Europe

Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, famous for his imbibition capacity and uttering -not necessarily in that order- the legendary words “when it becomes serious, you have to lie”, presented his State of the Union today. Which is of pretty much limited interest because, as Yanis Varoufakis’ book ‘Adults in the Room’ once again confirmed, Juncker is nothing but ventriloquist Angela Merkel’s sock puppet.

Just as the development of electronic trading led to mass downsizing on sales desks across Wall Street, advances in artificial intelligence could decimate the ranks of banks’ back-office staff, according to former Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit. And given the rapid pace of technological advance, jobs in operations and retail banking could begin disappearing in as few as five years.

Today, Moscow kicked off its controversial, week-long "Zapad-2017" drill, the latest iteration of a series of training maneuvers that began under the Soviet Union in the 1970s, and which has angered and put NATO and Baltic States leaders on edge. Land, sea and air units will be taking part in war games until the 21st of September across a huge area encompassing western Russia, Belarus, the Baltic Sea and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.

Last month, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin's trophy wife Louise Linton posted the following ill-advised response to an Instagram troll that, among other things, condescendingly blasted the suggestion that Mnuchin/Linton used government planes "for our honeymoon or personal travel."

Submitted by Bill Blain of Mint Partners

What do we know different this morning?

There is apparently nothing to worry about. Everything is coming up roses. These are not the droids you are looking for – says my market guru Steve Previs. All the old market bears, like me, are looking for stuff to grumble about – terrified by the unintended consequences of QE, caught in the headlights of apparently overbought markets, of whatever else panics them… etc.

But what do we know?