Earlier today, we parsed Saudi Arabia’s budget report in order to determine if the kingdom’s fiscal nightmare was better or worse than market expectations. 

As it turns out, it was better. This year’s deficit is expected to come in at around 15-16% of GDP, considerably below the 20% some analysts feared. For 2016, it looks as though the number should be somewhere in the neighborhood of 13%, broadly in line with expectations. 

According to a shocking report, in exchange for food from UN peacekeepers, children as young as nine traded oral sex in war-zones while officials looked the other way. UN human rights spokesman, Rupert Colville admitted in May that it was possible  that further inquiries would reveal even more unreported instances.

By EconMatters

Markets Going Nowhere

In one of the most comical expressions of failed Keynesian logic, two months ago, Deutsche Bank boosted its German GDP forecasts as a result of the "surge in immigration" - because no crisis can be wasted, the record influx of Syrian (and ISIS?) refugees...

... was to be immediately spun as being for the greater good. This is what DB predicted would happen:

Crude is at the lows of the day. Credit markets are at the lows of the day. Treasury yields are near the lows of the day. So it makes perfect sense that as Europe closed, "someone" would take the monkey-hammer to VIX ETFs (in particular UVXY - the Ultra-VIX ETF) and that rips stocks higher. What is most odd is that VIX (the underlying index) is not falling (as the ETFs appear driven more by futures out-months shifts and position-squaring).

Stocks rip as UVXY dips...