Business

Whoever is rigging the market is getting increasingly desperate.

The daily VIX slams are getting more and more ridiculous. It’s getting to the point that the VIX is getting slammed 5%-6% every single day at 9:50AM  just to pin the S&P 500 (they’re not even trying to get a gain anymore).

Here’s the VIX.

Here’s the S&P 500’s last nine closes. The index is LITERALLY not being allowed to move. It’s now gyrating a point or two per day.

Venezuela's currency, the bolivar, is disintegrating at an incredible pace under the country's political and economic crisis that has left citizens broke, desperate and in many cases, homicidal. The depreciation accelerated this week, after a disputed vote electing an all-powerful "Constituent Assembly" filled with allies of President Nicolas Maduro, which the opposition and dozens of countries have called illegitimate.

 Just two days ago, on August 2, we reported that one dollar would buy 14,100 bolivars, up from 11,280 the day before.

Authored by Nouriel Roubini, originally posted at Project Syndicate,

Now that US President Donald Trump has been in office for six months, we can more confidently assess the prospects for the US economy and economic policymaking under his administration. And, like Trump’s presidency more generally, paradoxes abound.

In its latest, July, snapshot of the US economy, the NY Fed observed something startling, and which hasn't received much discussion in the media: when looking at the June report, over the past year the only employment gains have gone to less educated Americans, or as the NY Fed puts it, "over the last year, the employment-to-population ratio has risen for the less educated." It added that "for those with less than a high school degree and for high school graduates, the employment-to-population ratio rose by 0.4 percentage point and 0.9 percentage point, respectively.

Two weeks ago we summarized the stunning impact that ECB Predit Mario Draghi's 'whatever it takes' efforts have had on European capital markets in one simple chart...

The European Central Bank now owns 14.8% of all eligible European corporate bonds.