Bloomberg – BoAML: US % of Global Investment-Grade Yield – John Authers 8/19/19

Bloomberg – BoAML: US & Non-US Investment-Grade Fixed-Income Yield – John Authers 8/19/19

FT – Fears grow of Venezuela malnutrition time-bomb – Michael Stott and Gideon Long 8/20/19

“Six to eight million people are living in a state of undernourishment,” said Susana Raffalli, a veteran Venezuelan humanitarian adviser who has worked across the world with the Red Cross and Unicef, the UN agency for children. 

In a recent report on global food security, the FAO estimates that between 2016 and 2018, about 21.2% of the Venezuelan population was undernourished. When Mr Maduro came to power in 2013 the figure was 6.4%, it says.

In a June report, Unicef estimated that 3.2m children in Venezuela were “in need of assistance”.

Mr Maduro (President Nicolas Maduro) blames a US-orchestrated economic war for the problems with food supplies. The US has imposed an increasing array of sanctions on Venezuela in an effort to force the president from office.

The White House and Venezuelan opposition say the principal culprit is an economy ruined by years of mismanagement whose collapse began years before the first significant US sanctions in 2017. In a statement, the US state department described Venezuela as “one of the worst man-made humanitarian disasters in the modern world”.

Mr Maduro has repeatedly denied there is widespread hunger in his country. He told the BBC earlier this year: “Venezuela has the highest levels of nutrients, has extremely high levels of access to food, and that stereotype, that stigma [of hunger] that they have tried to put on us, has only one objective: to present a humanitarian crisis that does not exist.”

But hunger is one of the main reasons for the mass exodus from the country in recent years, according to diplomats and aid workers. More than 4m Venezuelans have fled abroad, and for those who remain, the food situation is increasingly perilous.

Venezuela will face long-term consequences from chronic undernourishment, especially of children, humanitarian organizations warn. NGO data seen by the FT show the weight and height of Venezuelan children have fallen significantly below the average for comparable populations.