Chavez said explicitly that he was billing oil companies retroactively on the 50% rate. In 2 years, when his government is still broke and his people are still starving, he's going to 'retroactively raise' the rates again, to 62.5%. This is all a step on his path towards nationalizing all of the oil resources.

And who was picking on Putin? I haven't mentioned him in a long, long time. And I'd hardly call him 'a little guy', no matter how much sympathy that evokes for your position.