Americas

Iran has summoned the Swiss Ambassador to Tehran to protest the controversial supreme court ruling that $2 billion of frozen Iranian assets be used to compensate American victims of “terror”. Last week the supreme Court ruled that Iran must pay the sum to survivors and relatives of those killed in attacks blamed on the Islamic republic. Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif threatened to take legal action in the International Court of Justice against the United States if the amount in frozen funds is “diverted”.

Just as US equity futures were about to roll over following some very substantial misses yesterday by the likes of Google, Microsoft, Starbucks and a plunge in Visa shares, overnight who came to the markets' rescue but the BOJ, when shortly after midnight Bloomberg reported that "according to people familiar with talks at the BOJ" which is the traditional keyword for a BOJ source testing out the market's reaction, Japan's central bank may "help" local banks to lend by offering a negative rate on some loans.

The biggest catalyst for overnight markets, first reported on this site, was the announcement by Kuwait that its oil workers had ended their strike which disrupted oil production in the 4th largest OPEC producer for 3 days cutting it by as much as 1.7 mmb/d, and had served to offset the negative news from the Doha debacle. Kuwait Petroleum also added that it would boost output to 3m b/d within 3 days, which in turn has pressured the price of oil overnight, and the May WTI contract was back to just over $40 at last check, sliding 2%.

The ancient Goddess ISIS, usually associated as being of Egyptian origins, may have actually originated in India, as several eminent scholars have discovered.   Ancient-origins.net reports: One of the great, largely untold adventure stories of late antiquity is the journey to the East, from Egypt’s Red Sea ports, across the open ocean for 40 days and 40 nights, to the legendary entrepôt of Musiris, on India’s southwestern or Malabar coast, in what is now modern state of Kerala.

When we previewed Venezuela's upcoming hyperinflation, which in January was predicted to be 720% and as of this moment is likely far higher...

... we said "This Is What The Death Of A Nation Looks Like" and said "there is no good news in any of the above for the long-suffering citizens of this "socialist paradise" which any minute now will be downgraded to its fair value of "socialist hell."