In 2022, Qatar's "wonton skins" will spend 220 billion yuan to host the World Cup, which is five times more than the previous seven sessions.
Qatar is not only inhumane in the royal trenches, ordinary workers work "hard" for three hours and earn as much as Wall Street, even if they lie flat at home, they can get more than 100,000 US dollars a year, and the majority of netizens can't help but sigh that reincarnation is a technical job.
The cartels are rich on the one hand, but Venezuela, which is also a major energy exporter, is not so easy on the other side.
After Venezuela's proven oil reserves were discovered in 1922, it became the big brother of global oil exports.
In today's Venezuela, the poverty rate is 94%, and people spend a lot of money to buy a piece of soap, and they seem to be the richest people, but in fact they can't even afford a piece of meat, so they have to dig through the garbage heap.
The current situation of Venezuela can only be said to be "ancestors were rich", and now the happiness index is comparable to that of Syria, but the Syrian family is at war, and Venezuela is completely self-made.
So just how rich is Venezuela's oil?
For a long time, countries with abundant energy have been "blessed by God", and the wealth brought by energy exports can quickly increase the prosperity of the country, but there is also a saying: all the gifts of fate have already been secretly marked with a price, and Venezuela can be said to have vividly interpreted this sentence with its own national fortunes.
In 1922, Venezuela's first oil well gushed out "black gold", and its oil reserves instantly jumped to the first place in the world.
In the decade of the 70s and 80s, as Arab and Israeli quarrels with each other, international oil prices soared, and Venezuela also took the opportunity to cut a wave of leeks around the world and directly sent itself to the top four of the Latin American rich list. However, Venezuela's road to lying flat and soaring ushered in a big turn after the 80s, and after the 80s, international oil prices have not been able to rise, and Venezuela has been unable to make a fortune from oil, and suddenly owes a lot of debt.
In order to get out of the predicament, they can only go to privatization. The 19 U.S.-led foreign oil companies have almost all of Venezuela's oil refining industry in their hands, causing many locals to work as cattle and horses for foreign bosses.
In 1992, Chávez, then a young man, was a hot-blooded young man who, like most people in China, believed that American corporations were responsible for the current situation. He turned around and threw himself into the Bolivarian Revolution, calling for the expulsion of foreign-funded enterprises, and thus squatting in the situation.
As a result, this experience of squatting has become a plus point on Chavez's resume. In 1999, Chávez, the "hope of the whole village", came to power and vigorously implemented the policy of nationalizing oil resources as soon as he took power.
Chávez's simple idea was that since privatization was the root of all evil, then doing the opposite and nationalizing all the oil would solve the problem.
As soon as he came to power, he immediately took back the mining and management rights back into the hands of the state. Most of the cooperation agreements signed by international oil companies with Venezuela are also tearing up, leaving foreign-funded companies dumbfounded.
He forced foreign companies to relinquish operational and financial control of their projects, to do business in partnership with state-owned companies, and to secure at least 60 percent of the shares. As a result, foreign companies have seen that there is no profit here, and they have withdrawn their investments, even giants such as ExxonMobil in the United States.
With one operation, Chávez achieved his goal of nationalizing oil. But if you think that he has solved the legacy of Venezuela's history, you are very wrong.
Venezuela's pillar industry is oil, and after Chávez's toss, the pillar industry has not been invested, oil production has fallen all of a sudden, and the country's money bag has been deflated.
However, Chavez is a smart person, after he came to power, he began to engage in welfare policies, giving free basic education, medical services, and cheap meat, eggs and milk to the people.
At this moment, the middle and lower classes of the common people were happy, and they all said that Chavez was their "savior of the poor". But what they didn't expect was that it was these policies that drove the Venezuelan train into the gutter at full speed.
Chávez used all the money that would have been used to develop science and technology to subsidize the poor. As a result, technology has stagnated, and oil production has shrunk dramatically, laying a huge mine for the future.
However, if Chavez is surprisingly lucky, the price of Venezuela's oil has risen as the global economy has expanded further in his second year in office. Chávez's hidden dangers have been overshadowed by false prosperity, but his successor, Maduro, has been less lucky.
In 2013, "National Idol" Chavez finally stepped down due to cancer after serving three consecutive terms. It was also from this year that the demand for oil in the international market weakened, and the price of oil naturally fell.
People in the country have no money so they can borrow money from banks, but the banks have no money, so the Maduro government can only start borrowing money from other countries. Soon, together with several Latin American brothers in Brazil, Chile, and Argentina, he cried around and borrowed money, and for every 3 yuan of money lent out of the world, one dollar went into the pockets of the four Latin American brothers.
