Following Sunday night's resumption of trade after a three-day weekend, which saw sharp moves lower in US yields, the dollar and the USDJPY after Friday's disappointing CPI and retail sales data and the weekend's North Korea jitters, the mood has stabilized in light trading with Asian stocks advancing, Europe mostly closed for Easter Monday and S&P futures fractionally lower at 2,325 in early New York trading.
Overnight China reported a barrage of economic data for March and Q1, that not only showed the first back to back GDP acceleration in seven years, but beat across the board as investment picked up, retail sales rebounded and factory output strengthened, following record credit growth and a fresh rebound in China's property markets which defy Beijing's attempts to taper the country's newest housing bubble.
The Q1 data highlights:
Step aside China Huishan Dairy Holdings - China's largest dairy producer which cratered last month after a negative Muddy Waters research report brought attention to a company we knew for one year was collateralizing its cows to fund stock buybacks - and make way for what may be the next Chinese megafraud.
President Trump's top security advisor, Lt Gen HR McMaster told ABC News that the US and China are "working on a range of options" on North Korea, adding that there is consensus that this was a "situation that just can't continue" as tensions mount over the country's nuclear and missile programs. McMaster also called the regime in North Korea "hostile" and said said that Sunday's failed test fit into a pattern of "provocative and destabilizing and threatening behavior on the part of the North Korean regime."
Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,
The insouciance of the Western world is extraordinary.
It is not only Americans who permit themselves to be brainwashed by CNN, MSNBC, NPR, the New York Times and Washington Post, but also their counterparts in Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan, who rely on the war propaganda machine that poses as a media.
The Western “leaders,” that is, the puppets on the end of the strings pulled by the powerful private interest groups and the Deep State, are just as insouciant.