By Arthur Shaw

Encouraging Venezuelan workers and consumers, who are exploited chiefly by the financial bourgeoisie in the illegal currency market and defrauded chiefly by the commercial bourgeoisie in consumer goods market, to blow the whistle on these two sets of thieves is a good idea.

There is no doubt that these two kinds of bourgeois thieves are fueling the rise in consumer prices and pumping the spread between the legal and illegal foreign exchange rates for the dollar-bolivar currency pair.

Currency traders and speculators caught manipulating the foreign exchange market to undermine the bolivar against the dollar should face stiff penalties. Most of their capital that supports racketeering operations in the Venezuelan foreign exchange market is deposited in US banks outside of Venezuela, especially in the Bank of America. But the bourgeois racketeers still have considerable personal and business assets within the jurisdiction of the Venezuelan state, including their homes, real estate, airplanes, boats, cars, jewelry, etc.

The State should borrow a page from the RICO law (Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act) in the USA which treats all ill-gotten fruits of racketeering activity as objects of the crime. The assets are later returned if the racketeers beat the rap. The RICO law in the USA has been very effective in fighting organized crime that originates outside of Wall Street.

Since these two sets of bourgeois thieves prey not only on the working class and small farmers, but also on the bourgeoisie, big landlords, and the middle class, tough law enforcement measures against the price-gouging racketeers will likely weaken the counter-revolutionary movement in Venezuela by engendering dissension among the wealthy and affluent.

In the USA, there is neither regulation of nor law enforcement against financial markets, including securities, currency, commodities, hedge funds, host of exotic financial instruments, and others.

The doctrine of “self-policing” prevails in financial markets.

Government agencies in the field like the Securities & Exchange Commission, Commodities Futures Trading Commission and Federal Reserve System are jokes infested and dominated by advocates on non-regulation of the financial markets.

Naturally, the US financial system is in shambles.

The Venezuelan bourgeoisie and US imperialists are evidently attempting to create a similar situation in Venezuela.