Maduro Hearts International Capitalism

Leave it to Venezuela to give you multiple layers of irony. The government has blamed dollar shortages on evil capitalists and the empire. Naturally, then, to alleviate that problem you should rely on...evil capitalists and the empire.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and Bank of America Corp. (BAC) are among Wall Street firms that offered deals to help Venezuela obtain U.S. dollars amid a plunge in the nation’s foreign reserves.

A swap proposed by Goldman Sachs would provide $1.68 billion in cash and be backed by $1.85 billion of the central bank’s gold, documents obtained by Bloomberg News show. Bank of America said it could be an intermediary for $3 billion in payments to firms seeking U.S. dollars, documents show. Neither deal has been completed, a government official with direct knowledge of the matter said, requesting anonymity because the talks are private.

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Goldman Sachs’s total-return swap would bear interest of 7.5 percent plus the three-month London interbank offered rate, for $818 million in estimated financing costs over seven years, the documents show.

International capitalism has been keeping Venezuela afloat--recently Samsung was similarly licking its chops. There is a tremendous amount of money to be made from the government's poor economic decisions, backed by the high price of oil. Every day, oil money flows in massive amounts from the Venezuelan government to the largest corporations in the world. Maduro never tweets about that part of his plan.