United States

Following this weekend's leak by Greenpeace demonstrating not only that the TTIP is driven entirely by narrow corporate interests, but that Obama is openly willing to reneg on his pro-environment agenda just to pass the Transatlantic Treaty at any cost, the blowback arrived earlier today when France became the first major European nation which threatened to reject the huge free trade deal between the U.S. and the European Union, because according to AP "it's too friendly to U.S. business and probably doomed."

There has been a surprising mood change at JPM over the past 4 months: after initially changing the company's long-held view on equities, which for the first time since 2007 it is no longer holds at overweight, JPM's head equity strategist Mislav Matejka has been quite vocal on urging clients to take advantage of the current rally and sell into it. To be sure, this was surprising because whether JPM is talking its book or not, the bank stands to generate more client fees if the prevailing sentiment is one of bullish optimism rather than the opposite.

Submitted by Charles Kennedy via OilPrice.com,

The average price of gas in the United States is now at $2.22, up 8 cents over last week, hitting a 6-month high. This, in stark contrast to February’s ultra-low gas prices of $1.68 per gallon - a level that had not been since the end of 2008.

Then, the price drop lasted only five months from December 2008 to May 2009 when it rose to $2.24 per gallon.

US "boots on the ground" on Iraq have just suffered their first casualty.

Moments ago US Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced that the Islamic State killed the first U.S. serviceman in Iraq who was aiding Kurdish fighters near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, RT reports. A statement from the US-led forces in Iraq added the fatality was "a result of enemy fire." "It is a combat death, of course. And a very sad loss," Carter told reporters at a press conference in Germany.

Three months ago, when Australia unexpectedly revealed that its recent "stellar" job numbers had in fact been cooked we asked, rhetorically, why the sudden admission it was all a lie? Simple: weakness in commodity prices "is far greater than people had been expecting,” the nation's top economist said. Australia is now "swimming against the tide" because of uncertainties in the global economy, he added.