Well, banning the trade in bonds has effects, yes, but they're pretty marginal for a country in Venezuela's situation. It's not payable without constricting the Venezuelan economy more than any economy should be constricted. And we have a system to deal with that concerning sovereign bonds, simply default and reschedule. Which brings us to why they've not banned the oil trade. Perhaps more importantly it would immediately collapse the Venezuelan economy.

Source: Forbes August 26, 2017 15:56 UTC