United States

Last June, China’s stock market miracle ended in tears.

The SHCOMP’s inexorable, parabolic ascent was to a large degree facilitated by an explosion of margin debt, the likes of which could not be found in any other major market across the globe. For instance, by the end of June, the outstanding balance of margin transactions as a percentage of the SHCOMP’s free float market cap was nearly 14% compared to just 5.5% for the S&P and less than 1% for the TOPIX.

The sarcastic highlight of the overnight session was the Chinese stock market, where just one month after injecting a record amount of new loans into the financial system, the PBOC lamented the danger posed by China's tremendous debt load: "Lending as a share of GDP, especially corporate lending as a share of GDP, is too high" People’s Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan told China Development Forum yesterday.

Democracy Struggles To Recover From Betrayal

Paul Craig Roberts

First announcements. Then content.

President Barack Obama arrived in Havana on Sunday ending over half a century of Cuba’s isolation as a pariah state by the US. The US president as met by Cuba’s foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez when landed at Havana’s Jose Marti International Airport aboard Air Force One on Sunday. ITV reports: The trip, which marks a new chapter in Washington’s engagement with the island’s Communist government, would have been all but unimaginable before a detente brokered in December 2014.

Submitted by Mark St. Cyr

What’s The Frequency Janet?

Once again, in spectacular fashion, the financial “markets” have miraculously rebounded from the aptly moniker’d “Bullard Bottom” and without pause has traversed in a near vertical assent to recapture the levels where all the uncertainties began. In other words, after all the gyrations over the last 14+ months we are once again only back to the levels (as scored by the U.S. financial markets e.g., Dow, S&P, et al) where the Fed stood confidently in their economic policy acumen.