Patriot, I'm sorry to rain on your tirade, but things aren't as rosy as you think. Let me explain why.
1. The Chavez government used a lot of the surplus cash they gained from the run up in oil prices to hand out money - they didn't create more or higher paying jobs, they just handed out cash and created what is termed a "client base", people who receive direct handouts, subsidized food, and other goodies.
2. The opportunity to set the economy on a sound footing was wasted by maintaining the Bolivar exchange rate controlled at a very high price. This essentially served to poison and destroy local producers - both in the agricultural as well as the industrial sectors. Chavez seems happy to see private industry destroyed, because he wants to implement a communist system, but the little he has done to develop government enterprises has been a failure. Every industry he has nationalized or confiscated has suffered, produces less, is less inefficient, is more corrupt, and thus generates less economic benefit for the nation.
3. Oil Prices during the Chavez tenure have about quadrupled. This means the country receives FOUR times the amount of cash now, than it did when he took over. This is a chart from Mongabay, the environmentalist website, to back this up:
http://www.mongabay.com/images/commodities/charts/crude_oil.html4. So, in spite of having a much higher cash flow than in the past, the government continues to borrow both abroad and inside Venezuela. This thirst for borrowing during a period of high oil prices is noted by the market, which smells a rat - if Venezuela is borrowing so much now, what is Venezuela going to do to pay its debt in the future, if Chavez stays in power and the same economic policy is used? Result: The market is punishing Venezuelan bonds by demanding a very high interest rate.
5. Meanwhile, foreign reserves are being drawn down at a very high pace: $8 billion in the first four months of 2010. You can claim wsj is a corpo fascist media, but I just found the readers something in English. The figures are also posted by the Venezuelan Central Bank, in Spanish, if anybody wants to research it.
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100503-705051.html6. Inflation is raging as a result of the sudden devaluation (the "voluntary" devaluation you made so much noise about a couple of months ago). This devaluation was needed, but it was delayed too long, and the shock has been brutal, prices are skyrocketing because Venezuela under Chavez has been becoming more and more dependent on imports - evidently an artificially high exchange rate was poison for local producers, and the government has also been destroying productive capacity via nationalization and arbitrary behavior, which scares investors away.
7. To make matters even worse, the government has continued the irrational policies of the past, such as keeping the gasoline and diesel prices cheaper than water. This means we burn a lot of fuel we could export.
8. And of course, there's the electricity crisis, which hasn't gone away. The Guri water level is still at a dangerously low level, and the power cuts continue. This has devastated industrial production in some sectors, such as aluminum and steel, which are heavy energy consumers.
9. Compoounding the problem, the Venezuelan government has stated its intent to turn the economy towards communism. Chavez has also been acting as if his power is limitless (ie threatens individuals with expropriation if they don't behave as he commands it). So there's a lot of fear, and this means people are leaving the country and taking whatever they can with them.
The net result? The economy is indeed crashing right now. GDP is probably going to be minus 5 % this year, the worst performance in the Western Hemisphere, and there's no sign it will recover next year either. This article by Mark W. just shows the panic in the air is starting to hit the government, and they're calling on their propaganda weapons to try to hold their sinking ship together as best they can. But the key is the foreign bond buyers, and they won't be taken in by a simplistic article in the Guardian. Sorry, but you need to see reality, and it sure looks grim.