You didn’t hear this on Fox News or the Drudge Report, but on October 10 Venezuela seized and nationalized a massive fertilizer plant part-owned by Koch Industries. The media silence is a bit puzzling. You’d think that the seizure of property belonging to America’s second-largest private company, owned by one of the most powerful families in the country and the bankrollers of today’s libertarian/Tea Party revolution—the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch–would be considered newsworthy. But no, even though their Venezuela plant was nationalized a whole three months ago, other than a handful of short business-wire dispatches, this has yet to make the news. Even Koch Industries has been suspiciously silent on the matter.
One reason why the Kochs could be keeping the news under wraps is that the nationalization of the fertilizer plant may appear to be bad news for Charles and David Koch, but here’s the big surprise: the Kochs made hundreds of millions on every end of this deal…and even more surprising, bond markets cheered the nationalization. In other words, the free markets championed by the Kochs gave a big thumbs-down to Kochs’ negative influence on the value of the business, while at the same time, the free-market Kochs earned huge windfalls doing business with socialists. No wonder this story hasn’t made the rounds. (more…)
January 5th, 2011 | Comments (30)
