While tensions between President Trump and CNN dying down, a new scandal has erupted for the cable news network after Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro said on Sunday he wanted CNN out of the country, accusing it of spreading fake news, misrepresenting the truth and meddling in issues that are not of its concern.

Germans got another price shock today when the Federal Statistics Office reported that Wholesale Prices rose a China-like 0.8% MOM in January, and advancing 4% year-on-year in January, up from the "mere" 2.8 percent increase in December, and the fastest growth since October 2011, when prices gained 4.1%.

Back in 2000, the U.S. cash equities trading desk at Goldman Sachs’s New York headquarters employed 600 traders, buying and selling stock for the bank's institutional clients clients. Today, it has two.

According to BofA, the best ways to hedge increased risks of a potential Eurosceptic win in the upcoming French election is favouring 10y peripheral spread wideners in Spain vs France, longs in 5y5y Germany and 5y Dutch sovereign CDS. In the options space, the banks recommends going long vol with a hybrid 6m10y strangle. In inflation, it likes 5y5y French CPI v HICP widener and a long 30y OATei breakeven vs inflation swap.

Markets have started this week feeling much relieved, notes Bloomberg's Richard Breslow, as the understandable fears that U.S.-Asia strategy might continue their lurch toward direct economic confrontation were given a respite. However, as Breslow notes, asset classes galore are at important levels and vigilance will pay a hefty premium.

Following a woefully belated response by California authorities' to the dangerous situation unfolding at the Lake Oroville Dam in Northern California over the weekend, an evacuation order forcing some 200,000 people living below the tallest dam in the US remained in place early on Monday after residents were abruptly told to flee when a spillway appeared in danger of collapse.

"Although nearly every method we know of to measure relative value is equally over-extended to the upside, the great game of investment musical chairs continues.  Illogic reigns; the “Melt Up” has begun in earnest and it will stop when it stops and not a moment before."

A new recession is coming, and Donald Trump needs it to begin sooner rather than later...

"We're going to talk about all sorts of things we align on, like jobs and economic growth, opportunities for the middle class - the fact that millions of good jobs on both sides of our border depend on the smooth flow of goods and services across that border," Trudeau said.