Submitted by Brian Cloughley via Strategic-Culture.org,
Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States are the world’s five «nuclear weapons states», a description officially recognised in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which lays down that «each nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices…»
With the Italian referendum now in the rearview mirror, the market's attention focuses on this Thursday's second most important event, the ECB meeting on Thursday. Here the biggest question is whether, alongside the now widely expected extension of the ECB's QE which is set to mature in March 2017, and which most analysts believe will be prolonged until at least September 2017, Mario Draghi will also announce some form of tightening or tapering of QE purchases or an eventual formal ending of its asset purchases, as Reuters hinted in a trial balloon report last week.
As BofA's rates strategist Ralf Preusser writes in a note this morning, "not even a month since the US election and markets seem unrecognizable" adding that the Trump election represented a paradigm shift. Fiscal easing would take over from monetary easing and would allow for the dollar and rates to rise in unison, a trend not seen for a while.
The key economic releases this week are ISM non-manufacturing on Monday and University of Michigan consumer sentiment index on Friday. There are a few scheduled speaking engagements from Fed officials this week.
Away from the US economic calendar, initially focus will be on the Italian referendum result, which already appears to have been largely digested by the market, despite a variety of unknown consequences still to emerge. It will then shift quickly to a critical ECB meeting.
Submitted by Michael Shedlock via MishTalk.com,
Axel Weber, former head of Germany’s central bank says the ECB is going to halt QE soon and hike rates by September.
Weber warns Markets Unprepared for Central Bank Shifts.