Remember the Maine? CIA Intervention in Venezuela

[sandensea]

2. And the best part is that in many of those cases, it later cost US interests billions in bad debts

A number of those regimes, you'll recall, took on some $300 billion in foreign loans between them in the late '70s (over $1 trillion in today's dollars).

Several U.S. banks - particularly Bank of America - suffered huge losses by way of debt write-downs. Latin generals, they learned, love waving the U.S. flag; but aren't as fond of repaying U.S. loans.

The bad debts mounted as quickly as they did because over half that money was pilfered by way of state-sponsored speculative fraud and subsequent offshoring.

The most notable such case was probably Argentina's 'financial bicycle', which made the well-connected $30 billion in offshored profits (in 1980 dollars) while bankrupting the country for a generation - until Néstor Kirchner restructured the debt in '05, against bellyaching by Bush and IMF.

So no wonder they were so anxious to get Macri elected: he just put Argentina in (almost) the same debt crisis the dictatorship created in the early '80s.

Thanks as always for your very informative historical overviews, Judi. Qué será, right?