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berdariotoday at 10:34 AM2 repliesview on HN

I think this is denialism of the profit that the USA extracts with its crimes.

The most recent example include the profits from Venezuelan oil:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgn7p7g79wo

https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/trump-administration-manda...

That money is held in a US treasury account. In February the estimated price from the first 50 M barrels was $2.8bn... with the USA+Israel bombing of Iran, the price of course would have increased since.

> It is not clear what portion of the revenues from the sale - which analysts expect to raise about $2.8bn (£2.1bn) - would be shared with Venezuela.

But let's assume that the USA is going to retain "only" 5% of it: that's still 140 million $ of money flowing in, in perpetuity.

Not to mention that having control of the whole 2.8 billion $ also buys further room for loan and deals made on the USA's preferred currency and preferred terms... Or the expropriation of CITGO.

Of course, that money flowing in will be mostly in the pocket of Trump itself, of the billionaires surrounding him, of the military industrial complex (you have to replenish the weapons stockpiles, after all) and all of the federal contractors (that includes most of the FAANG!)... Lots of people in the USA "labor aristocracy" are going to see material benefit from it.

Ultimately, there's still going to be lots of poor people in the USA who won't be able to afford insulin, and there's going to be lots of resentment abroad (not only in Venezuela)... And one could split hair that Maduro's kidnapping is in the USA's interest, but not in its "best interest" (or similarly trying to argue a no-true-scotman for the definition of "USA's interest")

Not to mention, but it's not only Trump's: it's everyone who he surrounds himself with: JD Vance, Pam Bondi (until a few days ago?), Pete Hegseth, the military generals that didn't get kicked out by Hegseth, etc.

They're all complicit, and they're all going along with him.

And of course, if the Democrats will return to power in the next few elections, I don't expect them to relinquish the leverage and resources that Trump got them, just like Obama and Biden didn't pull out of Afghanistan for several years.

Of course, we saw with AIPAC and JStreet that US lobbying is seeing tons of money from abroad: but those are two different faces of the same medal: the oligarchs and the bourgeoisie have common interests across different countries, and the USA is definitely influencing politicians abroad as much, if not more, than moneyed interests abroad are influencing politicians in the USA.

The problem is not only Trump


Replies

AngryDatatoday at 2:06 PM

I mean on their own those are nice numbers, but you also have to add in the extra military costs of blowing crap up and it starts to seem like chump change to me. We just had a 1.5 trillion defense spending proposal.

9devtoday at 11:13 AM

> that's still 140 million $ of money flowing in, in perpetuity.

Oh hey, that's roughly enough to cover for Trump's new renovation plans!