Besides the upcoming FOMC meeting on May 2-3, and French & Italian politics - the decisive runoff round of the French election takes place this Sunday - this week's releases are dominated by US payrolls expected to come around 170k. The busy release calendar continues with Norges bank and RBA meetings as well as global manufacturing PMIs.
With much of Europe and Asia, including the U.K., France, Germany and China markets closed for Labor Day, Asian stocks and the dollar rose buoyed by news that Congress had reached a deal to keep the US government funded through the end of September. S&P futures are up 4 points or 0.2%. Oil declined as rigs targeting crude in the U.S. rose for a fifteenth week and output from Libya rebounded.
That Italy has a bank solvency problem will not come as a surprise to anyone who has been following events in Europe for the past 7 years.
Just yesterday, Italian daily La Stampa reported that four months after the third government bailout of Italy's third largest bank in as many years, the Italian government may have to inject even more cash than planned into Monte Paschi, the world's oldest and apparently always insolvent bank.
Earlier today in his weekly note, One River CIO Eric Peters explained that in their attempt to overturn the natural order of the global economic "ecosystem", what central banks have done is "stunning, unprecedented... and arrogant", and as a result it is only a matter of time before another "peak instability" moment emerges as "it stands to reason that our volatility-selling machine will break one day. We saw a glimpse of this in 2008-09."
Authored by Chris Martenson via PeakProsperity.com,
The only real constant to be found in both European and US politics is war. A steady feature of both regions for the past 20+ years has been small, lucrative conflicts waged against countries unable to effectively defend themselves.