Europe

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

The European Commission has decided to broaden sanctions against Moscow on Friday. As RT notes, more Russian individuals and firms accused of delivering Siemens gas turbines to the Crimea have been blacklisted.

The updated blacklist includes Russian Deputy Energy Minister Andrey Cherezov, the head of the department of operational control and management in Russia's electric power industry Evgeniy Grabchak and state firm Technopromexport CEO Sergey Topor-Gilka.

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With global stock indices - and the S&P - both just shy of all time highs, even as bond yields stubbornly refuse to validate the "equity upside" story, Bloomberg's macro commentator Richard Breslow, looking at recent yields and spreads writes that "in reality, these spreads just can’t be doing what they’re doing if the tapering and rate-hike stories were truly being given credibility" and has a troubling thought: "what is bond yields have been right all along"?

It took stocks only a few minute to "price in" the latest political shock out of Washington, and as of this morning Emini futures no longer care that Mueller has a grand jury, trading 0.08% in the green with European stocks and Asian shares all little changed as investors await the looming July jobs report, which is expected to show a slowdown in hiring from 222K to 180K but will have little impact on either the Fed's thinking or the market.

Submitted by Ronan Manly, BullionStar.com

The London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) has just released a first update on the quantity of physical gold and silver holdings stored in the ‘LBMA’ London vaulting network. The LBMA press release explaining the move, dated 31 July, can be read here.