Thursday, July 23, 2009

Newsthings (ferretting out the tiniest rabbits and passing them off as news)


Bolivia: Evo got U$8Bn in the hold, a new country record for international currency reserves. The financial people over there also hail the highest ever country GDP, both absolute and per capita. Don't expect to read about this in The Economist.

Colombia wanted investment grade from Standard & Poors...and didn't get it. S&P reaffirms the current BB+ rating, one notch under IG and one notch into junk.

However Colombia's bourse had a great day, up 2.7% on feelgood from the Dow plus Ecopetrol telling the world it had found a a very large quantity of oil in a field it shares with PRE.to. The new field has 500m barrels they say, which is officially known in the trade as a serious shitload.

Chile, and the latest opinion polls put the right wing Sebastian Piñera with a big lead over left wing Frei for the December Presidential elections...though "right" and "left" in Chile aren't that far apart anyway.

Honduras, And Mel is about to cross into the country at a place called "Las Manos". Could be a lotta fun, mojitos served and everything....and tear gas.