America

While we've yet to experience any large municipal pension failures, which is just a matter of 'when' rather than 'if', the small pension failures sprinkled across the state of California are starting to pile up.  As The Sacremento Bee points out today, public workers in Trinity and Imperial counties are just the latest to have their pensions slashed by up to 90% as their cities admit what most of us have known for some time, namely that they're running ponzi schemes which simply don't have the funding required to payout the benefits they've promised. 

Today, Moscow kicked off its controversial, week-long "Zapad-2017" drill, the latest iteration of a series of training maneuvers that began under the Soviet Union in the 1970s, and which has angered and put NATO and Baltic States leaders on edge. Land, sea and air units will be taking part in war games until the 21st of September across a huge area encompassing western Russia, Belarus, the Baltic Sea and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.

Gold spiked and USDJPY tumbled as headlines from Japan's Nikkei newspaper confirmed US military officials' observations last night that North Korea is said to show signs of missile launch preparation.

After disappointing (for The Fed's inflationistas) producer prices growth yesterday, consumer prices jumped 0.4% MoM in August - the biggest spike since January. Gains were driven by soaring energy costs (offset by a big decline in vehicle prices).

Year over Year, CPI remains below The Fed's mandat at +1.9% but that is hotter than expected and the highest since April..

As the breakdown shows, the gains were largely driven by rising energy and shelter costs (and note that vehicle prices are tumbling)

Former US President Jimmy Carter repeated his assertion that the US works more like an "oligarchy than a democracy," while also lambasting Trump's "hopeless" approach to the increasing tensions with North Korea.