Business

There was some good and some bad news in tonight's Chinese March inflation (and deflation in the case of PPI) data.

The good news, for those who believe that rising inflation is a positive economic outcome, was that Producer Prices declined "only" 4.3% Y/Y, or less than the -4.6% exoected, and better than the -4.9% drop last month. On a sequential basis, PPI rose by 0.5% on the back of various commodity input prices posting a modest increase in the past month on the back of China's epic January loan injection.

One of the more significant, if largely underreported events from last Friday, was the Fed's surprising announcement that it would conduct a closed meeting tomorrow, April 11, at 11:30am "under expedited procedures" during which the Board of Governors will review and determine advance and discount rates charged by the Fed banks.

This is notable because the last time such a meeting took place was on November 21, less then a month before the Fed's historic first rate hike in years.

Submitted by Mac Slabo of SHFTPlan.com

CEO Keith Neumeyer Warns: "There’s Going To Be a Major Revolt… We’re Going To See Riots"

With negative interest rates now the order of the day in much of the Western world, it’s only a matter of time before financial institutions start charging American depositors for the privilege of keeping their money safe in the U.S. banking system.

Things are going from bad to worse for the efficacy of the grand - and failed from the beginning - experiment known as Abenomics. As Bloomberg reports, Larry Fink's Blackrock has changed its stance on investing in Japan, and joins Citigroup, Credit Suisse, and LGT Capital Partners, the $50 billion asset manager based in Switzerland in their decision to head for the exits.

Ironically, Blackrock's decision comes only a few months after blogging about "The Case for Investing in Japan", in which they explicitly cited increased demand for Japanese stocks.

One of the biggest unconfirmed secrets of recent market action was whether or not there was a Shanghai Accord in February, in which the G20 and central bankers decided to push the dollar lower to benefit China at the expense of Japan and Europe, both of whom have suffered substantially in recent weeks as a result of their own currencies surging, pushing local stock markets lower (and sending European banks sliding).