Financial Markets and Economy
Janet Yellen’s use of one word shows something has gone wrong (David Rosenberg, Business Insider)
I have been in this business for 30 years and have never seen a central bank chief slip the word “uncertainty” into the headline.
Not just that, but she invoked the term no fewer than 10 times to describe the domestic and global macro and market backdrop — this even as we pass seven years since the worst point of the Great Recession and seven years into the most radical easing of monetary policy in recorded history.
America Isn't Going Broke (Bloomberg View)
There are sometimes good reasons to be worried about the U.S. national debt. The debt has to be serviced, and that requires collecting taxes, which distort the economy. If government debt gets so large that the only way to avoid a default is to hold down interest rates forever, those low rates can eventually have negative effects on the economy. In the worst-case scenario, investors can lose their confidence in a government’s ability to repay its debt, forcing the central bank to print money to fund the government, which raises the risk of inflation.
Oil Worker Strike Cuts in Half Kuwait Crude Production (Wall Street Journal)
Kuwait’s crude production dropped by more than half on Sunday as thousands of its oil industry employees began an open-ended strike over government plans to cut wages.
Futures are lower (Business Insider)
Futures dipped before the opening bell on Monday following a week in which stocks hit the highest levels of 2016.
If you're looking for systemic threats to the global economy, then this uptick in defaults ought to scare you (Business Insider)
The markets don't seem to care that corporate defaults — US companies failing to pay their debts — are heading back up to territory last seen in 2009, when the financial crisis hit bottom. Everyone feels reassured that while the default rate is getting worse, it's not as bad as it could be, and that therefore means it's relatively good.
OPEC and Falling Oil Prices (The Atlantic)
Saudi Arabia, the largest OPEC producer, had said it would freeze production if all other members of the cartel agreed. But Iran, which recently has seen international sanctions against it eased, refused to curb production to levels reached in January. Relations between the two countries, who are arch regional rivals, are likely to be hit further. Oil prices were coming off a 12-year low reached in January ahead of the Doha meeting, but the failure of the talks are likely to send them lower.
This is the No. 1 fear for big fixed-income investors, beating U.S., China slowdowns (Market Watch)
A British exit from the European Union has turned into the top worry for global fixed-income fund managers, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s latest sentiment survey around foreign exchange and rates.
The Hole at the Center of the Rally: S&P 500 Margins in Decline (Bloomberg)
Stocks are rising, the worst start to a year is a memory, and short sellers are getting pummeled. And yet something is going on below the surface of earnings that should give bulls pause.
ECB not aiming to weaken euro against dollar: sources (Reuters)
The European Central Bank is unhappy with the U.S. dollar's recent fall but accepts it as a natural consequence of the Federal Reserve's cautious economic outlook and sees no reason to act to weaken the euro, three ECB sources told Reuters.
G-20 Delivers Empty Warning on Global Economy (Bloomberg View)
The communique issued by the Group of 20 finance ministers and central bankers at the conclusion of talks in Washington this weekend had a somewhat unreal, and worryingly ironic, tone.
Financials Have a Strong Week, As Do Economically-Sensitive Materials and Industrials (StockWatchers)
Financials went from the year's weakest sector to the strongest gainer this past week. Chart 1 shows the Financials Sector SPDR (XLF) climbing to the highest level in three months and challenging its 200-day moving average (red arrow). The dotted line, which is the XLF/SPX relative strength ratio, jumped this week for the first time since February. Banks played a big role in the week's rally, as did brokers and life insurers. The market usually does better when financial stocks are helping.
Oil is getting obliterated because Iran is going rogue against the world (Business Insider)
Oil prices are being annihilated on Monday after several oil producers, responsible for almost half of the world's output, failed to reach a production-freeze agreement at a meeting in Doha on Sunday.
Trade Case to Target U.S. Imports of Raw Aluminum (NY Times)
An American labor union plans to push the United States to impose broad, steep tariffs on aluminum imports using a little-used but wide-ranging trade law that has riled the country’s trading partners in the past.
Gold edges higher as Doha oil-freeze deal fails (Market Watch)
Gold futures inched higher Monday, helped by haven demand as stocks and oil dropped in the wake of an oil-freeze deal’s failure.
Crude's Losses Drag Ruble, Loonie Lower; Stocks Pare Their Drop (Bloomberg)
Crude oil’s fourth-straight decline weighed on energy companies and currencies of commodity-exporting nations after talks between major producers ended in Doha without any agreement on limiting output.
Why Wait Three Days to Get Your Cash After You Trade? (Wall Street Journal)
By the time you finish reading this sentence, an electronic high-frequency trader can send out thousands of buy or sell orders. Why, then, does it take up to three days—and occasionally far longer—for investors to receive cash when they sell securities and when they buy?
China March home prices rise at fastest rate in two years, top cities boom (Reuters)
China's home prices in March gained at the fastest pace in almost two years but that growth may slow as local authorities tighten home purchase requirements in the two top performing cities on fears of a bubble forming.
Grand Oil Bargain Is Victim of Saudi Arabia's Iran Fixation (Bloomberg)
In the end, the outcome of Sunday’s summit of 16 oil ministers at Qatar’s Sheraton hotel turned on one country that wasn’t there.
