Europe

With speculation of helicopter money in Europe spreading like wildfire, here is a simple summary of how the ECB may have no choice but to go with the "final solution" and engage the "chopper" for one simple reason: by pushing bond yields lower, the ECB is now actively impairing the functioning of Europe's banks, and it's getting to the point where European bank stocks are now back to crisis lows, leading to questions about their viability. Here is the explanation courtesy of DB's Jim Reid.

As the growth mirage fades (and short-squeeze ammo runs out), so crude and copper carnage is reappearing. Amid its biggest plunge since early Jan, Copper is now down 10 of the last 12 days and crude is plunging back towards it 50-day moving average. Amid this bloodbathery, precious metals are bid as Saxo Bank sees Gold "heading back to its highs and beyond."

Copper & Crude carnage continues as PMs are bid...

The biggest plunge in copper since September 2015...

The last few days days have been rife with speculation about the motivation, if any, behind the release of the Panama Papers, with the most prominent example coming from Wikileaks two days ago on Twitter which accused the journalist consortium behind the leak, the ICIJ, of being a "Washington DC based Ford, Soros funded soft-power tax-dodge which has a WikiLeaks problem" and adding that "PanamaPapers Putin attack was produced by OCCRP which targets Russia & former USSR and was funded by USAID & Soros."

The vendors and proprietors of blockchain solutions have almost all traveled the private blockchain route. We, at Veritaseum, have decided to go in the opposite direction. Call it a yearing for our macro and fundamental analysis roots, but the risk of trusting untrustworthy parties is just too great. The only way to eliminate the need for tirust is to open the network to many parties. Think the power of the Internet vs the utility of an intranet. Ths is the third in a series of articles that show, hopefully wihtout a shadow or a doubt, that Veritaseum is on the true and righteous path.

Two days after stocks slid in a coordinated risk-off session, and one day after a DOE estimate of US oil inventories sent US stocks surging while the failed Allergan-Pfizer deal unleashed torrential hopes of a biotech M&A spree leading to the single best day for the sector in 5 years, sentiment has again shifted, this time due to a violent surge in the Yen as the market keeps testing the resolve of the Japanese central bank to keep its currency weak, and so far finding it to be nonexistent.