United States

Submitted by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

By all accounts Bernhard Gubser was living the American Dream.

Born in Switzerland he moved to the Land of the Free in the early 1980s to work at an international shipping company based in Laredo, Texas.

Eventually Mr. Gubser worked his way up to be President of the company and began traveling around the world to expand the business.

He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in the 1990s, something that would eventually cost him $1.35 million.

Yesterday, in an impassioned appeal to the hearts and minds of Americans everywhere, Minneapolis Fed Neel Kashkari said that the Fed is "here to serve Main Street" the same main street which currencly has $8.4 trillion in savings accounts currently earning exactly 0% in interest. Yet it wasn't Main Street but Wall Street that the Fed listened to once again last Wednesday, May 4, when the Fed's Advisory Council which comprises of 12 bankers such as James Gorman, Richard Holbrook, and John Stumpf, advised the Fed on how to conduct future monetary policy.

Every year for the past four, Goldman started off the year with an undauntedly optimism and a bullish forecast, one which usually involved a material increase to GDP expectations and, just as importantly, rising 10Y bond yields. And every year for the past four, it took Goldman a few months before it was forced to trim both its GDP forecast and cut its expectations where the 10Y would end the year.

Following the latest escalation in South China Sea territorial tensions, which culminated with China refusing to grant the Stennis aircarrier group access to the Hong Kong port, overnight the US decided to provoke some more Chinese anger when it sailed the guided missile destroyer the USS William P. Lawrence within 12 nautical miles of Chinese-occupied Fiery Cross Reef, according to U.S. Defense Department spokesman, Bill Urban said. This was the third warship the US has sent into contested waters in the South China Sea in less than seven months.

A day after oil tumbled to the lowest level in weeks, it has once again started to climb, ignoring the changing dynamic in the oilsands region where the fire has now moved away from critical Canadian oil infrastructure, and is instead focusing on concerns about supply disruptions not just out of Canada but also a series of attacks on Nigeria's oil infrastructure which pushed the country's crude output close to a 22-year, cumulatively knocking out 2.5 million barrels of daily production.