will be with us from chicago land lots to get to today so we pop started and jump right in let's go. and we start with the ongoing controversy in south america in venezuela where the dueling the bait is now taking the form of music musical of all things and what has been dubbed as a battle of the bands and here to help us out is our t. correspondent sarah monteux sarah welcome thank you bart so the music playing into this is just such a weird thing we're talking about it earlier very different perspectives from from pretty high profile people people lot of us i've heard from tell us what's going on well our president mother tells a government is actually organizing a concert dubbed hands often as well and pink floyd's roger waters is calling out virgin c.e.o. richard branson who is also doing a concert on the other side of the border in support for a self-proclaimed president. and here's what mr waters had to say the important thing about this is that even if you listen to this shtick it has nothing to

do with humanitarian aid actually it has to do with richard branson and i'm not surprised by this having bullets the u.s. saying we have decided to take over and is waiting for whatever our reasons may be that it has nothing to do with the needs of the venezuelan people it has nothing to do with democracy it has nothing to do with freedom and it has nothing to do with eight. so is sarah warren's evil and speaking of music used to sing about lawyers guns and money in then as well is it really about oil and money well it appears to be just that it's about oil and all we have to do is look at what trumps national security advisor had to say these were his words he said quote it will

make a big difference to the united states economically if we could have american oil companies invest in and produce the oil capabilities in venice well so this obviously has a lot to do with the oil of venezuela people forget that venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world yeah it is crazy because they've they've had all these resources there but they haven't been able to develop and they did so we've covered this in the in the past with the tavern sure that they really did well in the ninety's but then they slacked off they've not developed their infrastructure but now clearly from what you say mr bolton the national security advisor he wants to go in there pretty much up front totally for oil and money. well he actually made a few threatening tweets not only to venezuela but to me that i was well aware there are have also been protests since last year it looks like many critics are saying that this could be the start of a regime change of more to come here we heard the president target cuba cuba as

well doesn't want to they really harbored on that this week so we could probably look i'm a proud american and i want democracy all over but the dura was elected and it seems that you know the u.n. has said there are these human atrocities going on there right right so the united nations and the red cross are really trying to be careful and not calling it a humanitarian crisis now they're asking for the humanitarian aid opposition seems to be pushing for that term humanitarian crisis we have other crises going on in the world that the u.n. has acknowledge that as well is not one of them and that's what waters is saying that this has nothing to do with humanitarian aid. wade what else is going on on the ground you told me about a somebody that was killed earlier today explain that to the both of us right so one woman was shot and killed dozens of others were injured this happened in the border of brazil and venezuela now president mother would order about border closure just yesterday after opposition made plans to bring in that humanitarian

through there and he also close the other neighboring borders other bridges there were no immediate reports on what the injuries were but we know that those who were injured were taken in for for medical treatment how do you i mean i saw senator marco rubio on sunday on one of the sunday programs and he was in colombia and behind him there was you know pallets of what appeared to be aid and he said the venezuelan people need this a i mean how are we to judge what is the real circumstance on the ground well that's that's been the biggest controversy my little said there is no humanitarian crisis here he's called trump out to let them deal with their own democracy he said he won fair elections there are pro model supporters there are from supporters from both sides so that's the craziness and all this it is crazy but you've helped try to set a straight on some of the sponsor among just ok thank you sara always great thank

you. and it certainly is a troubling set of circumstances and to give us even more texture to what's going on we go live to venezuelan border with in colombia we're argue correspondent dan cohen has been covering the story hey did i give us an update on really three things down there one what's happened with regard to these concerts to the reported attempts to deliver aid and how have venezuelans been dealing with the sanctions imposed by the united states. the barnabei on the colombian side of the bennetts weyland border you know i mean on my right you. see that t.n.t. just border crossing where the u.s. is demanding that the venezuelan government open its border so it can deliver twenty million dollars worth of what it is saying is humanitarian aid and there are a lot of questions about this first of all this twenty billion dollars sounds like a lot to you and me but it's

a drop in the bucket in comparison to the impact of sanctions that according to the venezuelan government have cost of venezuela thirty eight billion dollars in recent years now the twenty million dollars worth of humanitarian aid which is actually in a warehouse just off to my right. is under a lot of scrutiny major international humanitarian organ what organizations like the red cross have said they will not participate in this and they have said this is not humanitarian aid and other groups like other groups like of the person who have voiced concern as well saying that this violates the principles of planetary daid like impartiality neutrality and that it actually could because of the the politicized nature of this could actually do more could create harm there's also the question of the involvement of elliott abrams who is now the state

