Business

In an otherwise quiet morning as we await Jeff Sessions' testimony, a WSJ article is making the rounds which recounts the interactions between Trump and Janet Yellen - who it turns out were born two months apart in neighboring boroughs of New York City - according to which despite Donald Trump’s fierce criticisms of the Federal Reserve in the final weeks of the 2016 election campaign "the nation’s two most powerful economic-policy players—the president and the leader of the central bank—are "off to a surprisingly smooth start."

Authored by David Stockman via The Daily Reckoning,

While the Imperial City is frozen in the Second Coming of Comey, it doesn’t mean that the Washington spending machine is on pause. In fact, the Treasury’s cash balance yesterday stood at only $153 billion — down by $130 billion just since the tax season peak was reached on April 25th.

Picking up where he left off last week, when Bill Gross told Bloomberg that U.S. markets are at their highest risk levels since before the 2008 financial crisis "because investors are paying a high price for the chances they’re taking", in his latest monthly investment outlook, the Janus Henderson bond manager says that investors should be wary as low interest rates, aging populations and global warming which inhibit real economic growth and intensify headwinds facing financial markets:

For the first time in 3 years, Core Producer Prices have risen at a faster pace than The Fed's mandated 2% target. May PPI (ex food and energy) rose 2.1% year-over-year, the highest since May 2014, as goods prices tumbled (gasoline, motor vehicles, fresh fruit) while services costs (retailer and wholesaler prices, and residential lending) jumped.

May 2014 was the last time that Core PPI (Ex Food and Energy)...

The breakdown shows a notable drop in Energy prices MoM with good prices tumbling as service costs jumping...

Nearly four months after Donald Trump signed an executive order calling for a review of Wall Street regulations, the administration has laid out part one of its plans for reforming the system in a detailed report released by the Treasury Department late Monday.