A Huge Leak
The “Panama Papers” tax haven leak is big …
After all, the Prime Minister of Iceland resigned over the leak, and investigations are taking place worldwide over the leak.
But Why Is It Mainly Focusing On Enemies of the West?
But the Panama Papers reporting mainly focuses on friends of Russia’s Putin, Assad’s Syria and others disfavored by the West.
Former British Ambassador Craig Murray notes:
In what was shaping up to be a low-volume snoozer of a day, things changed dramatically at 10:30am when the DOE confirmed last night's API data according to which US crude inventories had their biggest weekly decline since January even as distillates and gasoline stocks rose. That headline sent WTI soaring by 5.4%, the most since March 16.
Having pounded the table on buybacks as the only marginal source of stock purchasing since some time in 2013, we were delighted one month ago when Bloomberg finally got it, writing an article titled "There's Only One Buyer Keeping S&P 500's Bull Market Alive." The answer: corporate stock repurchases of course.
This is what it found:
The FOMC minutes from the uberdovish March meeting were just released. Here are the highlights:
Following yesterday's API data, which showed the biggest draw of 2016 with a 4.6 million reduction in oil inventories, everyone was keenly looking forward to today's DOE data. Moments ago the DOE indeed confirmed the API data, reporting that in the past week oil inventories declined by 4.949MM, more than the API print, down from last week's 2.3MM and well below the expected 2.850MM increase.
This was the largest draw since the first week of January.