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Venezuela’s US-backed coup leader immediately targets state oil company, requests IMF money

Unelected US-backed coup leader Juan Guaidó immediately moved to try to restructure Venezuela’s state-owned oil company and seek financing from the neoliberal IMF.

by Ben Norton

Part 3 - Coup Financing from Neoliberal IMF

The attempted restructuring of Citgo would just be the beginning of the neoliberal capitalist policies implemented by Venezuela’s US-backed coup regime.

Reuters also reported that Guaidó “is considering a request for funds from international institutions including the IMF to finance his interim government.”

The International Monetary Fund is notorious as a vehicle for US political and economic influence. For decades, the IMF, along with the World Bank, has trapped ostensibly independent Latin American nations in debt and imposed so-called “structural adjustment” programs that force governments to impose brutal neoliberal shock therapy on their populations, including austerity measures, privatization of state assets, deregulation, and gutting of social services.

Venezuela’s previous elected socialist president, Hugo Chávez, broke ties with the IMF and World Bank, which he noted were “dominated by US imperialism.” Instead Venezuela and other left-wing governments in Latin America worked together to co-found the Bank of the South, as a counterbalance to the IMF and World Bank.

Guaidó has moved to re-integrate Venezuela into these very same Washington-dominated financial institutions. In addition to seeking financing from the IMF, Guaidó is likewise trying to send a new representative to the Inter-American Development Bank.

Venezuela’s right-wing opposition has made it clear that it plans to pursue aggressive neoliberal capitalist reforms. The opposition-controlled National Assembly has also declared in its “transition” plans that the “centralized model of controls of the economy will be replaced by a model of freedom and market based on the right of each Venezuelan to work under the guarantees of property rights and freedom of enterprise.”

This plan might be a dream for foreign corporations, but even many Venezuelans marching against their government might soon decide that stripping state assets is not worth fighting for.

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  1. Anonymous2/2/19 19:13

    Your wisdom and knowledge is spot on, unbiased and factually stated. Thank you for writing the truth.

    ReplyDelete

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