North Korea

Despite yesterday's whopping beats by Amazon and Google which sent the Nasdaq to new record highs after hours, and brought Jeff Bezos "this close" to overtaking Bill Gates as the world's richest man, this morning futures S&P futures are little changed ahead of the closely watched Q1 GDP report, European stocks and Asian equities are slightly lower, oil is higher after Russia's energy minister Novak said Russia had reached the 300kbpd oil cut per the OPEC pact, and the dollar was modestly in the red.

While emoting sympathy for Kim Jong Un's situation, President Trump told Reuters, during a lengthy interview ahead of his 100th day in office, that he'd "love to solve things diplomatically," but warned that "there is a chance that we could end up having a major, major conflict with North Korea."

Putting a somewhat human face on the North Korean leader, President Trump had an interesting response when asked by Reuters if he considered North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to be rational...

Earlier today, Vladimir Putin warned that "the situation in Korea is deteriorating" and joined China in urging all sides to "avoid belligerent rhetoric." It was not clear what spooked the Russian president to escalate the rhetoric over North Korea, however in a move that will hardly help deescalate tensions, a North Korean propaganda outlet released a video clip on Thursday, which showed a simulated attack on the White House and declaring that “the enemy to be destroyed is in our sights.”

With Project Gotham Shield concluding today, which as a reminder is a joint agency exercise involving FEMA, Homeland Security and various other law enforcement and military agencies as a response is tested for a “simulated” nuclear detonation over Manhattan, Fox 5 updates that Federal authorities are running nuclear response drills at MetLife Stadium in northern New Jersey.

Authored by Gaius Publius via Down With Tyranny blog,

"We don't want a unified Korean peninsula ... We [also] don't want the North Koreans to cause more trouble than the system can absorb."
—Hillary Clinton, 2013, speech to Goldman Sachs