Business

With the Fed decision just one day away, followed the very next day by the increasingly more irrational BOJ, stocks had no desire to make significant moves and overnight's boring session was the result, as European stocks and U.S. index futures rose modestly but mostly hugged the flatline while Asian declined 0.2% for a third day as raw-material shares declined and Tokyo equities slumped before central bank meetings in the U.S. and Japan this week. China’s stocks rose the most in almost two weeks, up 0.6% but failed to rise above 3000 on the Shanghai Composite, in thin trading.

As we continue to cover the pension crisis that is unfolding in the United States (recently here and here), it is important to remember that these problems are not unique to just the U.S.

Malaysian CDS rose to near 3-month highs and the Ringgit has spiked over 300 pips - back near recent lows - after the Malaysian slushfund government investment fund 1MDB is reportedly in default. This is exactly the scenario we laid out last week that initially sent the currency lower and CDS higher, as the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund has by all appearances started a potential waterfall default on Malaysian sovereign debt (due to cross-default triggers at the sovereign).

Submitted by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

Regular readers know that we've covered Alberta's decline at length (refresher here), so there is no need to give much of a backstory other than to say that the situation seems to get worse for the Canadian province as each day passes even as oil has rebounded in the past two months.