Europe

With the US closed for Memorial Day and UK markets offline due to a bank holiday, overnight volumes have been weaker than normal on little newsflow. The main story remains the stronger USD following Yellen's hawkish Friday speech, which not only led to the lowest Yuan fixing since February 2011...

... but pushed the USDJPY almost as high as 111.50 overnight before paring gains, however it was enough to send the Nikkei 1.4% higher.

Submitted by Erico Matias Tavares via Sinclair & Co.,

Americans will be celebrating Memorial Day this weekend, to honor those who fought and died for the values they have traditionally cherished the most as a nation: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

There once was a time (at least in banished Austrian economic circles) when low market interest rates signaled to entrepreneurs a positive environment in which to make investments in order to grow or create new product. That indicator has long since been broken as central banks muddy the waters and arbitrarily move interest rates wherever they feel 'optimal', including corporate bond rates.

Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

As Our Past Wars Are Glorified This Memorial Day Weekend, Give Some Thought To Our Prospects Against The Russians And Chinese In World War III

By Chris at www.CapitalistExploits.at

In a misguided and desperate attempt to fight the headwinds of deflation (a byproduct ofunsustainable debt which the market has been trying to unwind for the past decade), central bankers have manipulated markets with a range of tools. This ranges from a lot of preposterous jawboning to quantitative easing and slashing interest rates all the way down to levels never experienced before.