, a former Venezuelan official and longtime editor of Foreign Policy who was a guest on this very show last year. The piece very succinctly describes the causes and consequences of Venezuela's collapse and begins with an very telling anecdote about toilet paper.

If you have 20 minutes and want to understand the reasons why Venezuela is on the verge of a collapse and the broader social, economic and international implications of the country's implosion, have a…