United States

Back in November, when describing the perverse global fund flows in which record money creation out of the BOJ and ECB amounting to roughly $200 billion per month was being used indirectly, via spread differentials, to create demand for US Treasuries by foreign official and private investors - an observation first made by Deutsche Bank - we dubbed it "global helicopter money", and were surprised that "nobody has noticed" what is going on.

Having caused quite a stir domestically when in an interview with Donald Trump airing just before the Superbowl, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly described Putin as "a killer" as he tried to press the U.S. president to explain more fully why he respected his Russian counterpart, on Monday the Kremlin slammed O'Reilly's "factual statement" and said it wanted an apology from Fox News over what it said were "unacceptable" comments.

Kremling spokesman Dmitry Peskov

The onslaught targeting President Trump's immigration executive order continued overnight, when virtually all US tech corporations, from Apple to Zynga, including Twitter, Netflix, Google, and Microsoft, banded together late on Sunday to file an "impassioned" brief condemning Trump's temporary immigration ban, arguing that it "inflicts significant harm on American business."

Trump meeting with tech CEOs

In a relatively quiet session, which may see US traders sleep in a bit after last night's Superbowl thriller, European and Asian shares rose ahead of Mario Draghi’s testimony at the European Parliament, while US equity futures were fractionally higher (up 0.1% to 2,293) after stocks jumped the most in a week, as traders assessed the trajectory for interest rates while scrutinizing every new Trump tweet.

Back in September, Tad Rivelle, Chief Investment Officer for fixed income at LA-based TCW, said in a note that "the time has come to leave the dance floor", noting that "corporate leverage, which has exceeded levels reached before the 2008 financial crisis, is a sign that investors should start preparing for the end of the credit cycle." Ominously, he added that “we’ve lived this story before.” Five months later, the FT reports that TCW, which is also the US asset manager that runs the world’s largest actively managed bond fund, has put its money where its bearish mouth is, and has eliminat