Venezuela

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.

Authored by Daniel Lacalle via The Mises Institute,

Socialism always promises heaven and gives hell...

In the early hours of Thursday, November 2, the Maduro regime certified its latest failure with what they promised would never happen: technical default. With his usual arrogance, Maduro issued a “decree” demanding “the refinancing and restructuring of the debt as of November 3.” That is, default.

The bad news for investors or high-yield hunters is that the likelihood of being swindled again is almost 100%.

Creditors had little expectations from today's ad hoc meeting with "soon-to-default" Venezuela, and with good reason: not only was the meeting attended by several sanctioned Venezuelan officials, potentially jeopardizing the legal status of any bondholders who voluntarily appeared at the Caracas meeting meant to "restructure and refinance" Venezuela's massive debt load, but it was nothing but total confusion, with neither Venezuela, nor creditors knowing what is on the agenda, why they were meeting, or what is the endgame.

While Venezuela’s embattled government struggles with the fallout from being declared officially in default by ISDA after delaying a principal payment on the Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA, bond that matured Nov. 2, its Supreme Court has been busy robbing the country’s downtrodden public one of the few small pleasures still available in a country that has been deprived of seemingly every necessity, from food to medicine.

Less than a week after Venezuela shocked the world by announcing it would proceed to restructure its massive external debt, even as it was within the grace period on hundreds of millions in unpaid interest expense, on Thursday the socialist nation confirmed it has never been closer to an official default after Reuters reported that Venezuela's state oil-firm company, PDVSA, has not made a debt payments to India’s top oil producer ONGC for six months, and has previously used a Russian state-owned bank and another Indian energy company as intermediaries to make payments.