Europe

• Headline of the day: Oil prices fall as investors' faith in rally wanes (Reuters)
• Europe shares, dollar gain as investors look to Yellen (Reuters)
• Chinese Bidder for Starwood Has Mysterious Ownership Structure (WSJ)
• Germany wants refugees to integrate or lose residency rights (Reuters)
• BlackRock Joins Pimco Warning Investors to Seek Inflation Hedge (BBG)
• Goldman Sachs and Bear Stearns: A Financial-Crisis Mystery Is Solved (WSJ)
• Contract Workforce Outpaces Growth in Silicon-Valley Style ‘Gig’ Jobs  (WSJ)

With Europe back from Easter break, we are seeing a modest continuation of the dollar strength witnessed every day last week, which in turn is pressuring oil and the commodity complex, and leading to some selling in US equity futures (down 0.2% to 2024) ahead of today's main event which is Janet Yellen's speech as the Economic Club of New York at 12:20pm, an event which judging by risk assets so far is expected to be far more hawkish than dovish: after all the S&P 500 is north of 2,000 for now.

I am “not isolationist, but I am ‘America First,'” Donald Trump told the New York Times last weekend. “I like the expression.”

Of NATO, where the U.S. underwrites three-fourths of the cost of defending Europe, Trump calls this arrangement “unfair, economically, to us,” and adds, “We will not be ripped off anymore.”

With the increasing propaganda wars, we thought a reminder of just how naive many Westerners are when it comes to their news-feed. As Arjun Walia, of GlobalResearch.ca, notes,  Dr. Ulfakatte went on public television stating that he was forced to publish the works of intelligence agents under his own name, also adding that noncompliance with these orders would result in him losing his job.

He recently made an appearance on RT news to share these facts:

Submitted by Justin Raimondo via AntiWar.com,

The vicious attack on the Brussels airport and metro underscores the futility of focusing on the Syrian “Caliphate” as the epicenter of terrorism: as I’ve been saying in this space since 2001, the snake has no head. Both al-Qaeda and now ISIS are protean entities with a vast geographical spread, and what the Brussels attack – and, before it, the Paris attack – show is that they have successfully colonized Europe.