Chavez Repatriates Venezuela's Foreign Gold Reserves

[Tortoise]

Anyone have ideas as to why Chavez is repatriating Venezuela's foreign gold reserves? The article mentions the following as possible explanations:

President Chavez has explained the move as an act of sovereignty that will protect Venezuela's reserves from global economic turbulence.

[...]

Some critics have suggested that Mr Chavez is acting out of fears Venezuela's overseas assets could one day be frozen by sanctions, as happened to his friend and ally, the late Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi.

[murphy_p_t]

eliminate counter-party risk

[stone]

Alongside real reasons, I guess he is a popularist leader who might get more support if he can make out that Venuzuela is struggling against imperialist forces rather just against his mismanagement . Doing this might be a bit of pantomime for that. I do find it troubling though that "the war on terror" does seem to focus so much on oil producers that are reluctant to accumulate USD.

[Storm]

Alongside real reasons, I guess he is a popularist leader who might get more support if he can make out that Venuzuela is struggling against imperialist forces rather just against his mismanagement . Doing this might be a bit of pantomime for that. I do find it troubling though that "the war on terror" does seem to focus so much on oil producers that are reluctant to accumulate USD.

Brilliant comment.  I find it troubling that the US is perfectly fine supporting Arab dictators or monarchies that use US dollars (Saudi Arabia, Yemen, etc), but if you decide to go outside the system like Iran, Syria, Venezuela, or formerly Libya, you have a very real threat of being invaded by "coalitions of the willing" to propagate US imperialism worldwide.

[Indices]

To be fair, Libya was really opening itself to US investment in recent years.

[murphy_p_t]

Stone...I think you hit the nail on the head.

[MediumTex]

Chavez's cancer is likely terminal, so perhaps it has something to do with consolidating power at home to ease the transition to whoever he taps to be his successor.

[craigr]

I was on a hiking trip this summer with someone from Venezuela. We had a lot of time in the car to talk about the situation there. He told me that Chavez has totally destroyed the country. His policies chased out everyone with brains to run a business and his cronies steal what they can. Don't be surprised if their gold goes missing. He hates Chavez and feels that Chavez had removed the soul from the country with his "reforms" and he was uncertain it would ever recover even after Chavez dies.