Chavez threatens to nationalize Venezuelan bankshttp://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091129/wl_nm/us_venezuela_banks_chavez_1

In a broadcast from nationalized farmland in central Venezuela, he said: "To all the country's private bankers ... (I'm saying) he who slips up loses; I'll take over the bank, whatever its size." "You want me to nationalize the banks?" he said during the broadcast of his weekly TV show "Alo Presidente." "I have no problem with that because the banks don't want to extend credit to the poor, they don't comply, they don't want to comply with the bank's purpose for existence, and that is the law."Addressing the banking theme, he said unnamed bankers "are not complying, they do not want to comply with the function for which a bank should exist (such as) that is in the law."This is occurring right now with a group of private banks, that's a demonstration that those private banking sectors don't want to learn, they don't want to accept that there is a constitution ... and that there are laws." Venezuela's banking sector is dominated by 10 banks that control 70 percent of the total funds.Chavez said he ordered the nation's chief prosecutor to investigate why a state bank, Banfoandes, deposited "a giant amount of resources in private banks.""How is it that state resources, which belong to the people ... end up being placed in private banks?" he asked in his broadcast.