Business

As OPEC is set to celebrate the extension of the cartel's oil production cut for another year in Vienna, Venezuela former-oil minister and the former head of the now defaulted state energy company PDVSA have no reasons to celebrate following their overnight arrests in Venezuela.

Taking a page out of the Saudi "anti-corruption" playbook, Reuters reports citing two sources that Venezuelan authorities detained former Oil Minister Eulogio del Pino and former state oil company PDVSA president Nelson Martinez overnight as a part of a broad anti-corruption probe.

With OPEC delegates sequestered in a Vienna conference room, as they negotiate the proposed 6-9 month production cut extension, at least one appears to be leaking the decision process to media outlets, because moments ago Bloomberg reported that OPEC ministers have agreed to extend their production cuts until the end of 2018 - agreeing with the Saudi-proposed 9 month extension - and discussions have now moved on to the mechanism that will be used to review the agreement in the middle of the year.

Despite a Wednesday dive in high-flying U.S. tech stocks on worries their boom may have peaked following a MS downgrade, which presured Asian stocks leading to a slide in Hong Kong and South Korean share, on Thursday morning the dip buyers have emerged and both European stocks and US equity futures are once again solidly in the green as yesterday's tech selloff is quickly forgotten.

The euro stumbled, dropping to session lows on Thursday after Eurostat reported that despite a welcome decline in Europe's unemployment rate to 8.8%, the lowest level in 9 years, Eurozone inflation missed expectations, rising from 1.4% to 1.5%, below the 1.6% consensus expectations, reminding the ECB that Phillips curves around the globe remain broken and that its intention to taper QE and tighten monetary policy may yet be derailed.

Authored by James Rickards via DailyReckoning.com,

I managed a track and field in team in high school. I was not the team coach, I was a student-manager who helped out with equipment, scheduling, training and other logistics.

Back in the days before internet I was the kid in the locker room phoning in athlete times and results to the local newspapers before the deadline for the next day’s edition.