Venezuela Shockwaves and the New Geopolitics of Markets

Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. What's going on, guys? It is Monday, January 5. And today, we are talking about what the whole situation in Venezuela means for markets. Before we get into that, however, if you are enjoying the breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or if you wanna dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on the Breakers Discord. You can find a link in the show notes or go to bit.ly/breakdownpod. Well, Well, friends, the Trump administration made it all of a couple days into the new year before triggering the next geopolitical shock. Early on Saturday morning, Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro was captured by Delta Force and CIA operatives. He has been extracted back to New York to face criminal charges related to narcoterrorism. Now while the removal of foreign dictators is not an uncommon event in US history, there are a few very peculiar details about this event. The first is it wouldn't necessarily be exactly accurate to say that the Maduro regime has been toppled as would typically be the outcome of this kind of operation in that the Venezuelan Supreme Court has already sworn in vice president Del C Rodriguez to continue governing in his wake. At the same time, president Trump has made it clear that Rodriguez serves at his pleasure. Early in the weekend, Trump said that The US will run Venezuela until a safe proper and judicious transition can be ensured. On Sunday, Trump said he wouldn't rule out a second strike if the Venezuelan government refuses to cooperate. He said Rodriguez could suffer a fate worse than Maduro, quote, if she doesn't do what's right. There's also the very strange visuals of Maduro once he landed in New York. We got multiple photos of him posting with DEA officers giving the double thumbs up. US operatives don't appear to have laid a finger on him as he has no visible signs of injury. Contrast that to pictures of a bloodied Manuel Noriega after his arrest during the Panama invasion of nineteen eighty nine, or the images of Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi after they were thrown. Kimchi Premium remarked on the photos commenting, for a guy who was toppled and stripped of power overnight, Maduro appears remarkably upbeat, positively radiant in fact. Almost as if this was less a dramatic downfall and more a well compensated retirement package quietly coming together. That sentiment would align with some reports that Trump and Maduro had been in frequent contact over the past few months, leading some to speculate that perhaps they could have been negotiating a transition of power. A final curious note about the event is how upfront the White House has been about their motivations. During the Iraq war, for example, the operation was presented to the public as having to do …