United States

The latest confirmation of the pain global megabanks are suffering as a result of an abysmal trading environment, in no small part made even worse due to constant central bank tinkering, comes from Japan's largest brokerage, Nomura, which eight years after buying Lehman's European and Asian units has decided to fire 15% of its European staff and is abandoning most of its European equities business.

In recent days, we have observed a distinct trading pattern: a ramp early in the US morning, usually triggered by some aggressive momentum ignition, such as today's unexplained pump then dump in the EURUSD...

... with stocks rising after the European open, rising throughout the US open, then peaking around the time the US closed at which point it is all downhill for the illiquid market.

Back in October 2014, just after the BOJ drastically expanded its QE operation, we warned that the biggest risk facing the BOJ (and the ECB, and the Fed, and all other central banks actively soaking up securities from the open market) was a lack of monetizable supply. We cited Takuji Okubo, chief economist at Japan Macro Advisors in Tokyo, who said that at the scale of its current debt monetization, the BOJ could end up owning half of the JGB market by as early as in 2018.

Submitted by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Proseprity,

On Sunday Ukrainian prime minister Yatsenyuk resigned, just four days after the Dutch voted against Ukraine joining the European Union. Taken together, these two events are clear signals that the US-backed coup in Ukraine has not given that country freedom and democracy. They also suggest a deeper dissatisfaction among Europeans over Washington’s addiction to interventionism.

With The Wall Street Journal once again playing down any precious metals strength and Goldman explicitly saying "sell," RBC Capitalo Markets' Tyler Broda and Alexandra Slattery are considerably more positive...

Retro Gold - Are we heading back to the 1970s?