presidential election

In his latest letter to investors, OakTree Capital's Howard Marks goes political (slamming Trump's tariffs and Bernie's minimum wage machinations), shedding some blinding light on the economic reality of America, the dismal failure (and increasing impotence) of central bankers, and the ongoing "tryanny of the majority" warning that if everyone wants to tax-the-rich, soon there will be no rich to tax.

There was much surprise, as well as accusations of outright voter fraud, when on Monday the Austrian presidential race - which was set to be won by the candidate of the right wing Austria Freedom Party much to the humiliation of Brussels - Norbert Hofer, was handed to his competitor, Green party candidate Alexander Van der Bellen, with postal votes tipping the final result in the favor of the former despite Hofer winning the outright vote by a solid margin. In retrospect, there may have been reason for the skepticism.

Now that Peter Thiel's vendetta against Nick Denton is in the open, and it's safe to say that the tech billionaire will not stop before putting Gawker out of business, Denton is starting to scramble realizing that he has a borderline irrational adversary, one for whom money is no object if it means a tombstone for the gossip tabloid.

Over the weekend, Deutsche Bank's chief credit strategist Dominic Konstam released a report in which as we documented, he explained his reasons why "the market is not ready for a June hike." This was his key point:

The operative question is whether markets are sufficiently calm for the Fed to use the June 2016 meeting to pave the way for a July hike.

 

After a brief dead cat bounce, the US services economy has tumbled back to 3-month (near 7 year) lows, missing expectations by the most on record. With the slowest pace of hiring since Dec 2014 (signalling a mere 128k rise in payrolls for May), business optimism plunged to record lows (since the survey began in Oct 2009).

When hope fades...