Wall Street "Anticipates" Regime Change, Calls it "Prudent Planning"
Charles Myers, an ex-banker, allegedly fielding calls from a ski lift in Aspen, has become the go-to guy for Wall Street's Venezuelan investment strategies. Bloomberg hails his foresight, describing his firm's years-long 'planning' for a future without Nicolás Maduro. This narrative conveniently glosses over decades of U.S. intervention, sanctions, and attempted coups against governments deemed
inconvenient to American financial interests in Latin America. One might charitably call this 'market preparation'; less charitably, it resembles betting on a game where you've already paid off the ref and a few key players. Myers, it seems, just positioned himself to collect on the payout. The U.S. has a long and storied history of 'democratizing' nations (see: Chile in 1973, Nicaragua in the
1980s, you get the picture) until their economies are ripe for foreign exploitation. The 'capture' of Maduro by 'US armed forces,' as the Bloomberg piece posits, paints a stark picture of direct military intervention, yet the article maintains an aura of benign market forces. It’s almost as if the financiers on those Aspen slopes were simply responding to natural economic trends, rather than
capitalising on a projected state-sponsored toppling. How many 'insiders' planned for a post-Gaddafi Libya, and did their portfolios fare better than the Libyan people? One wonders if the ski slopes of Aspen offer a clearer view of foreign policy than, say, congressional debates or international law.