To be fair, Chavez said the thing that would be calculated to hurt the US more than anything else and to help his cause.
Hugo Chavez is a communist.
The US nationalized a private institution that was a bastion of capitalism.
Hugo Chavez hates the US.
Hugo Chavez said something designed to make it to the US newspapers.
Hugo Chavez is the mouse that roared, an anti-American head of a tiny country. He's a plucky li'l psycho who's oozing confidence at this apparent failure of the American system.
I can say that a nationalized company isn't necessarily a bad thing. The US needs to develop it's production facilities and needs to be able to maintain a ready armed forces. Since the US has piecemeal been selling off its manufacturing assets for the past fifty years, I worry for the US' armed forces.
However, I am mystified at the stupidity of taking a company that has failed utterly to produce what the marketplace wants and nationalizing the debt. Why, in the name of all that is holy, would anyone buy a failing company and then let the people who caused it to fail to keep running it?
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