VHeadline commentarist Arthur Shaw writes: According to the proletarian media in Cuba "Venezuelan Finance Minister Ali Rodriguez asserted on Friday [November 20] that placing four banks in administration responds to repeated violations of the homeland and international law, jeopardizing the sector's stability."

 "Administration" is a kind of takeover on entities that doesn't necessarily entail expropriation with payment of fair compensation or confiscation without such compensation ... many options are available in an administration ... Article 116 of the Venezuelan Constitution gives the State the right to confiscate "private property" of natural or legal persons where the source of the property is government corruption or drug trafficking.

• The Friday press release from Finance Ministry didn't say exactly what the four banks were doing ... but the release makes it clear that the four banks were up to no good.

According to the release and press conference, the four banks -- Canarias, Bolivar, Provivienda, and Confederado -- "did not specify the origin of their funds, after increasing their capitals."

Well, now, this sounds just like the four banks were laundering money, because money laundering consists of hiding monies' origin or destination or both. In Venezuela, bourgeois money laundering operations are usually connected with drug trafficking and human trafficking. All of these four banks are also involved in the illegal foreign exchange market, but this involvement doesn't seem to be the genesis of the administrative takeover.

Ali Rodriguez also said "They [the four banks] also repeatedly violated the established percentages to stimulate productive sectors, including agriculture..."  Evidently, these banks refused to lend to the bourgeoisie in the agricultural sector as well as to the rural proletariat. because lending to bourgeois farmers would have satisfied the "established percentages" the State prescribes. An increase in domestic food production is central to the revolutionary State's strategy of fighting the general effects of world capitalist crisis, inflation, and excessive dependence on imports.

Ali Rodriguez said "that the Venezuelan government guarantees the banking system's health, starting from respect for the rights of clients and creditors." The current world capitalist crisis started from fraud and irregularities in the financial sector and then spread out over the whole economy e.g. industrial, commercial, agricultural, landholding sectors, etc.

So, the financial sector, banking and currency policy above all, are areas of special weakness in present-day capitalism.

Most bourgeois regimes, reactionary and liberal, loudly and stubbornly proclaimed a stupid policy of non-regulation of the financial industry and, accordingly, the capitalists in the financial sector ... the most parasitic and criminal element of the bourgeoisie ... went to town, stealing everybody's money until the whole capitalist system collapsed worldwide. The capitalist system had to be partially resuscitated by massive and powerful injections of cash on terms of a donation.

It is a good thing that the State in Venezuela ... which already boasts a ideologically sound and politically solid proletarian core although this core exists and operates within a bourgeois milieu ... keeps a close eye of capitalist schemes ... which are generally fast and loose ... in the financial sector.

We see that some of the political Right (and some of the political "Left") rehashing propaganda word-for-word from the vile bourgeois media, are now largely blaming the revolutionary State for certain difficulties in Venezuela, produced by the profound capitalist crisis, especially difficulties in the financial sector. Perhaps, the grabbing of the four banks on Friday will shut their mouths for a couple of months or, at least, modify in the direction of factuality what their mouths rehash.

The truth of the matter is that, in monetary policy and performance, the revolutionaries in the Venezuelan State have outperformed all but less than a handful of states, led by China, in these difficult economic circumstances.

The Venezuelan State has outperformed its peers and most others in defense of the its local currency, management and growth of international reserves, tight and strict supervision of the banking sector still largely in bourgeois hands, successful implementation of a more aggressive gold production policy, and routing of additional capital to strategic sectors of the economy like agriculture, fixing lucrative terms for issuance of State bonds that have taken in a whopping $11.3 billion this year, etc.

These big successes in the financial sphere by the State with a revolutionary core are not widely covered in the socialist-hating bourgeois media.

• So, the Right and these dubious elements on the "Left" can't easily or readily rehash the stories of these successes ... even if they were inclined to do so.

Venezuelan revolutionaries in 2008 have given a dazzling performance in the monetary and financial spheres while many of their peers in power elsewhere are crawling on their bellies with their hands stretched out before callous IMF and World Bank officials while the peers beg for crumbs and scraps "Please, Mister IMF and please Mister WB, can you see it in your heart to give us an interest rate at closer to 18%, not 31%."

Venezuela doesn't have to submit to these indignities as so many others are forced to do.

Arthur Shaw
arthur.shaw@vheadline.com

http://www.vheadline.com/shaw