Asia

Two weeks after winning the Turkish constitutional referendum by a modest but decisive margin, president - or perhaps it is now despot - Erdogan decided to take his newly decreed powers for a spin and overnight in rapid succession surprised foreign observers when Turkey decreed that it would ban TV dating shows, fire an additional 4,000 public officials and also ban Wikipedia.

TURKEY BANS DATING PROGRAMS ON TV AND RADIO: OFFICIAL GAZETTE

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) April 29, 2017

Two months we first suggested that OPEC may be fabricating data about its production cuts - and certainly overstating the "success" of its Vienna production cut deal - by looking at the rising Chinese oil imports, and by extension, rising oil deliveries by OPEC nations.

Authored by James Bambino via Platts blog,

This is the third and final segment of a three-part look at why oil prices have failed to rally despite OPEC’s best efforts at managing supply cuts. Not only have prices failed to rally, both NYMEX WTI and ICE Brent have fallen around 9% over the past three weeks. In case you missed them, be sure to read part 1 and part 2.

Refiners do what is in their best interest, too.

Despite yesterday's whopping beats by Amazon and Google which sent the Nasdaq to new record highs after hours, and brought Jeff Bezos "this close" to overtaking Bill Gates as the world's richest man, this morning futures S&P futures are little changed ahead of the closely watched Q1 GDP report, European stocks and Asian equities are slightly lower, oil is higher after Russia's energy minister Novak said Russia had reached the 300kbpd oil cut per the OPEC pact, and the dollar was modestly in the red.

Two days after launching a trade war with Canada by imposing tariffs on lumber imports, one day after nearly terminating NAFTA (but stopping just shy after an alleged phone call from the leaders of Mexico and Canada), Trump has finally turned his attention to the one nation whose GDP consists of roughly 60% net trade, and which we said several months ago, is far more likely to be punished for trade malpractice than China: South Korea.