Business

Authored by Steve H. Hanke of the Johns Hopkins University. Follow him on Twitter @Steve_Hanke.

Early last Thursday, EgyptAir 804 disappeared over the Mediterranean, becoming the second civilian airliner in less than seven months to go down while flying either to or from Egypt. Both this incident and Metrojet 9268’s disaster of last October were terrorist acts. Tourism to Egypt, a major earner of foreign exchange, has already been flat for years and will suffer even further from these airline disasters.

Iconic jeweler Tiffany reported Q1 earnings which continued the recent slide in top and bottom line on the back of a clearly weaker domestic and global consumer, and which not only missed the top and bottom line, printing at $891.3MM (exp. 914.9MM) and $0.64 (exp.

• Oil nudges $50 a barrel as investors bet on shrinking overhang (Reuters)
• From hinterland to wonderland: China's 'teapot' refinery boomtowns (Reuters)
• Peter Thiel Has Been Secretly Funding Hulk Hogan's Lawsuits Against Gawker (Forbes)
• China Wants to Set Prices for the World's Commodities (BBG)
• Big Banks Ladle On the Risk (WSJ)
• China Said to Plan Asking U.S. on Timing of Fed Rate Hike (BBG)
• ECB credit buying to start small, betting on issue boom (Reuters)
• HP Enterprise to Spin Off, Merge Services Business (WSJ)

In his latest contrarian comments to Reuters, Jeff Gundlach focused on the recent flipflopping by the Fed and its various speakers who are now positioning the market for an imminent rate hike despite the US economy still treading water, and said that while many Fed officials are "dying to raise rates," but all that matters is Janet Yellen's opinion, a glimpse of which we will get as soon as this Friday when she speaks at Harvard. "All that matters is Yellen. She is still there." 

The single biggest event overnight was the PBOC's devaluation of the Yuan to the lowest since March 2011, setting the fixing at 6.5693, the highest in over 5 years and in direct response to a stronger dollar, which however if one looks at the DXY remains well below the recent highs in the 100 range, suggesting for China this is only just beginning.