While nearly two decades of ideologically driven economic mismanagement has turned Venezuela from a relatively wealthy oil state into a Zimbabwe-like basket case, Chile has mainly stayed the course, politically and economically, just to the right or left of the sensible centre. Wild swings avoided Since the restoration of democracy in the late-1980s, this long, thin ribbon of a country has largely avoided the wild boom-and-bust pendulum swings that have characterised much of the continent’s stop-start…