Is That Armageddon Over The Horizon?
Paul Craig Roberts
The insouciance of the Western world is extraordinary. It is not only Americans who permit themselves to be brainwashed by CNN, MSNBC, NPR, the New York Times and Washington Post, but also their counterparts in Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan, who rely on the war propaganda machine that poses as a media. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39573526
WTI/RBOB prices slipped ahead of DOE data as Canada's growth outlook cut trumped Saudi Arabia's wishy-washy chatter on production cuts. DOE data confirmed the biggest crude draw of 2017 (-2.16mm) and gasopline and distilates saw the 8th week in a row of drawdowns but Cushing's 276k build pushed it to a new record high as US crude production rose once again to its highest sine August 2015.
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Trust between Russia and the US has collapsed under the Trump administration, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated on Wednesday, as Moscow delivered an unusually frigid if not hostile reception to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in a face-off over Syria, shortly after Putin said the recent chemical attack was a staged "false flag" and predicted that more are coming, while at the same time the US accused Russia of a gas attack "cover up."
S&P futures are unchanged and Asian stocks closed mixed, however European stocks rebounded for first time this week, led by auto stocks after Daimler’s quarterly profit, as a break in alarming political news prompted traders to "swoop" - as Reuters puts it - on equities, cooling a safe-haven rally that saw the yen and gold at five-month highs and global government bond yields to drop their lowest this year.