When will the world stop referring to those giving odious loans, odious credits, as investors?
Sir, the Lex column “Venezuela debt/Maduro: crypto communist” of August 23 writes: “It beggars belief that a country with the world’s largest oil reserves has failed financially…when prices for oil, its sole commodity, fell. Borrowing has filled the gap… Investors, including the asset management arm of Goldman Sachs, can look forward to a lengthy default”
In your editorial of August 22, “The desperate plight of Maduro’s Venezuela” you wrote: “Much of the world, especially supporters of “Chavismo” from the Panglossian left, has been disgracefully silent about Venezuela’s crisis for too long. The country is all but a failed state. As a drug-trafficking hub and the source of a huge exodus, it is already an exporter of instability.”
And I must ask when is the world going to stop referring to those who help finance regimes that are notoriously inept or/and commits awful violation of human rights as “investors”, and not as the lowly and dirty financiers they are?
Is for instance financing the smuggling of drugs more morally reprehensible than financing a regime like Maduro’s? Would you ever dream of introducing to your family and friends one who had helped finance the construction of Auschwitz, as an investor?
Yes, credit ratings might be needed, but more does the world need ethic ratings. It is way past time the world begins to understand that most odious debt there is, has its origin in odious credits, and that we need a Sovereign Debt Restructuring Mechanism that takes that in consideration.
@PerKurowski
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