News of the Restless

Video in Spanish. Aporrea has more:

President Hugo Chávez called upon bank customers yesterday to maintain calm and not give in to rumors which, according to him, are meant to generate a run on the banks with the end purpose of “toppling Chávez”.

“Pay no attention to those attacks, because what they’re trying to do is create alarm […] It all came out on the Internet, by phone, and so on. They’re looking for what’s known as a run on the banks, and they think they’ll topple Chávez with that. I repeat, the only thing that’s going to fall here is the private banking system, not Chávez. Don’t be fooled, it will backfire on them,” said the president during the graduation ceremony for the eighth cohort of Mission Ribas, broadcast from the Teresa Carreño theatre.

Chávez reminded listeners that the government is acting “against a group of banks whose owners could not show where they had gotten all that money. Right up to now they couldn’t do it, and that’s their job,” he said, referring to the liquidated Banco Canarias and BanPro, and the also bailed-out Bolívar and Confederado banks.

Chávez warned that “we have another banking chain on our radar […] and you may be sure that if I’m obliged to intervene in all the private banks of Venezuela, I’ll do it. Let there be no doubt.”

Chávez called on private bankers to take care and comply with the law. “I’m keeping an eye on them, because private banking has degenerated into a chain of mechanisms and instead of doing their jobs, the banks are specializing in financial speculation.”

The president decreed an end to the hegemony of private banks, and announced the creation of a “real public financial system”, although he did not give more details.

Translation mine; linkage added.

Well, let’s see if Chavecito doesn’t improvise something nifty on the fly. He’s very good at that; the ALBA, among other things, was an improvisation of his, which he came out with at the spur of the moment during a speech about the need to kill the ALCA (the Spanish acronym of the FTAA, or Free Trade Area of the Americas) during the 2005 summit at Mar del Plata, Argentina. ALCA is now officially DOA, so we know he wasn’t talking out his ass on that one. (Sorry, Otto, but you’re a little off base when you say the man doesn’t do finance well. He does; he just doesn’t do it the capitalist way. He certainly knew how to kill a bad done deal dead!)

Swami ‘Bina predicts that Chavecito will probably turn the recuperated banks into credit unions once the depositors get their looted money back. Meaning, citizens will be actual shareholders and managers of their own cash, instead of just victims “customers” like they’ve been until now. If they can do it with local water councils and co-op businesses, they should be able to do it with banks, no problemo.

She also predicts that Chavecito will stand firm, and it will be the bankers who finally back down when they see he means business. And the bucks-to-bolivars exchange rates will drop right back to their old levels when that happens (and the warned-of putsch doesn’t).

BTW: That other man in the video is Jorge Giordani, Chavecito’s planning minister. This is how Swami ‘Bina comes by her assertion that Chavecito is serious this time. Giordani is a serious man, and he’s been Chavecito’s right hand on a lot of key things. Look for him to be heading up the committee to get ‘er done.

Just for fun, and further proof, here’s another video:

…in which Chavecito puts his childhood business experience as a papaya-candy seller to good illustrative use.

We’ll see who’s more right on this one, Otto or me…all in good fun, of course. This won’t be about money, but just to see who’s the better prognosticator. Get your turban on, amigo!

PS: Further interesting viewing here. Mario Silva dissects it all rather nicely. David Icke you can ignore if you like, or just take him with a grain of salt. But Mario’s analysis is the real thing, and it’s especially good in the second segment, where he rips El Matacuras a new one.