Americas

The Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul has suspended the use of a chemical used to kill mosquitoes that transmit the Zika virus, after doctors voiced concerns that it may be the actual cause of brain defects in newborns. The state government’s move followed reports from the Argentine group Physicians in the Crop-Sprayed Towns (PCST) and Brazilian Collective Health Association (Abrasco)  which both suggested that the larvicide, not the Zika virus, was responsible for the alarming spike in microcephaly.

Submitted by Leonard Brecken via OilPrice.com,

During the 1990s, developing nations including Mexico and many in Asia became very competitive manufacturing bases due to lower wage structures. This, I believe, was the root cause of the use of failed fiscal and monetary policy to “close the gap” with the competitiveness of low-cost wage structures around the world, which has played out for three decades. The result has been three bubbles and a worsening systemic problem of wage and taxation disparity between the U.S. and developing nations.

Two years ago, just before Michael Lewis released Flash Boys starting a sharp if brief revulsion against parasitic, predatory High Frequency Trading frontrunners, which delayed Virtu's IPO by one year, we broke down Virtu's 2013 net trading income by product line. We were not surprised to find that of the $45 million in total growth, the largest income category, US stocks growth was a tiny 5% of all, rising by $2.3 million in 2013. In fact, between EMEA, APAC and US Equities, there was very limited growth in 2013, while commodities posted an outright trading income decline.

Submitted by Alasdair Macleod via GoldMoney.com,

Last Sunday (31 January) Zero Hedge ran an article drawing attention to the big names in the hedge fund community who are betting heavily that the yuan will suffer a major devaluation any time between the next few months and perhaps the next three years.

The impression given is that this view is universal, almost to the exclusion of any other.

Just like the global panic that gripped the world in October 2014 when the Ebola virus had spread from western Africa to many nations around the globe, including several isolated cases in the US, so a year and a half later, the world is urgently scrambling to unleash a sense of panic surrounding the Zika virus which, just like Ebola, came out of nowhere and is fast becoming the latest scapegoat for collapsing global commerce this year's invisible bogeyman.

Here are some of the latest developments.

At Least 54 People Infected in the U.S.