SOTS 2nd Hour: Venezuela latest - Market, Geopolitics, Crypto & National Security Implications 1/5/26

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David Faber (0:45)

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Sara Eisen (1:05)

Good Monday morning, welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Sara Eisen with Carl Quintanilla and David Faber. All back together, live at Post 9 at the New York Stock Exchange. We're all over the breaking news of the day. Outstanding Venezuelan leader, Nicolas Maduro, due to appear in a New York court just two hours from now with wide ranging implications for global markets, the energy complex, the geopolitical order. We've got a great lineup to help break it all down for you, including Rockefeller's Ruchir Sharma with a look at the market impact. Signum Global Advisors founder, Charles Myers, who is planning a trip to Venezuela with business leaders to explore investment prospects and former Trump National Security Adviser HR. McMaster, all with us to discuss what happens next in Venezuela and beyond.

Carl Quintanilla (1:47)

First though, some new economic data, first of the week. Let's get to Rick Santelli. Morning, Rick.

Rick Santelli (1:52)

Good morning, Carl. Yes, these are ISM Manufacturing and it's for December. Expecting a number under 50, around 48 and a half comes in light, 47.9.

So, this would be what the 10th consecutive read under 50, only the first two months of the year were above 50, and it's the lowest read since October of 24, October of 24 And if we look at prices paid, unfortunately, it remains sticky. 58.5, it equals last month 58.5, and that was the highest since the previous month, September of 25 New orders, 47.7, that's very close to expectations, but obviously, in contraction territory, under 50 47.7 would be the weakest, going back to, well, just last month was 47.4, so you can see, it's actually the strongest since October, but we have not been above 50 since August of this year. Last year, or new year this year, right? ISM Employment finally, considering that we have ADP and the Big Jobs Report this week comes in at 44.9, well under 50, but it is a little higher than our last, which was 44.0. 44.9 actually is the best since it was 46 in October. That means we now had 11 consecutive readings under 50 The only reading that was above 50 in the employment space was the very first month of the year. Interest rates, well, they're all down a little bit, but they're down from elevated areas. We've been testing the top of the range in a 10-year, which has basically been hovering around that 420 It backs away from there. We haven't closed above that since very early September. Sara, back to you.

Sara Eisen (3:41)

Okay, Rick, thank you very much. Rick Santelli, I wanted to focus on Venezuela and what's happening in the economy there, sort of re-up the discussion with Maduro Du and the New York Court today. It is one of the saddest cases of economic implosion in modern history. Venezuela was blessed with so many things that a country would want, gorgeous beaches, very good farmland, and oil, oil reserves sitting on the biggest in the world. Here's the chart for that one. I mean, it produces a fraction of this as we've been talking about all day. So what happened there? Well, what happened was communism or democratic socialism, basically. Look at some of the more recent charts of what's happened with GDP per capita, one of the lowest in the world, which is kind of a good reflection, I think, of just compared to the United States. I mean, GDP per capita for Venezuela now under 4,000. That's even with all the migration out of the country. If you compare it to the United States, we're like 80,000, for instance. But per person, 80 something thousand. Yes, we're a rich country. Even compared to most South American countries, Venezuela has gone from the top all the way to the bottom. And just to illustrate how dire things are, their inflation rate, this is what happens when you take over a central bank and you completely leave it unindependent and monetize all the debt. It's 682%, which is actually an improvement. It used to be like 300,000%.