Recent reporting and commentary in major Western outlets have cast an unusually stark light on the intersection of US foreign policy, speculative finance, and outright predation. As deplored even in the Washington Post, Washington’s latest assault on Venezuela does not resemble a conventional regime-change operation alone. Rather, it appears to double as a mechanism for highly targeted financial profiteering, blurring the line between geopolitics and what, in any other context, would be called insider trading.

The episode that crystallized this suspicion involved Polymarket, a so-called “prediction” platform. There, a strikingly well-informed participant wagered more than $30,000 that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro would be removed from office by the end of January. The bet paid off spectacularly, yielding profits exceeding $400,000. The timing was so precise, and the information advantage so obvious, that it drew immediate media scrutiny. The hallmarks of insider trading were difficult to ignore. That this occurred alongside an aggressive escalation of US pressure on Caracas invites an uncomfortable question: who, exactly, is permitted to know what-and when-in the corridors of American power?

To seasoned observers, the answer is hardly shocking. Real, historically existing capitalism-rather than the sanitized free-market mythology still propagated by Friedrich Hayek–Milton Friedman enthusiasts-has always been ruthless. Its roughly 500-year history is undeniably marked by astonishing scientific, technological, and cultural transformations. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels themselves acknowledged this dynamism in The Communist Manifesto, at times sounding almost admiring of the bourgeoisie’s revolutionary capacity to reshape the world.

Yet this same system was founded on extreme violence and dispossession. The early history of capitalism is inseparable from mass impoverishment, the plunder of entire continents, the annihilation of indigenous populations, and the transatlantic slave trade. Marx described this foundational brutality as “primitive accumulation,” or, more caustically, “original expropriation,” likening its role in classical political economy to the biblical myth of humanity’s fall from grace. Wealth did not emerge organically from peaceful exchange; it was seized.

For a time, however, the ruling elites of the capitalist core learned restraint. Following the 1917 Russian Revolution and, after the Second World War, the emergence of a global socialist “second world” centered in Eurasia, Western regimes faced a credible systemic alternative. Under that pressure, capitalism moderated its domestic excesses. Reformist rhetoric flourished, redistribution-though limited-became politically necessary, and public spending took on a more rational, socially stabilizing character.

In Western Europe, particularly in countries such as France and West Germany, elites flirted with the idea of a “capitalism with a human face.” In the United States, even presidents could publicly champion progressive projects: Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal or Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society would be unthinkable proposals in today’s political climate. This was not altruism; it was self-preservation in the face of a rival system that exposed capitalism’s social costs.

That moment has passed. With the neoliberal counterrevolution of the late twentieth century and the collapse of most of the socialist bloc, capitalism shed its inhibitions. The restraints imposed by fear of systemic competition vanished. What followed was not merely deregulation or privatization, but a reversion to more openly predatory forms of accumulation-now globalized, financialized, and increasingly shameless.

The contempt displayed by contemporary elites for those outside their narrow class is barely concealed. Whether embodied by a real-estate billionaire in the White House or by technocratic careerists linked to asset-management giants such as BlackRock in Europe, the message is consistent: governance exists to serve capital, not society. Plunder, though often euphemized as “market opportunity” or “geostrategic necessity,” never left capitalism’s repertoire.

Syria offers a blunt example. During his first term, Donald Trump abandoned diplomatic pretense and acknowledged outright that US troops were stationed there “to take the oil.” The admission was extraordinary in its candor. The occupation was illegal under international law, yet the objective-resource extraction-was stated plainly. This was imperialism without fig leaves.

What is unfolding in Venezuela, however, represents an especially glaring escalation in both scale and openness. The Trumpist political-media ecosystem appears to revel in its own impunity. The ongoing and anticipated looting of Venezuela’s oil, gold, lithium, and other resources is not hidden; it is celebrated. When dissent arises, it is not over the morality or legality of the enterprise, but over the distribution and certainty of future profits.

The Wall Street Journal exemplifies this posture. As one of the principal organs of the global investor class, it has treated the destruction of Venezuelan sovereignty as an economic puzzle rather than a human catastrophe. Amid reports of kidnappings, the killing of over a hundred Venezuelans and Cubans, and preparations for a possible new war against Iran, the newspaper focused its analytical energies on a narrower question: would US exploitation of Venezuelan oil lower global prices?

