DMA member Ted Helms will speak with our group about the startling demise of Venezuela in his presentation entitled “Venezuela – A Failed State: Story of the Road to Destruction.” As Ted observes, it is not widely understood or appreciated just how rich and developed Venezuela was, including the wealth of its resource base, and the abject condition in which it currently finds itself. Large numbers of people, representing 25% of its population, have fled the country in desperation, with entire families walking as far as Chile or the United States, literally to escape starvation. Today, Venezuela is arguably a failed state with no foreseeable possibility of returning to its prosperous and democratic past. Based on his first-hand experience, Ted will highlight the root causes of Venezuela’s road to ruin, and why, under any plausible scenario, its future remains bleak.
Ted Helms lived in Caracas for three years in the late 1970s, as a tennis teacher to the oligarchy, witnessing the boom years that followed OPEC’s fourfold oil price increase. He returned to Caracas in the 1980s as the country manager for Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company during a period of economic volatility. In the 1990s Ted was the New York-based financial representative for Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., the national oil company (PDVSA), when Venezuela nearly doubled its oil production and became the United States’ leading oil supplier.
In the course of his work in the country, Ted experienced, first-hand, Venezuelan society, politics, and economy under six presidential administrations. His direct involvement with Venezuela ended shortly after the election of Hugo Chavez in 1999, so he lightheartedly refers to himself as the ‘first exile” of Hugo Chavez.
Arranged by Tom Lom