Crypto News: Guyana is feeling the crushing weight of its oil boom

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Oil’s Curse Is Hanging Over the World’s Fastest-Growing Economy — Juan Pablo Spinetto

It was a night of remembrance.

Guyana was celebrating the anniversary of its independence from the UK, and the most solemn moment was approaching: the raising of its flag at midnight, to mark the historic handover on May 26, 1966. The president, foreign dignitaries and members of the diplomatic corps stood mute before the massive Golden Arrowhead banner as a military band drummed to a climax. A light rain drifted across Fort Island, in the middle of the Essequibo River, a venue chosen to signal Guyana’s sovereignty over a territory long claimed by Venezuela.

Yet as the minutes passed, something was going awry: The flag was stuck. Whoops.

Despite repeated efforts by soldiers of the Guyana Defence Force, the colors would not rise. Others rushed in to help. Nothing worked. After about 45 minutes of hapless struggle, the flag was left at half-mast, illuminated against a burst of fireworks.

While the malfunction could be dismissed as horrible luck, the same could not be said of the chaos that followed the ceremony’s conclusion. Ministers, top guests and ordinary citizens scrambled to board the ferry back to the mainland through a narrow entrance, a bottleneck that quickly descended into angry disorder. I was lucky to catch a seat on a speedboat, but some VIPs did not make it home until 5 a.m.

That fiasco was more than an embarrassment. For a nation awash in newfound oil wealth, with proven crude reserves of nearly 11 billion barrels, it was a small but telling reminder of the enormous organizational challenges behind what is arguably the world’s most extraordinary nation-building experiment.