Yesterday Venezuela held a bondholders meeting in the capital. Only about a quarter of the 400-450 bondholders sent representatives and these appeared to show up more out of curiosity than anything else. Venezuela owes about $150 billion (most of it bonds) and most of the debt is held by banks and other financial institutions (mutual funds, pension funds and so on). The government sent out repeated invitations (via the Internet) for about a week in which it described a bondholders meeting that would feature government officials describing and discussing how Venezuela was going to restructure and refinance its huge debt. In the previous week significant fractions of that debt was declared in default and more is expected to follow. The bondholders meeting lasted about 30 minutes and largely consisted of the Venezuelan vice-president Tareck El Aissami blaming all the financial problems on the United States.
The Venezuelan state has been descending into autocracy, violence, poverty, and hunger for years and this first move over the cliff will likely be the start of a rapid descent into chaos and mass refugee flows to Colombia and Guyana as well as points north.
It is amazing how socialism could eff up a wet dream given Venezuela's massive oil wealth and educated population.
My question is whether Maduro makes a desperate attempt to distract his people by attacking the Dutch Caribbean Sea possessions and trying to engineer a short and glorious war against the proxy of America (as he'd call the Netherlands).
