In addition to being a hyperinflating, socialist banana republic with a devastated economy Venezuela has another problem: debt,  of which it has some $70 billion with $9.5 billion due this year. It also has $15.4 billion in foreign reserves, of which two-thirds or around $10 billion, are held in gold bars, which as we said last week, "limits President Nicolas Maduro's government's ability to quickly mobilize hard currency for imports or debt service."

There has been much speculation whether foreign official institutions (central banks, SWFs, reserve managers and so on) are selling Treasurys or equities, or both as part of the Quantitative Tightening phenomenon.

Moments ago, courtesy of the latest TIC data we have an answer: based on the monthly flow report breaking down Treasury transactions between foreign official and private entities, in December the far more important, former, group sold $48.1 billion in US Treasurys: the highest single monthly outflow on record.

A Foreign Intelligence Service report has revealed that US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia visited President Obama just hours before his suspicious death in Houston.  The secret meeting was held aboard a US Air Force plane heading to a Texas ranch owned by a close friend of Obama’s.

First it was over-invoicing 'exports' to friends in Hong Kong; then it was Bitcoin, most recently it was buying domain names, and now, the ever-industrious (and increasingly desperate) Chinese have found a new way to beat the government's quasi capital controls... by losing.

China Law Blog's Dan Harris explains how the Chinese are getting money out of China by losing in Arbitrations...

File this one under “just when I thought I had seen/heard everything.”

A study has confirmed that 26 vaccinated Florida toddlers all got sick with whooping cough (B. pertussis) after receiving the DtaP vaccine in 2013.  All of the children, aged one to five year olds, attended the Tallahassee preschool and had received four doses of the pertussis vaccine (DtaP) – according to official CDC recommendations.