The Trucker's Nightmare That Could Flatten Europe's Economy (Bloomberg)
Peering through his rain-lashed windshield, Zoltan Unczorg alternates edgily between the brake and the gas pedal of his 18-wheeler. "It’s very tiring," the sturdy Hungarian complains as he crawls along in a line of vehicles approaching the Austria-Germany border.
Is Deutsche Bank’s Gold Manipulation The Main Scam Or Just A Side-Show? (Dollar Collapse)
For years now, the easiest way to finesse a debate over whether precious metals markets are manipulated has been to say, “well, if they’re not manipulated they’re the only market that isn’t.”
Morgan Stanley Profit Plunges By More Than 50% As Trading Revenue Tumbles 40% (Zero Hedge)
Moments ago Morgan Stanley became the fourth major US bank to report earnings which unlike its previously reporting peers, JPM, Wells and Citi, were far more simple to digest due to the lack of bank loan balance sheet arbitrage and reliance on Net Interest Margin.
Politics
It's up to you, New York: state takes center stage in election campaign (Reuters)
Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders is throwing a concert in a park with a dramatic view of Manhattan's skyscrapers. At the opposite end of New York state, Republican front-runner Donald Trump will be holding a rally in Buffalo, a Rust Belt city recovering from economic decline.
Both Parties’ Presidential Front-Runners Increasingly Unpopular (Wall Street Journal)
Both parties’ presidential front-runners are growing increasingly unpopular, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds, with Hillary Clinton showing an especially steep decline over the past month.
Bernie Sanders, Union-Buster (The Atlantic)
A labor union’s strength is implied in its name: unity. There’s a reason Marx and Engels called on the workers of the world to “unite,” not “get together and agree, sort of.” Unions fall apart when their members stop working toward the same goal.
Ted Cruz Just Reminded The Republican Establishment Why They Hate Him (Huffington Post)
Is Sen. Ted Cruz the palatable presidential alternative to Donald Trump? Sure, the Texan senator’s not exactly the Republican Party establishment’s first or even second choice, but the Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio ships have sailed and sunk.
Technology
GM President Says Driverless Cars Coming “Sooner Than You Think” (BuzzFeed)
The car industry is on the verge of its biggest transformation in more than a century, with a fleet of fully self-driving cars coming “sooner than you think,” according to General Motors President Dan Ammann.
New Wi-fi Chip Is Just as Fast With Half the Antennae (Gizmodo)
Usually removing hardware means removing functionality. But a team of researchers from Columbia University have created a new kind of wi-fi chip that uses just one antenna rather than two—and yet manages to be just as fast.
Sunglasses Designed To Help The Blind See (PSFK)
Saqib Shaikh, a software developer from London, lost his sight at the age of seven has been developing an application to help him see. Shaikh, who currently works at Microsoft, has incorporated artificial intelligence, cognitive computing, image recognition and mobile headset technologies into an app which hopes he hopes will give him the freedom that sighted people take for granted everyday.
Health and Life Sciences
Acupuncture does not work for menopause: A tale of two acupuncture studies (Science-Based Medicine)
Arguably, one of the most popular forms of so-called “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) being “integrated” with real medicine by those who label their specialty “integrative medicine” is acupuncture. It’s particularly popular in academic medical centers as a subject of what I like to refer to as “quackademic medicine“; that is, the study of pseudoscience and quackery as though it were real medicine.
Where Have All the Ear Infections Gone? (NY Times)
One way I knew my pediatrician was a good doctor was that he resolutely refused to diagnose an ear infection in my youngest child.
Many with Parkinson's 'hide symptoms' (BBC)
They feel the symptoms are not socially acceptable and may embarrass those close to them, Parkinson's UK said.
It added it was concerned that too many people were struggling alone with their diagnosis, affecting emotional health.
Life on the Home Planet
Shaken Ecuador hunts for survivors amid 7.8 quake debris (Reuters)
Traumatized Ecuadoreans slept amid rubble while rescuers dug for survivors on Monday after an earthquake smashed the Andean nation's coastal region, killing at least 272 people and flattening resort towns.
El Niño has made these coral reefs into ‘ghost towns’ (Futurity)
A team of marine scientists has returned from nearly a month of scuba diving on coral reefs in the middle of the equatorial Pacific Ocean. What they saw will haunt them for a long time.
“It’s as if someone has thrown a fuzzy red/brown blanket over the reef, turning it all one color,” says Kim Cobb, a professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. “Right now it looks okay from afar, with all the coral structure still in place. But when you get up close, you see that it’s all dead, as far as the eye can see. It’s very eerie.”
American Religion Has Never Looked Quite Like It Does Today (Huffington Post)
Nearly a century after German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche first proclaimed “God is dead,” TIME magazine released a controversial cover on its April 8, 1966 edition with the related provocative question: “Is God dead?”
Both Nietzsche and TIME were exploring the prominence of God in people’s lives, and whether religiosity was on the decline in the society. Fifty years later, religion experts are still grappling with that question, though the context has drastically changed.
