United States

Days before the ICIJ released this weekend's trove of "Panama Papers" international tax haven data involving Panamaian law firm Mossack Fonseca, Bloomberg conducted an interview on March 29 with the two founding lawyers. In it, it found that even before the full leak was about to be made semi-public (any of the at least 441 US clients are still to be disclosed), the Panama law firm knew that the game was already largely over.

• Panama Papers: Biggest Banks Are Top Users of Offshore Services (WSJ)
• Panama Papers probes opened, China limits access to news on leaks (Reuters)
• Credit Suisse CEO Distances Bank From ‘Panama Papers’ (WSJ)
• Fed's Evans says market more pessimistic on U.S. rate hikes (Reuters)
• IMF's Lagarde Says Risks to Weak Global Recovery Are Increasing (BBG)
• New U.S. inversion rules threaten Pfizer-Allergan deal (Reuters)
• Time Is Running Out (Again) for Greece (BBG)

Yesterday's stunning announcement by the US Treasury, which released a report titled  "Treasury Announces Additional Action to Curb Inversions, Address Earnings Stripping", and which was clearly aimed at ending not only all tax inversions, but the biggest pharma M&A deal in history, Pfizer's tax-inverting takeover of Allergan (pardon Actavis) hit AGN like a ton of bricks, sending the stock crashing 20%. 

The market's slumberous levitation of the past month, in which yesterday's -0.3% drop was the second largest in 4 weeks and in which the market had gone for 15 consecutive days without a 1% S&P 500 move (in March 2015 the sasme streak ended at day 16) may be about to end, after an overnight session, the polar opposite of yesterday's smooth sailing, which has seen a sudden return of global risk off mood.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has criticised the West for attempting to give Turkey “lessons in democracy” amid increasing criticism from the U.S. and Europe that Turkey is suppressing press freedoms under his regime.  “Those who attempt to give us lessons in democracy and human rights must first contemplate their own shame,” Erdogan said. Middleeasteye.net reports: His comments came after US President Barack Obama said Turkey’s approach towards the media was taking it “down a path that would be very troubling”.