RICHARD FERNANDEZ: Reinforcing Failure. “Venezuela is a problem similar but more severe than the challenge Greece poses to the European Union. In both cases you have countries with large voter blocs of socialist believers. They are charming, sympathetic and economically hopeless. Nobody even pretends to believe that another bailout will help Greece. Realistically no amount of charity will sustainably help Venezuela either, if the 12th largest oil reserves on the planet could not. About all a handout will do is simultaneously reinforce failure and obscure its causes.”