Asia

S&P futures are flat, still spooked by the WSJ's report that Gary Cohn will not be the next Fed chair, while both European stocks and Asian shares gain in a overnight session on edge in which everyone is looking forward to today's main risk event: the ECB meeting and Draghi press conference due in under two hours. The dollar continued to weaken against most G-10 peers as tensions over North Korea, concerns over Stan Fischer's resignation and the increasingly cloudy Fed outlook outweighed positive sentiment from the US debt ceiling extension.

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

Putin reveals 'fair multipolar world' concept in which oil contracts could bypass the US dollar and be traded with oil, yuan and gold...

The annual BRICS summit in Xiamen – where President Xi Jinping was once mayor – could not intervene in a more incandescent geopolitical context.

Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

By setting off a 100-kiloton bomb, after firing a missile over Japan, Kim Jong Un has gotten the world’s attention.

What else does he want?

Almost surely not war with America. For no matter what damage Kim could visit on U.S. troops and bases in South Korea, Okinawa and Guam, his country would be destroyed and the regime his grandfather built annihilated.

Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com,

An open military conflict in Northern Asia would disrupt more than a third of global seaborne crude oil trade, Wood Mackenzie warned last week amid yet another escalation between North Korea, its neighbors, and the U.S.

Yesterday morning, with the US closed for holiday but with S&P futures trading modestly lower on the latest set of North Korean geopolitical fears, we asked "is this time different", referencing last week's similar setup, when futures gapped lower on Monday after the Kim regime shot a missile over Japan, only to surge into the end of the week.