In addition to borrowing money, Maduro also came up with another "good idea": printing money, and it is not difficult to imagine how it turned out - in 2019, its inflation rate skyrocketed to 10,000%, and in 2021, the inflation rate remained high at 686%.
It is not uncommon to see news that tens of thousands of cash can only buy a pound of pork. The people spend a lot of money and look like they are rich, but in fact, even food and clothing are a problem. How ironic it is that as an energy powerhouse, people don't even have fuel to drive and cook.
Back in the '70s, when Venezuela was living comfortably on black gold, Oil Minister Alfonso predicted that over-reliance on oil would one day bring ruin to Venezuela.
Today, this prophecy is a prophecy.
Venezuela, who was born with a golden spoon in his mouth, is a blessing that many countries cannot envy, but this opportunity is useless for Venezuela. Excessive dependence on oil has led to a single economic structure, and the development of oil, a pillar industry, is completely dependent on international oil prices. There is a bit of turmoil in the international community, and it is a big gamble that will affect the fortunes of Venezuela.
But in addition to these, Venezuela's fate is so miserable, and it is indispensable that the United States is behind it. The United States imports a large amount of oil every year, and the slump in international oil prices is naturally conducive to the United States buying and buying to its heart's content.
What's more, Russia, an old adversary of the United States, also feeds on oil and gas under its own ground. The United States is vigorously advocating the reduction of international oil prices in the international community, and naturally this is also the reason why they do not want to see Russia doing better.
So how dependent is Russia on oil?
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia, under the leadership of Yeltsin, can be said to have suffered a great loss of vitality, and no longer has the prestige of the big brother of the past. After Yeltsin stepped down in disgrace, Putin, who took over from him, was just a fledgling newcomer in the eyes of the West, and no one thought that he could do anything big.
But no one expected that as soon as Putin came to power, he slapped everyone in the face. Russia's GDP, trade volume, and foreign exchange reserves have all begun to rebound, and there is a tendency to revive the momentum of the year. In the final analysis, it is because Russia has a strong foundation, and energy is their trump card.
Seeing that the old adversary was relieving itself again, the United States began to get anxious. In 2014, the Secretary of State proposed sanctions against Russia. From cats and dogs to flowers and plants, from Tchaikovsky, who has been dead for more than 100 years, to the yachts and mansions of the rich, the sanctions imposed by Western countries are simply varied and eye-opening.
By April 2022, the sanctions had accumulated to more than 8,000. On June 23, 2023, because of the Russia-Ukraine war, the European Union passed the 11th round of sanctions against Russia, including a ban on the import of Russian shipping oil, which is expected to account for 90% of Russia's total oil exports to Europe.
If it can be implemented, it will definitely make Russia's situation worse. But it backfired, and in the end, this huge sanction was only "thunder and rain". Especially Lao Mei, who imports while sanctioning, says no, but is very honest in his body.
Although the United States ostensibly buys oil from India, in fact, India's oil is imported from Russia, and everyone knows this, but they just keep their mouths shut about it. The United States and the EU have been busy for a long time, but Russia has become more and more moisturized. Lao Mei saw that the embargo did not work, so it changed its routine and called for a reduction in international oil prices.
But the reduction in international oil prices can really affect Russia's oil exports?
Unlike Venezuela's oil, which is not of high quality and does not produce enough oil, Russia's difficulty with oil is that it is too expensive to extract. Because their energy deposits are under the permafrost, they are expensive to dig up, and they need pipelines to transport them to other countries, which is another lot of money.
So the cost of extraction in Russia is about the same as in Venezuela, which has remained at a high level of $40. Since Putin came to power, the country's economy has been heavily dependent on oil, which is now living on exporting energy, and if international oil prices fall, profits will shrink sharply, and fiscal revenues will also be affected. If a country's money bag is deflated, there is basically no way out, and then the United States should be happy.
In order to make Russia's decline worse, the United States has been using both soft and hard tricks to make stumbling blocks. As for the life and death of a small country like Venezuela, it is natural that the United States will not be taken seriously.
To put it bluntly, Venezuela is nothing more than a cannon fodder in the game of great powers, whose fate is often dictated by the great powers and cannot be controlled by itself. Even if you take the "King Bomb" card at the beginning, it will be difficult to have the last laugh at the global table.
This is not just a script that Venezuela has gotten, since ancient times, only countries that have taken their destiny into their own hands can develop steadily and steadily. If any country is too dependent on the outside world, maybe Venezuela's today will be his tomorrow.