There were two notable things about a report released by the ECB this morning as part of its Occasional Paper Series titled "Profit distribution and loss coverage rules for central banks", which purportedly analyzes "how profit distribution rules can affect the amounts distributed and the financial strength of central banks."
Days before the ICIJ released this weekend's trove of "Panama Papers" international tax haven data involving Panamaian law firm Mossack Fonseca, Bloomberg conducted an interview on March 29 with the two founding lawyers. In it, it found that even before the full leak was about to be made semi-public (any of the at least 441 US clients are still to be disclosed), the Panama law firm knew that the game was already largely over.
With the USDJPY crashing to a fresh 17 month low, sending the Nikkei down 2.3% and taking out levels during which we have seen direct BOJ intervention in both February and March, many were wondering how a panicking Japan would try to push its currency lower. The answer was revealed moments ago, with the following Reuters headlines:
Yesterday's stunning announcement by the US Treasury, which released a report titled "Treasury Announces Additional Action to Curb Inversions, Address Earnings Stripping", and which was clearly aimed at ending not only all tax inversions, but the biggest pharma M&A deal in history, Pfizer's tax-inverting takeover of Allergan (pardon Actavis) hit AGN like a ton of bricks, sending the stock crashing 20%.