Europe

There has been no shortage of sellside reactions to last week's Fed rate hike, which have run the gamut from congratulatory as per BofA and Credit Suisse, to the outright critical, as we showed last week in a note from Goldman Sachs, RBC and SocGen, all of whom accused the Fed of either misleading the market, or soon being being forced to double down on its hawkish message as a result of the dramatic easing in financial conditions as a result of a rate hike.

If after a day full of James Comey's dramatic testimony in Congress, which according to MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough was “the worst day of Donald Trump’s presidency” after Comey stated on the record that he is not aware of any wiretapping of Trump Tower and that the FBI has been probing Russia for ties with the Trump campaign since July, Trump wanted to send the world a signal that his priorities remain focused on Russia, and he is not backing down from demanding NATO pay its "fair share", his Secretary of State has done just that after Reuters reported that Rex Tillerson plans to skip the April

The Conspiracy Against President Trump

Paul Craig Roberts

March 20, 2017: Listening today to the broadcast of testimony by FBI Director Comey and National Security Agency Director Admiral Michael Rogers before the House Intelligence Committee (an oxymoron) made it clear that the Democrats, Comey, and Rogers intend conflict with Russia.

David Rockefeller, the famous banker and philanthropist with the family name that controlled Chase Manhattan bank for more than a decade and wielded vast influence around the world in the world of finance, has died on Monday morning at his home in Pocantico Hills, N.Y. He was 101.

A family spokesman, Fraser P. Seitel, confirmed the death.

Below is an exccerpt of his obituary from the NYT:

Following bearish reports from Goldman (which tactically downgraded stocks to Neutral for the next three months just hours before the Fed rate hike), RBC and JPM's head quant Marko Kolanovic over the past week, overnight Credit Suisse decided to take the other side of the trade and hiked its year end forecasts for the S&P500, and pretty much every other risk asset, noting that it is happy to "climb the wall of worry", and prefers equities to bonds.