Venezuelan Bond Buyers Pack Into Manhattan Law Office

The South American country, which has nationalized more than 1,000 companies to fulfill Chavez’s socialist ambitions, imports three-quarters of its goods and suffers from the world’s highest inflation. That’s left the nation plagued by chronic shortages of everything from toilet paper to milk, and helped reduce the country’s foreign-currency reserves to the lowest levels in a decade. The likelihood that Venezuela will repudiate its bond obligations over the next two years is 73 percent, based on trading in credit-default swaps and CMA data. More…