Business

Late last month, we brought you the latest from Barclays on Venezuela, where Nicolas Maduro’s socialist paradise is rapidly collapsing in the face of falling oil prices.

“The economic emergency decree and any measures that the government could take at this point may be too late,” the bank declared. “After two years of inaction and the recent decline in oil prices, a credit event in 2016 is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid.”

A new supermarket in Rotterdam is giving away food to the poor and anyone who can prove they need assistance. The supermarket is located in an improvised area of the Netherlands and is staffed by volunteers. It makes money by selling grocery items to customers who can afford them. It does not get any government subsidy. Food and Wine reports: Swingmarket, located in one of Amsterdam’s poorest neighborhoods, is a nonprofit grocery store that covers its expenses by catering to paying customers while also giving food away for free.

Yesterday we explained why according to Bank of America, despite the big equity squeeze Treasurys refuse to move lower, and in fact have continued to drift higher in price. We also noted that according to a Reuters blurb, Guggenheim CIO Scott Minerd said on Monday that he sees the 10-year Treasury note yield falling to 1 percent, perhaps even lower, before year-end.

Below are key excerpts from his just released argument for why the best trade of the year will be to buy 10Years in May, or any other month for that matter, and go away until December 31.

Do not show this chart to Melinda Zabritski:

For those unfamiliar, Melinda is Experian’s senior director of automotive finance and she’s never, ever worried. Or at least not that she lets on.

“We're not seeing anything that would be a red flag,” she said earlier this month in response to data that showed the percentage of auto loans made to buyers with the poorest credit ratings is growing faster than the rest of the auto finance market. As a reminder, here’s the chart that shows the trend:

A leaked White House memo reveals that the NSA already have a tool that allows them to bypass security on iPhone devices and access private user data.  The current media frenzy about Apple’s stance on user privacy is likely to be a deliberately orchestrated distraction from the fact that the government already routinely accesses private information from Apple and Microsoft products.