WHAT IS the hottest global market so far in 2012? How about socialist Venezuela — where stocks rose 99 percent between Jan. 1 and this week. That might seem like an improbable surge in a country wracked by double-digit inflation, shortages of water, power and staple foods, and a dearth of investment — not to mention one of the world's highest murder rates. But Venezuela's markets are being moved by a strange but powerful force: the absence of reliable information about the health of President Hugo Chavez — and the growing speculation that his condition is rapidly deteriorating. According to Russell M. Dallen Jr, a banker who produces a newsletter on Venezuela, a rumor that a prominent journalist had tweeted the news of Chavez's death caused Venezuelan bond prices to spike by as much as 5 percent Friday. The rumor was false, and Chavez proved he was alive with a phone call to state television on Monday from Cuba. Yet it is Chavez who has created the feverish climate, by refusing to tell his people the truth about the cancer he has been battling, even as he insists he will be a candidate for a new six-year presidential term in elections scheduled for October. What Venezuelans know is that Chavez has had three operations in Cuba since the discovery of what he described as a “baseball-size” tumor in his pelvic area last June, including one on Feb.?26 to remove a new growth. He has had three rounds of chemotherapy and three rounds of radiation treatment, also in Cuba. What the country has not been told is what type of cancer the president suffers from or his prognosis — though Chavez's tearful prayers at a pre-Easter service on April 5, in which he pleaded for his life, offered an ominous hint. — Excerpts from a Washington Post editorial __
