Singapore

Last Friday we first reported on two surprising developments: one was a record accumulation of crude tankers on anchor or steaming just off the coast of Singapore in the Straits of Malacca, awaiting higher oil prices to offload their precious cargo; the second was that as a result of previously profitable contango trades now flattening and making storage no longer profitable, oil shippers are now forced to ask for bank loans to fund offshore storage costs.

Following the demise of the thousand year-long tradition of Swiss banking secrecy, crushed virtually overnight by Barack Obama's demands to make the central European nation's banking industry transparent, one of the major consequences was the shift in money laundering from Geneva and Zurich to the latest and greatest "anonymous" banking and tax evasion hub located halfway around the world, namely Singapore.

   "I've been coming to Singapore once a year for the last 15 years, and flying in I have never seen the waters so full of idle tankers,"

   - Senior European oil trader a day after arriving in the city-state.

Back in November, when the world-record crude inventory glut was still in its early innings, we showed what we then thought was a disturbing image of dozens of oil tankers on anchor near the US oil hub of Galveston, TX, unwilling to unload their cargo at what the owners of the oil thought was too low prices.

Submitted by Nick Giambruno via InterntionalMan.com,

If you’ve never heard of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), you’re not alone.

Few people have, and even fewer fully grasp the terrible things it foreshadows.

FATCA is a U.S. law that forces every financial institution in the world to give the IRS information about its American clients. Complying with it is a huge financial and administrative burden, measured in hundreds of billions of dollars. It’s a paper shuffler’s dream come true.

In another quiet overnight session, the biggest - and unexpected - macro news was the surprise monetary easing by Singapore which as previously reported moved to a 2008 crisis policy response when it adopted a "zero currency appreciation" stance as a result of its trade-based economy grinding to a halt.