Asia

As reported yesterday, adding insult to injury to a bank that just hours earlier admitted that in addition to rigging everything else it has also been caught engaging in "stock fraud" at the same time as a new mortgage probe was launched against it, Deutsche Bank's senior debt rating was downgraded by Moody's to Baa2, just two notches above junk. For the bank with the tens of trillions in derivatives, being seen as an increasingly more distressed counterparty was not good news and explains why the CEO took the unexpected step of having to defend his firm following the downgrade.

Yesterday's weak dollar headfake has ended and overnight the USD rallied, while Asian stocks dropped to the lowest level in 7 weeks and crude oil fell as speculation returned that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates as early as next month. The pound jumped and European stocks gained thanks to a weaker EUR.

Submitted by Michael McDonald via OilPrice.com,

One reality in the markets is that despite the best efforts of analysts and traders, no one ever knows with any degree of certainty what will happen to the price of an investment in the future. Oil exemplifies that premise right now. All year there has been a tremendous amount of discrepancy in predictions for oil prices with some commentators looking for prices of $10 a barrel and others expecting prices near $100.

Americans: A Conquered People: The New Serfs

Paul Craig Roberts

As readers know, I have seen some optimism in voters support for Trump and Sanders as neither are members of the corrupt Republican and Democratic political establishments. Members of both political establishments enrich themselves by betraying the American people and serving only the interest of the One Percent. The American people are being driven into the ground purely for the sake of more mega-billions for a handful of super-rich people.

Following the latest month abysmal trade and PMI data out of Japan overnight (April exports crashed -10.1 %, worse than the exp. -9.8 and worse than last month's -6.8% while imports plunged -23.3% also far worse than exp. -18.8 and March -14.9%; PMI 47.6, Exp. 48.3, last 48.2), it was supposed to be a straight up for the USDJPY, and its carry linked E-mini.