You Live By The Oil, You Die By The Oil

With crude reaching $145 a barrel this year, the leftist leader has been able to pour billions into social programs at home and lavish the rest abroad, sending subsidized oil from Nicaragua to New York – including up to 100,000 barrels of oil per day to Cuba, discounted by as much as 40 percent – and making pledges to invest in infrastructure, refineries, and agricultural programs everywhere in between.

Now that lower prices are a new norm, at $71.85 a barrel Friday, the clout such largess has earned him could begin to wane. Commodities prices overall are slipping, generating new concern in a region heavily vested in exports of soy, copper, and crude. But it is Chávez who could stand the most to lose: a new report from Deutsche Bank says that Venezuela needs prices to stay at $95 a barrel in order to balance its budget.

Coupled with production declines, Chávez's days as the ultimate benefactor could be coming to a close.

Emphasis added.  Like many American investors, Chavez has found out the hard way that "what the market giveth, the market taketh away."