Venezuela Moves its Exchange
Reserves Out of U.S.
Banks
Last week,
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced that Venezuela had moved all of its
central bank reserves out of American banks and had liquidated its investments
in U.S. Treasury securities. He said that the funds had been moved to European
banks on a temporary basis, but proposed the creation of a South American
central bank which could hold the foreign exchange reserves of all of the
countries in the region. Venezuela
currently has foreign exchange reserves of US$30.434 billion.
Chavez explained
that the move was made necessary by the repeated threats being made against Venezuela by
the American government. The U.S.
has a long history of freezing the assets of other governments with which it
disagrees. In addition, the big U.S.
banks have been implicated in providing support to the attempts by the American.
administration and its Venezuelan allies to overthrow the
democratically-elected Chavez government.