Europe

The European Union have ordered the British press to stop exposing the religious beliefs of terrorists if they turn out to be Muslims.  According to the European Commission against Rasism and Intolerance (ECRI), the British press is to blame for an increase in so-called hate speech in the UK due to the fact that they often use anti-Islamic rhetoric when referring to terrorists. The report says: some traditional media, particularly tabloids… are responsible for most of the offensive, discriminatory and provocative terminology.

It was just one year ago when the biggest worry for the market - which culminated with a near 10% S&P correction in in early 2016 - was the daily plunge in the Yuan driven by the surging dollar, which in turn prompted China to engage in an unprecedented reserve liquidation (in which it sold both government bonds and equities), leading to a daily selloff in risky assets on days when the Yuan was fixed lower.

Following a tumultuous year of declining sales as a result of its emissions-cheating scandal, today Volkswagen agreed to cut 30,000 jobs at the core VW, roughly 5% of its global salesforce of 624,000. After months of intense talks, labor and management agreed on a package to balance cost-cutting with investment as the auto industry shifts away from traditional combustion engines and adapts to car-sharing services and self-driving technologies.

It has been more of the same this morning as the dollar extended its advance on the still undeteremined Trump reflationary policy measures after Yellen signaled an interest-rate hike could be imminent, while bond yields around the globe rose again, metals declined,  European stocks advanced and futures were modestly in the red just shy of all time highs.

One week after RealVision brought us the latest Jeff Gundlach interview, in which the DoubleLine bond king explained why he is now "100% net short", on Friday Grant Williams interviewed Jim Rogers, in which George Soros' former partner (the two co-founded the Quantum Fund in 1973), is about as gloomy, warning "the next time the world comes to an end, it's going to be a bigger shock than we expect."