United States

Unlike yesterday's overnight session, which saw some substantial carry FX volatility and tumbling European yields in the aftermath of the TSY's anti-inversion decree, leading to a return of fears that the next leg down in markets is upon us, the overnight session has been far calmer, assisted in no small part by the latest China Caixin Services PMI, which rose from 51.2 to 52.2 (even if the employment index dropped to a three year low, suggesting China's labor problems are only just starting).

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) court battle with Apple over the security system in place on iPhones appears to be over. But some experts in the communications security community are expressing concern because of the Bureau’s unwillingness to reveal what exactly occurred to end the standoff.

Earlier today, for the first time we got a glimpse into some of the American names allegedly contained in the "Panama Papers", largest ever leak. "Some", not all, and "allegedly" because as we said yesterday, "one can't help but wonder: why not do a Wikileaks type data dump, one which reveals if not all the 2.6 terabytes of data due to security concerns, then at least the identities of these 441 US-based clients. After all, with the rest of the world has already been extensively shamed, it's only fair to open US books as well."

Max Boot’s argument for the importance of NATO unwittingly draws attention to one of the biggest problems with the alliance over the last two decades:

Preface 1: One of the reasons that voters like Sanders and Trump is because they oppose fake "free trade" deals, which help a handful of fatcats ... but have almost nothing to do with "free trade", and which hurt the American worker.

Preface 2: I'm for consistency ... either we ALL get to hide our money from taxing authorities, or none of us should be able to.

Barack Obama pushed the trade deal with Panama which allowed the tax evasion revealed by the "Panama Papers" to flourish.  Huffington Post reported in 2011: