Venezuela's interim government is privatizing the oil industry following the US ouster of Maduro and effective seizure of control over the sector.

Well, they’ve gone and decided to privatize the oil in Venezuela, which I suppose makes a lot of sense if you don’t think about it too long, which is probably the idea. It seems the folks in Washington have finished with the old management and have moved right along to setting up a new shop, and they’re inviting all the neighbors over to help run the till.

It’s a mighty interesting thing to watch. On one side, you’ve got the folks who were so sure that pulling one man out of a chair would fix the whole house, and on the other, you’ve got the new interim crowd acting like they’ve just inherited a gold mine that was actually a dry well for the last decade. They’re calling it a transition, which is a real fine word. In my experience, a “transition” is just what you call it when you’re moving from one way of losing money to another way of making it.

Now, the way they’re explaining it to us, it’s all about “reforming” the industry and bringing in “foreign investment.” That sounds real professional. It’s a lot like when a man loses his farm to the bank, and then the bank hires a new foreman to run the cattle, and then tells the neighbors they can come over and lease the grazing rights as long as they pay the bank’s interest first. The cattle are still there, the grass is still there, but the man who used to own the fence is gone, and the new guy is mostly interested in making sure the ledger looks good for the folks in the big cities.

The diplomats will tell you this is about restoring democratic legitimacy and stabilizing global markets. That’s a high-class way of saying they’re trying to make sure the gas pumps don’t run dry while they figure out who actually holds the deed to the country. They talk about “effective seizure of control” like it’s a surgical procedure, but to anyone watching from the porch, it looks a lot more like a game of musical chairs where the music stopped, someone grabbed the chair, and now they’re trying to sell the legs of the chair to the highest bidder.

It’s a bipartisan sort of confusion, too. You’ve got the folks who believe in the power of the state to fix things, and the folks who believe in the power of the market to fix things, and both of them are currently looking at Venezuela and seeing whatever helps them sleep at night. One side says we’re liberating an industry, and the other side says we’re just rearranging the furniture in a room that’s already been looted.

The real trick is that they’re making the complexity so thick you can’t see the ground. They use words like “interim government” and “privatization frameworks” to keep you from noticing that the oil is still the same oil, and the people living there are still the ones who have to deal with the smoke when the engines start up. It’s a lot like a man telling you he’s “restructuring his debt” when all he’s really doing is taking out a second mortgage to pay the first one.

In the end, it’s just the same old story of people in far-off offices deciding how the wealth of a land should be shared, usually by making sure it’s shared with the people who have the biggest lawyers. They say the transition is reshaping the economy, and I don’t doubt it. It’s just a shame they didn’t mention that the shape being reshaped is usually a circle that leads right back to the same old pockets.

I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see if this new arrangement works out. But if history has taught me anything, it’s that when the powerful start talking about “new eras” and “fresh starts” in the middle of an oil field, you might as well check your pockets and see if your wallet is still there.