You'd think that steering a country away from the brink of economic catastrophe might buy a young administration some slack, but not in Argentina, where tolerance for anything short of miracle-making runs thin, a Bloomberg View reported. So maybe it's no surprise that less than two years after taking office and announcing a 21st-century Marshall Plan, President Mauricio Macri is struggling not just to fix South America's second-largest market, but to salvage his career as well.

Venezuela’s state oil company, one of the most distressed credits in emerging markets, hired BancTrust & Co. to help arrange calls with investors, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter, Bloomberg News reported. The calls with Petroleos de Venezuela SA officials including Chief Financial Officer Simon Zerpa, set to begin July 10, are meant to improve communication with bond investors and will be invitation-only to some of the company’s biggest creditors and emerging-market funds, said the person.

Bets on a Venezuelan default are climbing as international reserves slump toward $10 billion amid anti-government protests and President Nicolas Maduro’s push to rewrite the constitution. The implied probability of the country missing a payment over the next 12 months rose to 56 percent in June, according to credit-default swaps data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s the highest level since December, Bloomberg News reported. The odds of a credit event over the next five years increased to 91 percent last month.

Tuesday in Venezuela, armed groups attacked Congress and a police helicopter may or may not have dropped grenades onto the Supreme Court. Wednesday’s reaction from traders? Mostly a shrug. Venezuela’s benchmark bonds due in 2027 edged higher, while notes from the state oil company coming due this year were a hair lower, Bloomberg News reported. The cost to insure sovereign debt from default dropped the most in a month.

A year into its bankruptcy saga, Oi SA is reinforcing to the rest of the world that Brazil is a hazardous place even for the most experienced of investors. In the two decades since the telecom giant was privatized, it’s been strong-armed into disastrous acquisitions and turned into a dumping ground for the debt of its controlling shareholders, Bloomberg News reported. It was used by Brazil’s government to push political policies and was saddled with regulations that drained it of cash.

Oi SA has unveiled a plan that facilitates the early repayment of small debts to suppliers and contractors, as Brazil's No. 4 wireless carrier seeks to emerge faster from creditor protection, Reuters reported. The plan was made public in newspaper ads on Friday. Under its terms, all creditors will be eligible for an early repayment of their debts to a maximum limit of 50,000 reais ($15,000) each. According to Chief Executive Officer Marco Schroeder, the plan seeks Oi's so-called Classes 1, 3 and 4 of creditors to negotiate ahead of a vote on the carrier's bankruptcy plan.

Brazilian banks are wrestling with a growing pile of assets they’d rather not own: at least 13.8 billion reais ($4.2 billion) of cars, real estate, equipment and other collateral seized when borrowers defaulted on their loans, Bloomberg News reported. The total surged 42 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier at eight of the nation’s biggest lenders as fallout from the worst recession in Brazil’s history continues to weigh on banks’ finances, according to the companies’ financial statements.

Brazilian banks are wrestling with a growing pile of assets they’d rather not own: at least 13.8 billion reais ($4.2 billion) of cars, real estate, equipment and other collateral seized when borrowers defaulted on their loans, Bloomberg News reported. The total surged 42 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier at eight of the nation’s biggest lenders as fallout from the worst recession in Brazil’s history continues to weigh on banks’ finances, according to the companies’ financial statements.

Argentina sold 100-year bonds barely a year after settling a protracted legal dispute tied to a $95 billion default, Bloomberg News reported. With the $2.75 billion sale, the government of South America’s second-largest economy joins Mexico, Ireland and the U.K. in issuing debt that matures over a century, which is often particularly attractive to insurers and pension funds seeking to lock in long-term returns. Argentina, for its part, is taking advantage of historically low borrowing costs to finance the budget and pay off debt that’s maturing in the next few years.

In the wake of Goldman Sachs’s controversial purchase of $2.8 billion of bonds held in Venezuela’s vaults, investors have been trying to quickly figure out what other hidden assets the country might be sitting on. The stakes are high. As the central bank’s officially published foreign-reserve figure dwindles to just over $10 billion, that secretive stockpile might ultimately decide whether the nation averts default or not, Bloomberg News reported. Calculating the value of those securities, as you might expect, is tricky.