United States

After both Brent and WTI rose above their respective 50DMAs on Friday, capping 2017's best weekly rally for oil, the rising tide is accelerating as the latest CFTC COT data confirmed, when net specs boosted bullish Nymex WTI crude oil bets by 27K net-long positions to 423K, the highest in two months, as producers continued to cover short hedges, sending their net position to the most bullish since the summer of 2015.

Authored by John Mauldin via MauldinEconomics.com,

Exactly 10 years ago, we were months way from a world-shaking financial crisis.

By late 2006, we had an inverted yield curve steep to be a high-probability indicator of recession. I estimated at that time that the losses would be $400 billion at a minimum. Yet, most of my readers and fellow analysts told me I was way too bearish.

Authored by Andrew McCarthy via National Review,

There’s more than bank fraud going on here.

In Washington, it’s never about what they tell you it’s about. So take this to the bank: The case of Imran Awan, Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s mysterious Pakistani IT guy, is not about bank fraud.

Chris Whalen, Chairman of Whalen Global Advisers and a very well-known financial analyst (he was one of the original forecasters of Lehman's inevitable demise) appeared on MacroVoices podcast this week to discuss the equity valuations, the path of the US dollar and DoubleLine Capital founder Jeff Gundlach’s declaration that the 35-year bull market in bonds is dead. Some of the key highlights:

When Russia warned on Friday that it would retaliate proportionately after it announced it would seize two diplomatic compounds used by the US in Russia and added that it would reduce the number of US diplomatic service staff in the country to equal the number of Russian diplomats in the US by September 1, calculated by the local press at 455, it wasn't joking.