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Comment by tyingq | Hacker News Reader

Makes sense, but I still see the reason oppressed people would make a stink.

If only to broadcast that it will be bad optics for any foreigner to support the current regime...or even appear to. Propaganda is likely going on both sides.

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The only reason why this is even made public is because Goldman is a big and easy target. There are mutual funds that I wouldn't be surprised a bunch of people here hold that easily dwarf GS in this space.

Sure, but that seems logical. If you want to make a deterrent, use a big name that will get press coverage, even if they bought on a secondary market.

For example, I'd be loath to buy Sudanese investments, even if I could prove it was a secondary market buy. The association just has bad optics.

I agree, but GS appears to be resilient against bad optics so far. Some negative stories are written about them, some people on the internet call them 'criminal banksters', but no matter what happens they continue to make vast amounts of money and ex- (and likely future) employees seem to reliably find their way into top offices of government, central banks and other powerful institutions.

It isn't much of a deterrent, if you know that only a single competitotor of yours or just a few companies will be singled out for the outrage. Time and time again. There are fund managers, pharma companiess, and industrial conglomerates that acted way more shitty than most banks, but people tend to ignore that or forget that very quickly.

Well, it did give the opposition a podium that they didn't otherwise have. I would guess many of us wouldn't have thought about Venezuela today otherwise.

I like this idea. Although the economic arguments aren't particularly strong, they give the opposition an opportunity to be noticed.

"but people tend to ignore that"

You mean it doesn't get much media attention.

Yes. :)

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