Europe

• Crude's Losses Drag Ruble, Loonie Lower; Stocks Pare Their Drop (BBG)
• Grand Oil Bargain Is Victim of Saudi Arabia's Iran Fixation (BBG)
• Both Parties’ Presidential Front-Runners Increasingly Unpopular (WSJ)
• It's up to you, New York: state takes center stage in election campaign (Reuters)
• Rousseff Hangs by a Thread After Losing Impeachment Vote (BBG)
• China March home prices rise at fastest rate in two years, top cities boom (Reuters)
• Shaken Ecuador hunts for survivors amid 7.8 quake debris (Reuters)

How The American Neoconservatives Destroyed Mankind’s Hopes For Peace

Paul Craig Roberts

When Ronald Reagan turned his back on the neoconservatives, fired them, and had some of them prosecuted, his administration was free of their evil influence, and President Reagan negotiated the end of the Cold War with Soviet President Gorbachev. The military/security complex, the CIA, and the neocons were very much against ending the Cold War as their budgets, power, and ideology were threatened by the prospect of peace between the two nuclear superpowers.

Following yesterday's OPEC "production freeze" meeting in Doha which ended in total failure, where in a seemingly last minute change of heart Saudi Arabia and specifically its deputy crown prince bin Salman revised the terms of the agreement demanding Iran participate in the freeze after all knowing well it won't, oil crashed and with it so did the strategy of jawboning for the past 2 months had been exposed for what it was: a desperate attempt to keep oil prices stable and "crush shorts" while global demand slowly picked up.

The Nature of a Career Politician

Written by Jeff Thomas (CLICK FOR ORIGINAL)

Wolf Richter   wolfstreet.com

The amount it costs to ship containers from China to ports around the world, a function of the quantity of goods to be shipped and the supply of vessels to ship them, just dropped to a new historic low.