United States

In the words of Markit's chief economist, "the US upturn has lost substantial momentum over the past two months," as the golden child of any current bullish narrative - the Services economy - drops to its weakest since October 2013 (PMI 53.2, missing expectations). Plunging backlogs suggest hiring will slow notably and then ISM Services hit at a 23-month low, plunging back towards manufacturing's weakness, with employmenmt at its weakest sicne April 2014 and unadjusted new orders at their weakest since Jan 2014.

On Monday I gave some reasons why foreign policy realists might not be interested in supporting Donald Trump. Leon Hadar delves deeper into the question today and concludes that Trump isn’t a realist:

With the market now predicting virtually zero rate rate hikes for the rest of 2016...

... the Fed will have to take a machete to its next exercise in erroneous groupthink known as the "dot plot", when it will have to admit it was dead wrong about the state of the US and global economy.

It's no secret that trillions in global QE and the descent into the NIRP twilight zone have done very little to resuscitate global growth and trade in the wake of the crisis. 

Indeed, eight years on and the world is mired in subpar growth and faces a global deflationary supply glut that's driven commodity prices to their lowest levels of the twenty-first century on the way to undercutting central bankers' collective efforts to jumpstart inflation and keep the entire world from becoming Japanified.

• Oil lifts stocks off lows, yen and low-risk debt in favor (Reuters)
• Yes, this agaim: Oil gains after Russia says open to talking with OPEC (Reuters)
• More forecasts: Oil Prices Could Jump 50% by the End of 2016 (BBG)
• New Risks for Trump After Iowa Loss (WSJ)
• Yuan Gap Widens Again as Depreciation Bets Swamp PBOC Fightback (BBG)
• Germany Struggles to Assess Security Threats Ahead of Carnival Season (WSJ)
• Marco Rubio becomes early hope for mainstream U.S. Republicans (Reuters)