$1,305,592,000,000 (please have this number in mind -one trillion, three hundred and five billion, five hundred and ninety-two million dollars- as you read through). Two very charitable chaps from Cleary Gottlieb, Richard J. Cooper and Mark A. Walker, have published a paper on Venezuela's debt, entitled "Venezuela's Restructuring: A Path Forward" (see below with added comments). It is work that shows the kinds of problems a future administration will have to deal with ($191.4 billion debt) in terms of pleasing the country's creditors.

Silvain Besson reported yesterday in the Tribune of Geneva that Helsinge -the shell controlled by Francisco Morillo, Leonardo Baquero and Daniel Lutz- has been charged by Geneva prosecutor Johan Droz with corruption, money laundering and data theft.

Depending on where people stand in the political sphere, there's never a shortage of villains. In the UK, at this point in time, there's almost universal consensus about number 10's current resident. The fact that a fanboy of Castro and Chavez stands across the aisle shows just how debased politics can become, even in very advanced democracies. What hope then, for a banana republic like Venezuela?

A PDVSA source recently shared some puzzling information about operations of Petrozamora, a joint venture between Corporación Venezolana de Petróleo (CVP) and Gazprombank Latin America Ventures B.V., an Amsterdam shell controlled by Boris Ivanov, Christophe Gerard, Francisco Convit and Orlando Alvarado.