#and it turned out to be this messy but brilliant breakdown of capitalism and how we treat the poor

[nothingenoughao3]

It's because the word "landmark" is being used in place of the correct (series of) word(s), which is "palatable for the broadest audience possible".

Not only is new queer fiction and art coming out all the time, it always has been. You just have to be willing to watch a movie (to pick a form of storytelling in particular) that's older than you.

Like, did you watch "Paris Is Burning" or do you just nod wisely when it's brought up? Did you know that it's part of an entire damn movement of filmmaking from the '90s called new queer cinema? Have you ever heard of Gregg Araki? Did you vote "never heard of him" on that Tumblr poll where the vast majority of folks on The Gay Website did not know who John Waters was?

Are you only watching stuff that's produced in your own language? Are you aware that most non-English language parts of the world are and have been producing queer cinema for decades and that those films aren't hard to get? Do you know what New Maricón Cinema is? Are you aware that the most highly decorated Spanish director is an out gay man who's produced films about trans women and queerness since the 1980s?

A fuckton of queer cinema also depicts heavy, bleak, and triggering subject matter; are you mentally prepared for facing that when you engage with art? Are you mostly/only watching children's media because you, personally, are not in a place to deal with heavy subject matter--and therefore you don't actually know what's out there and can't judge? Or are you only watching children's movies because you're afraid of being challenged?

Are you going outside of your comfort zone? Are you taking a risk? Do you not have time to waste on major IPs because you're too busy in the back alleys of fiction and cinema, exploring for something exciting and new?

Are you, you know, being queer?

ngl i keep seeing new iterations of "all landmark queer media is children's media! i want queer media for adults!" and i guess i kind of get where it comes from but i have never really experienced this issue

new adult queer cinema is coming out all the time, a lot of it very good and a lot of it not, new adult queer fiction is coming out all the time, a lot of it very good and a lot of it not, and i totally get it when you say queer kids' stuff isn't enough for a queer art-loving adult to subsist on (you're right, it's not enough for me either!)

but like, are you actually checking out new and exciting queer stories that appeal to your sensibilities? or are you spending your time in insular fandom spaces instead of going out and looking for art that speaks to you?

listen to new albums, click through galleries, find art made by people who might not be where you're from or share every life experience with you, and talk to folks about that stuff and you'll make lots of friends.

[terrancedkennedy]

Venezuela: A Bondholder Nightmare, A Market Failure. Where Was Macro?

This post was written in collaboration with and cross-posted on Caracas Chronicles. Check them out! 

“The time between the “outrageous” and “yeah, you didn’t know that?” can be incredibly short.”

This tweet was about the Hollywood harassment scandal, but it applies to markets on a regular basis – and it certainly did in Venezuela last week.  

Intrigue surrounded the amortization and maturity of two PDVSA bonds, which required roughly $2 billion for bondholders. Sanctions preventing US dollar transactions and new US dollar funding for the regime complicated the already difficult task of cobbling together payments with an absolutely broke government.

And yet... it paid.

PDVSA somehow bundled the October 28th amortization payment across the line, and promised, with some credibility, that the check would be in the mail for the maturity of the PDVSA bond of November 2nd.

Then, one of the more surreal events in the history of sovereign defaults happened: after market hours on Thursday evening, Maduro announced that the government will stop paying principal and interest on the current debt load, the same day they pledged to pay back a bond at par. And what had been a tumultuous but profitable week for Venezuela bondholders, turned into a total nightmare.

The 7% December 2018 bond saw its value cut in half from the high 60s Thursday afternoon, to the mid 30s on Friday, just above what many people use as assumption of what defaulted sovereign debt is worth in a restructuring.

With the wave of Maduro's magic wand, “Venezuelan default” went from “outrageous” to “yeah, you didn't know that?”

Here's where “macro” comes in. Those who’ve been following me for the last few months know that I have a healthy skepticism of macro trading strategies. There are traders out there who are constantly ahead of the curve, who see opportunities more quickly and accurately than the rest of the crowd, even in markets they don't trade in every day. But for the vast majority of the universe, there has to be a definable edge when you are doing something the rest isn't, whether it's a different type of analysis, or taking advantage of some market breakdown or regulatory change.

The different pools of capital in financial markets should produce enough diversity to keep markets “honest” in the same way Leo Messi keeps defenders “honest” because they have to protect against him charging to the goal or threading a brilliant pass to a teammate. You can’t “cheat” towards one or the other because you'll pay for it.

How did markets miss that Venezuela could default any day? Did they miss out on this chart, which shows nearly $4bn in payments going out the door in Q4 2017, for a country with stated foreign reserves of $10bn?

 A few months ago, I talked to some EM managers on the subject. One suspects that “(debt holders) are going to start bailing when it's too late, ourselves included. Anyone that has anything to do with an index gets burned by being underweight, so they inevitably come back. To step out of the position, you would have to compensate, and there isn't enough risk-adjusted yield to do so elsewhere.”

That's the “cheat”; for bondholders, Venny debt was a case study of game theory in Emerging Markets. The market structure is set up in such a way that the biggest foreign investors were afraid to sell and afraid to buy. Macro investors should step in and say “Look, the market is pricing a greater than ever chance 2018 bonds will be paid at par.  There's nearly $4bn in bond payments this year, another $10bn next year, versus $10bn in foreign reserves at best, for a country under sanctions that prevent access to new dollar funding.”

Why didn’t they? There's a few reasons:

The capacity of repo markets to lend bonds has been greatly curtailed. After the post- Global Financial Crisis reforms, banks don't want the risk of lending bonds in a credit on the edge of default. This situation leads to a lot of difficulty in trying to establish a sizable short position in the bonds, and when you can, it can be prohibitively expensive;  

The size and risk appetite of global macro has been overwhelmed by the size of real money investors. The days of George Soros pushing around markets and central banks are over; enter the era of the multi-trillion-dollar passive asset managers such as Blackrock, Vanguard, Fidelity, etc.

The liquidity provided by Wall Street banks seized up further when the US imposed sanctions on USD transactions with the regime. A couple key players in the interdealer “wholesale” market stepped out after the August round of sanctions, worsening market liquidity and amplifying the wild swings Venny Bonds are known for.

Call it what you will, self-preservation, or the Bachaquero on Wall Street trade, but guessing the date of the Venezuelan default has been a trader parlor game for over three years now — more than one hedge fund trader got carried out on the short Venny theme. Traders were lulled into complacency that Maduro would simply find a way. He didn’t.

With macro traders sidelined and real money investors petrified, liquidity dried up and the market became hostage of local brokers and regime insiders, rather than economics and risk. A break that macro traders were unable to exploit… and Venezuelans couldn't prepare against. It is yet another testament to the power of market efficiency, and the consequences when it breaks down.

The losers in this game? Not the regime, the fixed income investors or even the hedge fund guys that shorted Venny too early: the real losers were the Venezuelans who died because there weren’t enough dollars to service the debt and import food and medicine.