Business

Authored by James Rickards via The Daily Reckoning,

Many everyday citizens assume powerful global financial elites operate behind closed doors in secret conclaves, like the scene of a Spectre board meeting in the recent James Bond film.

Actually, the opposite is true. Most of what the power elite does is hidden in plain sight in speeches, seminars, webcasts and technical papers. These are readily available from institutional websites and media channels.

With the FOMC members currently huddling deep inside the bowels of the Marriner Eccles building, perhaps scheming how to spook markets by announcing a surprise rate hike tomorrow, one would have assumed demand for 2 Year paper in today's auction would be less than stellar. One would be wrong, because moments ago the Treasury sold $26bn in 2 year paper to what was clearly an overabundance of demand: the high yield of 1.395% stopped through the When Issued 1.401% by 0.6 bps, and was the highest yield going back to October 2008.

Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

A key member of Facebook's ministry of truth, Snopes, has hit a major snag which has forced them to go beg for money. Apparently too cheap or stupid to run a contract for their primary source of income past a competent attorney, the 'arbiters of truth' appear to be in major financial trouble after claiming a San Diego outside vendor is holding ad revenues hostage. In response, Snopes set up a gofundme page which has raised over $500,000.

The largest cryptocurrencies are under presure again today - Bitcoin, Ethereum down around 10% - as it seems some anxiety remains ahead of the August 1st scaling decision deadline, chatter about Russian Bitcoin viruses, and a new report from BofA has raised more questions than answers about the future of virtual currencies.

On average major crytos are down around 10%...

With Bitcoin back near $2500...

And Ethereum testing $200 support...

Just over three years after Greece "triumphantly returned" to capital markets in April 2014, when it issued €3 billion in 5 year bonds at a yield of 4.95%, and a cash coupon of 4.75% - an offering which was 8x oversubcribed - and which crashed and nearly defaulted one year later when only the 3rd Greek bailout prevented the country from going bankrupt, only to get taken out at 102, moments ago Greece once again returned to the bond market, if far less triumphantly, by selling another €3 billion in 5 year paper which however was "only" 2x oversubscribed, with indications from Bloomberg that