South America

While investors had largely given Venezuela's economic catastrophe the benefit of the doubt for the past two years as crude collapsed and the country's CDS soared to record highs only to normalize subsequently, yesterday bond investors got very nervous for the first time in a while, as the Venezuela 9.25% of 2027 bonds crashed on fears a presidential coup may be imminent after Wednesday's decision by the pro-Maduro supreme court to assume the functions of congress, in effect making Venezuela a Maduro dictatorship.

Authored by Andrew Syrios via The Mises Institute,

Over the course of approximately six hours, the Left in the United States made a spectacular, 180 degree turn on federalism and states’ rights without even recognizing it. Although this lack of self-awareness shouldn’t be particularly surprising coming from the modern Left, which seems to have missed the irony when it goes about shutting down debates on free speech.

Earlier this morning we noted Ford's "CFO Let's Chat" meeting with analysts before which Ford announced weak 1Q adj. EPS guidance of 30c-35c, coming in well below analyst estimates of 47c, which they blamed on higher costs, lower volume & unfavorable exchange rates. 

With the call now concluded, here are a couple of the key takeaways:

First, the bad...

Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

If Southern Europeans were a race, say there were something like a Mediterranean race, Jeroen Dijsselbloem would definitely be a racist. Since there is not, the -demissionary- Dutch Finance Minister and -still- president of the Eurogroup of eurozone finance ministers, escapes the label, albeit narrowly.

Harold Vilches, a 23-year-old Chilean, exported $80 million in contraband gold. As Bloomberg Businessweek details, it all started with a Google search...