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> one becomes immediately suspicious of the US intent. I suggest your read or watch this and you'll be immediately less suspicious [1] [1] https://en.wikipedi

• JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  I've read and enjoyed it. Knowing good people who work and have worked for Bechtel, et cetera, I can assure you that the riveting read it makes contains some truths and many exaggerations. The laws the U.S. is deploying here are designed to prevent a despot from pilfering a population's wealth to pay cronies. Letting Maduro liquidate PDVSA to pay debts which should be defaulted on is precisely the intent of the law, an intent which aligns the United States with Venezuela. Again, suspicion is healthy. But using the possibility of an international conspiracy to detract from a well-established national one (in Venezuela) is disingenuous.
  • r00fus 9y ago
    The answer could be both. The problem is the lack of coverage on the ground.
• Bartweiss 9y ago
  In this case, though, the point is that it doesn't actually matter. Maybe the Washington Consensus really is a racket designed to turn underdeveloped nations into 1%-favoring client states. (Frankly, the least convincing part of Perkins is the claim that this is a formal conspiracy instead of a convenient result of non-conspiracy functioning.) Even if that's true, refusing to deal with PDVSA is far from unreasonable on a practical and moral level. Maduro is running an unsustainable, patronage-based con, to the detriment of his country. Freezing his ability to do that via international finance is a pretty reasonable move, so it doesn't actually tell us anything about the presence or absence of a conspiracy.