Business

Following yesterday's bankruptcy of Peabody Energy and today's Chapter 11 filing of XXI Energy, defaults among American junk bonds just topped $14 billion in April, the highest monthly volume in two years according to Fitch calculations, and that is only for the first two weeks.

April's surge in bankruptcy filings is not unexpected: according to JPM's default tracker, the number of bankruptcies was on a tear in both the month of March and the first quarter.

The Bank of Japan and the ECB are assisting me in teaching the world's savers, banking clients and corporations about the benefits of blockchain-based finance for the masses. How? Today, the Wall Street Journal published "Negative Rates: How One Swiss Bank Learned to Live in a Subzero World":

It’s a fun conceit of science fiction to contemplate the existence of alternative universes.

As Bloomberg's Richard Breslow points out, when you think they exist in the same time and place, it leaves the realm of the paperback section of the airport newsstand and is better discussed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

This is his full lament:

Presented without comment.

Here is Marketwatch, March 21, 2016

Here is Marketwatch from today, three weeks later, April 14, 2016

The final auction of the week confirms that something is seriously amiss with the market.