Like social bonds’ growth the antisocial bonds’ seem also to be doing fine

Sir, Kate Allen writes: “a host of other financial products have begun to emerge, promising to tackle social issues including homelessness, access to education, clean water, crime prevention and helping disadvantaged children…. The market is still small — just $3.5bn of social bonds were issued in the second quarter of 2017” “Ethical investing branches out from green roots” July 18.

And small it might really be when comparing to all of the antisocial financing that goes around. As an example just in that quarter the Maduro government of Venezuela, that one who is publicly and notoriously violating human rights and has its people starving and dying because of lack of food and medicines, sold $2.8bn in bonds. These antisocial bonds were initially picked up for a mere $800 million by a “with those possible returns, why should we give a shit about ethics”' Goldman Sachs.

Allen points out the fact that “The [social] bonds must perform socially as well as financially.” Yes, and if they don’t perform socially, as is clearly the case with Venezuela, then they should not perform well financially either. The Western civilization has an obligation to put a stop to odious anti-social financing. Otherwise our heirs will end up having to refer to that civilization as a once was.

Hopefully we will see an important socialite publicly disinviting a seemingly totally unrepentent Lloyd Blankfein from an important social event, because of Venezuela.

PS. I wonder how much $ in bonuses Blankfein will receive from this operation.

@PerKurowski