department special envoy to venezuela in the one nine hundred eighty s. he actually under the reagan administration ordered humanitarian aid officers to use their planes to deliver weapons to contras and the iraq war so very controversial figure there really undermines the credibility of this whole humanitarian so-called humanitarian effort also usa i just brought in another shipment to the border here that they say they're bringing in righteous and wheelchairs they're toothbrushes but these are actually items that are available in venezuela but people are set. really unable to afford them because of hyper inflation the economy has experienced. we haven't been allowed to see what's actually to inspect this this so-called humanitarian aid inside the warehouse. as far as i understand c.n.n. and corporate media outlets like that have been allowed which are of course very

close with the u.s. government so there's a lot of questions about what this actually is and you know if it really is humanitarian aid. now here at the concert there are about i would estimate five thousand people here and it's the first day tomorrow saturday is supposed to be the benefit the organizers are saying that they're expecting three hundred thousand people so this is this much just as many people as there will be the organizers may end up being disappointed but. we've heard a lot of you know on one hand people are saying they really you know want to peaceful resolution resolution to what's happening here but at the same time we've heard a lot of strong denunciations and actually cursing of the venezuelan president nicolas maduro so there are a lot of also venezuelan refugees in the area but the people here appear to be rather affluent having a good time watching the music as you can see behind me but you know inside venezuela it's another story just across the border we have bet as well an

opposition lawmakers pledging to breakthrough possibly tomorrow and even saying that the humanitarian aid the so-called humanitarian aid is less important than bringing down what they call the dictatorship for boom bust dan cohen r.t. . we thank you so much dan appreciate that actual reporting thanks so much for your time down there. and other latin american nations are facing economic hard times there in the news for reaching out from help from abroad in south america the international monetary fund or i.m.f. has returned to another country the. this time it's ecuador where president lenin marino has agreed to the terms of a an austerity deal for austerity for deal are therapy for credit deal worth an estimated ten billion dollars four point two billion dollars of that value will be lent by the i.m.f. the rest will be financed by i.m.f. peers at the international international american bank and the latin american

development bank and the world bank the increasingly unpopular mr marino was elected on a leftist platform but is steadily march to the right in office and meanwhile the nicaraguan congress has approved the terms of a critical twenty year alone valued at one hundred million dollars from taiwan from taiwan nicaraguans government is seeking new methods of refinancing after u.s. economic sanctions there. and a player from a story we told you about last time is in the news again as a spanish telecom firm telefonica s.a.a. is sanctioned by the european regulators for failing to fulfill conditions of a past merger telefonica which yesterday announced the sale of assets in central america to millet com cellular has now been found to have broken promises made as conditions of the european commission's approval of telefonica acquisition of telecom company put us back in october of two thousand and fourteen the commission says telefonica previously agreed to divest of some radio assets and rent key

equipment to rivals in the german market but did not telefonica has until april fifth to reply to the commission's official statement of objections and could be fined up to ten percent of the annual revenue of the german subsidiary. and time for our global weekly market roundup and we start in russia at the moscow stock exchange the moscow mo act which is down that's two weeks in a row down at moet and chandon high in china actually up it's two weeks in a row as is the nikkei two twenty five in tokyo the hang seng down in hong kong up and it was down last week and by the way a little programming note again we're going to be there in ten days for the two thousand and one thousand block change conference and next week we'll have the c.e.o. of next change next changes the sponsor of the event there in hong kong jawan lee will join us from hong kong next week and down in australia at the three hundred

there was a signal from the central bank there this week that interest rates may rise which actually rosebank stocks higher interest rates mean higher bank profits they get more and more and the result is that there is some healthy growth also in the job sector and the a.s.x. with three hundred up for the week and speaking of central banks in india by the bombays. stock exchange the central bank also there indicates they will actually cut rates as the elections approach in a couple of months but the sunset turned the corner after being down for the year and down last week just a little bit and when i say a little bit is very interesting just in the last closing hour or so they closed at three thirty by time it fluctuated between whether they're going to be up or down eighteen different times it was quite something to see and in south africa the all shares down in cape town down seven percent this much this month and you know south america or south africa rather in emerging markets of all of the emerging markets

around the world south africa it dips seven percent while the other emerging markets including south africa just one point eight percent so not a good month so far for it south african stocks the frak the french cac forty in paris and the dax also up this week that's two weeks in a row for the cac and the dax and in the u.k. at the footsie down with thirty five days until brecht's that is set to occur on march twenty ninth and the call cup down in colombia down after being up last week and it's the opposite there it's down at the best was up last week but down this week after that report we told you about about present hardball so narrow reversing his position on pensions proposing to raise the retirement age quite a shock there to markets and moving from brazil up eight thousand miles to the great white north through the ts exit stock exchange up for the week and

