By Bill Blain of Mint Partners
Blain’s Morning Porridge – May 15th 2017
“In yacht racing, there is no second.”
Ah the joy of a new week! What’s on the recipe today then?
My colleague Simon Denehy started the day by pointing out UK 2-year gilts yield 0.12% - (his description of that number was more colourful and expressive, but would have had me banned from ever blogging again) - while UK stocks yield an average dividend of 3.8%.
Less than 24 hours after it first emerged, it has been called the first global, coordinated ransomware attack using hacking tools developed by the NSA, crippling over a dozen hospitals across the UK, mass transit around Europe, car factories in France and the UK, universitied in China, corporations in the US, banks in Russia and countless other mission-critical infrastructure.
Gold Coins and Bars Demand Rises 9% In Q1, 2017
Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,
The French election, won overnight by Emmanuel Macron, put several segments of the French population opposite one another in a pretty fierce contest. And that contest will continue. Because Macron won’t be able to lift the French economy out of its doldrums any more than Le Pen could have, or than Trump can life the US, and the new president will have the honor of presiding over a further and deepening downturn. The French political dividing line was aptly described by Simon Kuper recently:
Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,
EC vs EC
Donald Tusk, president of the European Council went after Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission for Juncker’s leak of his dinner meeting with UK prime minister Theresa May.
Following ill-fated dinner meeting, Juncker phoned Angela Merkel “Theresa May Lives in a Different Galaxy”. Someone, presumably Juncker’s chief of staff, Martin Selmayr, leaked the results of the dinner meeting and Juncker’s phone call to the German press.