Business

On Monday Russia warned that it would begin aggressively reducing its dependence on the US Dollar and US-based payment systems, and shortly after it confirmed just that when Indonesia announced that it will barter coffee, palm oil, tea and various other commodities in exchange for 11 Russian-made Su-35 fighter jets, calling U.S. and European sanctions against Russia "an opportunity to boost the Southeast Asian nation's trade."

While Draghi shook things up in late June, it appears to be Janet Yellen's flip-flop that has sparked the latest regime shift in global capital markets.

Since then, traders' expectations for foreign exchange uncertainty has surged, while the outlook for equity, rate, and oil uncertainty has tumbled.

This has left the market now seeing equities as safer than currencies...

When are equities safer than currencies? As Bloomberg notes - almost never, at least until now.

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Financialization incentivizes hot money capital flooding into speculative credit-asset bubbles.

When we speak of capital investments and capital flows, it's presumed all the capital being referenced is equal: a dollar is a dollar, wherever and whenever it's put to use.

Authored by Christoph Gisiger via Finanz Und Wirtshcaft,

Fred Hickey, editor of the influential investment newsletter «The High-Tech Strategist», warns of trouble ahead for the stock market and spots bright opportunities in the gold sector.

When it comes to inflation in the US, there are generally two schools of thought:one is that inflation is woefully - and purposefully for political means - mismeasured, and that the real inflation is orders of magnitude higher than what the BLS, with its endless array of hedonic adjustments, reports. We discussed this view in May when we presented a presentation by Devonshire Research, which showed that "contrarian" CPI is closer to 8%, not the "post-modern" accepted rate of roughly 3%.