VENEZUELA'S BRAIN DRAIN

When they first elected him in 1998, Venezuelans hoped that Hugo Chávez would be a healer. Instead, they got a tyrant who seizes private companies and farms and harasses political opponents.

Now after a decade of the so-called Bolivarian revolution, tens of thousands of disillusioned Venezuelan professionals have had enough. An estimated one million Venezuelans have moved away since Chávez took power, says Newsweek.

The exodus is sabotaging the country's future and no industry has been harder hit than Venezuela's oil sector: [snip]

Much of the same is happening in the Axis of Hugo, the states following Chávez. Leaders in Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua are rewriting their constitutions, intimidating the media and stoking class and ethnic conflicts.

The result? More flight:

• More than one in three Bolivians under 30 have plans to emigrate, up from 12 percent a decade ago.
• Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua have all fallen in the World Economic Forum's competitiveness index.
• Fitch Ratings, which analyzes credit risk, recently demoted Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador to junk status.

These states may be commodity-rich, but their biggest export is no longer minerals or oil. It's the one resource best kept at home: talent.

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