Mark Weisbrot and Luis Sandoval of CEPR argue that the Venezuelan economy is actually doing rather well, and poverty has decreased dramatically under Hugo Chávez. I don't really have any opinion on this--I just thought that this bit was unexpected:

[Venezuela's] private sector has grown faster than the public sector over the last 8 years and therefore the private sector is a bigger share of the economy in 2007 than it was before President Chavez took office.

Who knew?