China

Free trade is constantly being blamed for America’s trade deficits and static living standards. It’s not true!

One day after stocks were this close from hitting new all time highs on what have been either ok earnings, if looking at non-GAAP data, or atrocious earnings, based on GAAP, and where any oil headline is now immediately translated as bullish by the oil algos, so far futures are relatively flat, while European stocks were at their moments ago in anticipation of the latest ECB announcement due out in just one hour.  However, unlike last month's "quad-bazooka", this time the market expects far less from Draghi.

China's credit growth in March (and $1 trillion surge in total social financing in Q1) is a "warning sign" according to billionaire George Soros, "because it shows how much work is needed to stop the slowdown." Speaking at an event in new York this evening, Soros commented on "troubling developments" in China, the anti-corruption drive's impact on capital outflows and the real-estate bubble "feeding on itself." His conclusion, rather ominously, was that despite all the naysayers and fiction-peddlers, China "resembles US in

China's shift to an official local-currency-based gold fixing is "the culmination of a two-year plan to move away from a US-centric monetary system," according to Bocom strategist Hao Hong.

China has successfully tested it’s newest and longest range intercontinental ballistic missile amid heightened tensions with the US over the South China Sea. The missile is capable of striking the United States in around 30 minutes, either through a polar trajectory or over the Pacific. RT reports: The launch of China’s Dongfeng-41 (East Wind, DF-41) missile was registered by the US satellite tracking system in real time, the Washington Free Beacon reports, although the location of the launch was not immediately revealed.