Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,
We are witnessing the demise of the world’s two largest economic power blocks, the US and EU. Given deteriorating economic conditions on both sides of the Atlantic, which have been playing out for many years but were so far largely kept hidden from view by unprecedented issuance of debt, the demise should come as no surprise.
Things are going from bad to worse in Brazil where, contrary to what the stock market suggests, the economy continues to disintegrate.
Following today's disappointing consumer spending data, we forecast that a downward revision to the Atlanta Fed's most recent 1.0% Q1 GDP forecast was imminent...
Atlanta Fed to revise its Q1 GDP lower once more after Personal Consumption disappointment
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 31, 2017
As University of Michigan's Richard Curtin writes, "Democrats expect an imminent recession, higher unemployment, lower income gains, and more rapid inflation, while Republicans anticipate a new era of robust growth in incomes, job prospects, and lower inflation. It is a rare situation that combines increasing optimism, which promotes spending, and rising uncertainty which makes consumers more cautious spenders."
With the market red on a Friday ahead of a new "merger Monday", and the state of a new "mutual fund reallocation quarter", something was due to snap, and sure enough moments ago TradeStateion announced that while equities and options trading is available, CME is down for futures trading.
It was not immediately clear if this was systemic, and exchanges would announce self-help against the CME momentarily, or is the result of a single busted data feed.