Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro Looks to a Marxist Spaniard for an Economic Miracle

By Anatoly Kurmanaev and Mayela Armas – August 8, 2016

The Wall Street Journal

Alfredo Serrano’s calls for even more state controls have largely shaped the president’s response to the country’s economic crisis

CARACAS, Venezuela—President Nicolás Maduro, hoping for an economic miracle to salvage his country, has placed his trust in an obscure Marxist professor from Spain who holds so much sway the president calls him “the Jesus Christ of economics.”

Alfredo Serrano—a 40-year-old economist whose long hair and beard have also elicited the president’s comparison to Jesus—has become the central economic adviser to Mr. Maduro, according to a number of officials in the ruling United Socialist Party and other government consultants….

“I thought it was a good proposal, very reasonable,” said José Antonio Ocampo, a Columbia University economist and former Colombian finance minister who took part in two preliminary meetings of the Unasur mission earlier this year.

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