a new york nasdaq was up as is the new york stock exchange up for the week at two solid weeks of markets in the u.s. and time now for a quick break but hang here because when we return the trump administration's environmental protection agency has walked away from the negotiating table with the state of california over fuel efficiency standards and a fierce fight may be in the offing more unfair. the car coach will join us plus we talk kryptos with colleen sullivan the c.e.o. of c.m.t. digital hold it as we go to break here the daily numbers from new york at the closing bell will be back in a flash. as far right parties obsess about the danger is them presents to the western lifestyle some islamic scholars are concerned about the opposite. the dead muslims don't step

up their game within the next twenty to forty is islam they vanish from europe all those fee is really just to find. the. money to set up i said. so there are a lot of bills. and they have a mission but. we . don't want out of the modern i don't want to know about. something on the.

phone when. they shuffle stem and we have. a little warmth and you know. this i don't know. i thought it could be is that i who wouldn't accept the idea of going to be ocean without by the united states on the border that will be six to seven with your was it about as it's gotta be done or we are going to be slipping i don't mind the snipping and go one step. on the line which means that we will be living in it do you find one this did situation therefore is that i had with find it said neither do you wish i was the north korea book i think i was there.

in twenty four to you know bloody revolution to the demonstrations going from being relatively peaceful political protests to be increasingly violent revolution is always spontaneous or is it still here to put it but i mean you know liz put me in the new bill is that i'm still in the middle of the former ukrainian president recalls the events of twenty four. those who took. invested over five billion dollars to assist ukraine in these unethical that will ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic. welcome back the trump administrations of our middle protection agency has walked away from the negotiating table the state of california related to fuel efficiency

standards the actions seem to guarantee a fierce fight and massive legal battle that could change the playing field and create major compliance headaches for the a whole manufacturers in the u.s. and around the world here discusses a car coach lauren fix hey lauren welcome back oh we love having you of course all the time this thing was already a mess we talked about it a few months back but i guess there was some hope it could have been resolved amicably although perhaps that too pollyannish on my part where you make of all that lord. i didn't think it was going to get resolved at the table i have to remember california thinks they can run the country because they had this national dispensation that they could make their own right you'll ations for their own state but remember the rest of the forty nine states now have to follow through if california makes the regulation because car manufacturers want to make vehicles to one standard so instead i'm going to date myself you are these to have new york emissions and california emissions and everyone has their own emissions well now

that's now california wants to call the shots for the whole country and that's what the federal government said well wait a minute that may have been fine then but now we're going to change the corporate average fuel economy notice cafe standards and you no longer get that special dispensation took from the california air research board and wherever they get their data from whether it's for just for them only seventeen states have agreed to follow suit one of the newly added is colorado and unfortunately it puts manufacturers in a tough position because they want to build vehicles for everybody but if the one standard is higher in california and other states and the other ones aren't they cost them more money to meet the standard but overall it's costing them more money which is costing you more money when you go to buy a car because some of those regulations one apply in kentucky or montana and so you have to remember that that's going to cost everybody money across the board you know i just i just wonder and this may be a stretch and i know you're not a political analyst but you're one of the smarter people we know here that you know

california is leading this group of seventeen other states to take the trump administration on with regard to those that emergency designation last week on the border wall i just wonder if you know what they're after that by the way you may recall that the top administration sort of said they wanted some of their money back from the high speed rail in california so i just wonder if that was in the background when this was going on that there wasn't sort of some edict from the top that came down and said just call off the talks with california you have an opinion on that. well yeah i don't believe that that's i think what happens or some bad timing in and the green new deal that was presented which is a bag of really bad ideas which i put in my four minute friday that i posted today the goal is no more fossil fuels and you think no more fossil fuels well everybody will water you touch the clothing you touch everything has fossil fuels in it and a part of that was also high speed rail and no more airplanes which is seven hundred thousand jobs and millions of jobs in the auto industry just really not

well thought out in the bigger picture you know you might want to be less responsible and less on to fossil fuels but i think it just didn't make any sense but part of that at the same time gavin newsome who's the governor of california said we can't do high speed rail it's trillions of dollars from san francisco to l.a. and we couldn't get it into l.a. would have to be way outside of l.a. and they decided to bag the whole thing but he had already taken money from the federal government for this high speed rail project so just so happens a bad timing was corporate average fuel economy conversations were going on the green new deal idea came out at the same time they realized the cost of doing it was completely unreasonable and then they said fine so you want this money for this high speed rail project you're not going to do that high speed rail project we want our money back and they don't want to give it back listen if i borrowed money from you bar tonight i'm going to buy a car and i didn't buy the car you want your money back i mean it's pretty simple if you're not going to use it for those funds then the money should go back to the federal government because it belongs to all of us here in the united states. i

