United States

The US Secretary of State has urged China to “use all available tools” to rein in North Korea over their provocative actions. Rex Tillerson made his plea on the sidelines of a first-time meeting with the Chinese Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, during a G20 foreign ministers summit on Friday. Their talks come less than a week after North Korea test-fired a newly developed intermediate-range ballistic missile in its first provocative act since Trump came into office.

Submitted by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

AP reported that according to a draft 11-page memo, the Trump administration is considering mobilizing as many as 100,000 National Guard troops to round up illegal immigrants. However, the White House quickly slammed the agency’s report is “false."  In yet another leak-counterleak example of "spot the fake news" , moments after the AP report hit, the White House denied everything

S&P equity futures followed Asian and European stocks lower, driven by weakness in Franch and Italian markets, as French political concerns returned; the pound tumbled after UK monthly retail sales unexpectedly dropped pushing the dollar higher and Euro lower.

Submitted by Arthur Berman via OilPrice.com,

It is more likely that oil prices will fall below $50 per barrel than that they will continue to rise toward $70. Prices have increased beyond supply and demand fundamentals because of premature expectations about the effects of an OPEC production cut on oil inventories.

Last week’s 13.8 million barrel addition to U.S. storage was the second largest in history. It moved U.S. crude oil inventories to new record high levels.