United States

There’s been no shortage of coverage both in these pages and elsewhere of the impact falling oil prices have had on the American and Canadian oil patches.

Bernie Sanders looks to be a real contender for the U.S. Presidency after facing off his rivals in a few debates and revealing to the public his anti-establishment credentials and his lifelong fight for justice. He has galvanized an otherwise improvised electorate with his modern way of crowd sourcing his electoral campaign and in return promising real and tangible returns for 99% of Americans. Jacob G.

As noted earlier today, BofA's chief credit strategist Michael Hartnett is anything but bullish: in his own words, he remains a seller "into strength in coming weeks/months of risk assets at least until a coordinated and aggressive global policy response (e.g. Shanghai Accord) begins to reverse the deterioration in global profit expectations and credit conditions."

As this website exclusively reported three weeks ago, under explicit guidance by the Dallas Fed and associated regulatory pressure, US lenders have been instructed to not only not accelerate energy company counterparty defaults but to suspend energy loan book MTM entirely in distressed cases to avoid contagion concerns.

Questionable marks notwithstanding, in their fourth quarter earnings reports and conference calls banks had no choice but to reveal what their existing "publicly appropriate" exposure to oil and gas companies looks like.

Nonfarm Productivity collapsed by 3% QoQ, notably worse than expected as labor costs jump.

Economists are gnashing their teeth to explain this "plunging productivity paradox" - we think it is rather simple...

While only modestly tongue in cheek, here is what is really going on...