United States

There was one thing keeping US GDP growing in recent months: rising inventory. Well, no more. Moments ago the Dept of Commerce reported the latest inventory data and following major historical revisions, not only was last month's inventory print slashes from 0.3% to -0.2%, but the February Inventory number was a dramatic -0.5% drop, far below the -0.2% expected.

This was the biggest sequential drop since the spring of 2013.

It wasn't just inventories: wholesale sales also declined by 0.2%. The ongoing declines refuse to paint a pretty picture of the US economy.

Three weeks ago, when the Fed and Janet Yellen shocked markets with their extremely dovish statement in which they admitted the US Federal Reserve no longer is US data dependent, and instead is far more focused on global developments and especially China's dollar-pegged currency (which makes it impossible for the Fed to be hawkish without causing further FX instability and leading to more Chinese capital flight), CNBC's Steve Liesman asked Yellen point blank a question which would seem otherwise completely taboo: does the Fed have a credibility problem.

This was her response:

In the final day of the week, it has again been a story of currencies and commodities setting stock prices, however instead of yesterday's Yen surge which slammed the USDJPY as low as 107.67 and led to a global tumble in equities, and crude slide, today has been a mirror imoage after a modest FX short squeeze, which sent the Yen pair as high as 109.1, before easing back to the 108.80 range.

Submitted by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

Submitted by Angela Borozna via OrientalReview.org,

Do Russians want another war? If you are Russian, you would be surprised by the question. Why would anyone want war (hot or cold)? But if you are an American, and grew up fearing ‘bad Russians’ such question does not surprise you a bit. After all, the whole Cold War was based on the main assumption – Russians/Soviets want war!