The implications, according to the Journal, were complex. A price drop might hurt American domestic producers, complicate OPEC dynamics, and affect Trump’s electoral prospects, particularly with midterms looming and affordability concerns rising. Ordinary Venezuelans-and even ordinary Americans-registered as secondary considerations at best.

More revealing still was the Journal’s discussion of what it dubbed the “Donroe Trade.” Investors, it noted approvingly, were “racing to capitalize on President Trump’s ambitions to dominate the Western Hemisphere.” Translated into less ideological language, this meant positioning portfolios to profit from imperial conquest. Venezuelan debt rallied sharply on expectations of regime change, delivering windfalls to hedge funds and investment firms. Capital, ever agile, had already begun eyeing similar opportunities in Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, and even Greenland.

At least one firm reportedly planned exploratory trips to Venezuela, coordinating with the White House and inspecting potential spoils. Venezuelans might reasonably view this with alarm, given the same firm’s history of organizing comparable expeditions to Ukraine and Syria-countries likewise subjected to intense external pressure and economic dismemberment. Even if extraction itself proves difficult, ancillary profits beckon, including lucrative arbitration claims and financial restructuring deals.

In this context, the metaphor of vultures circling understates the reality. The vultures have landed. The Wall Street Journal, for its part, presents this as normal market behavior, an orderly response to geopolitical change.

Yet another flagship of capitalist media, Bloomberg, simultaneously reported a strikingly different trend. While investors crowded into the “Donroe Trade,” a separate boom was unfolding across Asia, particularly in technology and artificial intelligence sectors. Asian tech stocks, including those in China, were “on a tear.” Investors-many of them American-were increasingly betting that Asian firms would outperform US peers through 2026.

The significance lies not in any single stock surge, but in the broader sentiment. Optimism is growing around Asian semiconductor supply chains, earnings potential, and technological innovation. Conversely, doubts are emerging about the sustainability of US tech valuations after years of outsized gains. Bloomberg openly raised the specter of an American tech bubble. Notably, enthusiasm for China’s technological capabilities has intensified rather than faded.

This juxtaposition is telling. Washington is obsessed with China as a geopolitical rival, yet capital markets are voting with their money. They are expressing confidence in Asia’s productive future and skepticism toward America’s capacity to maintain technological leadership without continual financial engineering.

Taken together, these developments offer a snapshot of a system in transition. In Venezuela, the United States demonstrates its capacity for legal and moral nihilism, ruthlessly punishing a far weaker state and broadcasting the spectacle as a warning-particularly to Latin America. In Washington’s internal lexicon, this may register as a “win.”

Historically, however, such behavior has marked imperial decline rather than ascendancy. As the American historian Alfred McCoy has argued, the United States increasingly resembles “an empire in decline,” lashing out because it can no longer command loyalty or consent. Brutality becomes a substitute for legitimacy.

Emmanuel Todd, the French intellectual who correctly foresaw the collapse of the Soviet Union and more recently diagnosed what he calls the “defeat of the West,” offers a complementary analysis. According to Todd, the United States has lost the capacity to reindustrialize. It no longer trains sufficient engineers or maintains the productive competence required to sustain manufacturing leadership. Tariffs and protectionist rhetoric, prominent under Trump, cannot reverse this structural erosion.

What remains, Todd argues, is a state adept at violence and predation. The extraction of value through force-whether via sanctions, financial manipulation, or outright military coercion-replaces production as the primary mode of accumulation. Venezuela becomes less an anomaly than a case study.

The irony is that capital itself appears to recognize this reality. Investors are quick to exploit the short-term opportunities created by Washington’s raids, yet they are equally quick to hedge against America’s long-term decline by reallocating toward Asia. The same financial logic that fuels predation also anticipates its limits.

Washington can still inflict enormous harm. It can devastate economies, displace populations, and destabilize regions. What it increasingly cannot do is articulate a compelling vision of order-internationally or domestically-that attracts those not already bound by corruption, coercion, or dependency. Predation may generate profits, but it does not generate legitimacy.

Venezuela, then, is more than another chapter in the long history of US intervention. It is a mirror held up to a system that no longer bothers to disguise its methods. In that mirror, the spectacle of insider betting, celebratory plunder, and investor enthusiasm for empire reveals less about American strength than about its exhaustion.

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Source: Weekly Blitz :: Writings