know you have a great answer to that hey how about the rest of the world piece of fish and see standards and you know how do they do and are there certain vehicle manufacturers that are better equipped to deal with higher standards than others lauren. well i think all of them work together i mean obviously the smaller companies will struggle more so then bigger companies like the germans are on top of it because they've also worked with diesel they've had the diesel issues and it's interesting though you look at europe as a whole and their goal is to try and be more green have more electric vehicles like paris so they're going to be all green they're already the same problem we're running into here in the states the government has to subsidize it consumers don't want it there's not enough charging stations and there grid can't support it so you start tying all this together and the cost to do all this is well more than if you text everyone one hundred percent it doesn't make sense so you're starting to see have backing off of some of the european manufacturers in their countries is saying you know what maybe we're not going to push these green cars too far really just

make better fuel efficient vehicles or maybe combinations of gas and hybrid or. get right has really kind of raised a plug in there what she's so interesting all the always informative and ever interesting lauren fix the car coach thank you so much lauren thanks for. and we now move to look at investment in crypto assets and block chance to do so we are pleased to be joined by colleen sullivan the c.e.o. of c.m.t. digital asset who joins us from chicago land coley welcome. thank you for having me oh we're so excited i'm particularly so excited so first off tell us what c.m.t. digital does and how did you start it. sir so seem to digital as a subsidiary of the c.m.t. group which is a twenty two year old proprietary trading and investment firm were headquartered in chicago about one hundred people we also have two offices in london and one in frankfurt we started in the kryptos based in two thousand and thirteen started

primarily from a legal and regulatory standpoint i'm a securities attorney by background and i thought this concept of a digital instrument that could democratize money could have some interesting ripple effects on our global legal system and it really that was the genesis of seem to digital so we got involved in quite a few discussions at the state and federal level regarding how crypto should or should not be regulated that then turned into the firm investing in bitcoin january two thousand and sixteen we launched a full crypto training just january two thousand and seventeen and then we started investing in the space in the fall of two thousand and seventeen so we now have fourteen portfolio companies including groups like back to paris the temple and avarice of a good bank circle and a few more well my gosh fourteen that that scully that's a credible i mean congratulations and i'm sure they're not all gangbuster has so you've got you know you've got to diversify but that's it that's so given all the fluctuation in the price the crypt those especially big boy did it it's still down

you know year over year of course but up about a hundred bucks or so for this year are some people sort of missing the forest through the trees here that they aren't seeing all the other places like you have to invest in crypto and watching. yeah i mean you know while the firm maintains our long bitcoin position. i do think that most of the value will eventually see will be from the venture investing our thesis is pretty much to invest or we see gaps in infrastructure coupled with where we can be strategic and i think a good example of this is the crypto trading space so and our view the first real proven blocked chain use case is crypto trading so we've got billions of dollars worth of crypto assets moving unsteadily in across various block chains daily. and you know we the given the way that these centralized crypto exchanges kind of organically grew they look very different than our traditional markets so most

crypto exchanges are the exchange the custodian the liquidity provider the clearing firm in the broker all in one and so you know we see that those functions are going to have to probably break apart in the future we also see that you're missing the whole suite of prime services so you know in the traditional space where you know we are counter parties not the new york stock exchange or nasdaq it's our prime broker and so our counterparty risk is to that one prime broker and that prime is also looking at our positions on an aggregate basis in providing us financing there's nothing like that in the crypto space so we have direct counterparty risk to you know there's upwards of two hundred different crypto exchanges most of them are offshore and most of them are unregulated. so there's a tremendous amount of risk there so we see that gap where you need prime services that would include mature barlinnie so it is mature a custom duty and mature trading tools analytics research and we've invested in

all those spaces i will add that we don't think it makes sense to just copy and paste existing traditional market infrastructure into the crypto markets and we think that you can actually. use blackton technology to help make these markets more efficient and transparent so write call and you can use yeah i got out of the were up there were only a little bit there i'm so sorry we could talk for another hour but we're running out of time here calling thank you so much colleen sullivan partner do you know it's the mt to to hold a good hope you'll come back as a lot of fun a great change and that's it for this time thank you all for being with us you can catch boom bust on you tube dot com slash r t see you next time.

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