Revelations of US secret torture sites overseas and a new Senate investigation revealing widespread horrific CIA torture practices should finally lead to the abolishment of this agency. Far from keeping us safer, CIA covert actions across the globe have led to destruction of countries and societies and unprecedented resentment toward the United States. For our own safety, end the CIA!

"The central bank imposed interest rates are the source of global financial instability now and in the future," warns Grant's Interest Rate Observer's Jim Grant, adding that "The Fed... has manipulated us into a period of quite eerie stability and measured volatility." Grant believes, given the values (and aware of the risks) that Russian "stocks stand to do very well," and also likes mining stocks as he warns credit markets are overvalued (especially sovereign debt). His conclusion, own gold as "it stands to benefit from the demonstrated, as opposed the theoretically likely, crack up of the [current] monetary arrangements."

Senior U.S. Intelligence Officers: Obama Should Release Ukraine Evidence

...just as the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand 100 years ago led politicians to make a series of pitiful, short-sighted decisions that led the world into the most destructive war it had ever seen, today's "leaders" are raising the stakes towards an even more destructive kind of war. This new kind of war is fought with bits and bonds rather than steel. But it's one that affects almost everyone on the planet. Change is very clearly afoot. And it's time to start paying very close attention to the canary in the coalmine.

Aggressive buying of gold and particularly silver by Russia will likely lead to defaults on the COMEX gold and silver futures exchanges and potentially an international monetary crisis. As sanctions, economic war and currency wars intensify we expect Russian and Russian ally buying of gold and selling of dollars to intensify ...

Moments ago TWTR reported Q2 earnings which beat EPS expectations of a 1 cent loss, posting non-GAAP EPS of $0.02 (let's ignore that the GAAP EPS was actually -$0.24 and that GAAP Net Loss was $144.6 million, much worse than the $42.2 million a year ago, all driven by stock-based compensation expense, because clearly retaining employees is never a factor when calculating earnings). And yet, the stock has exploded by 30% after hours on what appears to be a super squeeze after hours, as the company also reported revenue of $312 million up from $139.3 million a year ago and some $54MM in EBITDA, up 461% Y/Y. This is just a little awkward for the Federal Reserve which some 2 weeks ago was warning about a bubble in social networking stocks, just before first Facebook and now Twitter have exploded higher on what can best be described as yet another massive short squeeze of those who decided to not fight the Fed on this one.

Plus Iran, Syria and Ukraine ...

Equity markets were lifted on a sea of USDJPY stops this morning to open higher and press to the week's highs. Once 102.00 was achieved and Europe closed, headlines started to stall stock exuberance. The  initial downturn was when BES cancelled its shareholder meeting, the dip was bought, then Europe unveiled its sanctions started to take stocks down and then the US unleashed a further round of sanctions targeted at banks and that dragged stocks to the lows of the day. Trannies were worst down 4 days in a row. This move merely caught stocks down to bond's less-than-exuberant day. Treasuries rallied with yields dropping 2-3bps on the day. The USD surged to 6-month highs, ending up 0.2% from Friday. Credit markets continue to sell off notably. VIX closed back above 13 (highest in 2 weeks). The Russell is -1.65% YTD and 4.5% in July (on course for worse month in over 2 years). It appears sanctions fears trumped turbo Tuesday.

Correlation or causation?

With an estimated net worth of $14 Billion, Zhou Yongkang, the man formerly in charge of China's vast security apparatus, was one of the nine most senior politicians in China until 2012. But now, as The BBC reports, state media have announced he is being investigated for "serious disciplinary violation", a term usually used to refer to corruption. The news ended months of speculation about his fate as numerous people in his sphere of influence are either under investigation or have been sentenced to death. This move confirms Xi Jinping's determination to root out corruption but could also be seen, given Zhou's influence, as an effort to eliminate a center of power in China's factional political system.

We are sure President Obama must be happy that the European leaders finally stepped in line behind him and layered new goldilocks sanctions on Russia. With business leaders on both sides of the Atlantic urging him not to, for fear of the dreaded 'boomerang' from Putin (which has already been targeted at MSFT, IBM, MCD, INTC, AMD, and car manufacturers), President Obama is set to explain how his new-new sanctions (which include several Russian banks including VTB, Russia's second largest ) and will be the message that Putin needs to leave, fold to NATO, handover everything, and retire to the Gulag. Yet, oddly enough, Gazprom is once again missing from the sanctions list. The whole market is sliding heading into his speech (including the Russian ETF). We await the retaliation.

With 77 million Americans having debt past due and the average household owing more than $15,000 in credit card debt, it appears the Fed's supposed plan to 'help Main Street' is not working so well. As the following chart from NewEdge's Brad Wishak shows, despite Fed Funds at practically zero, US credit card variable interest rates continue to rise - now at their highest since July 2001.

With hours to go until Argentina's grace period runs out and default occurs, investors are less than frantically selling Argentine bonds and pesos. They are lower but do not appear in full panic mode as we presume investors cling to hope that Argentina folds and pays off the holdouts (though there has been no sign of that so far). ARG 2033 bonds are down 3 points to 81 and the black-market peso is modestly weaker at 13.0 (near its record lows). Argentine CDS tightened modestly (as BofA warns the facts surrounding Argentina’s bond payments continue to be unique and deciding if CDS are triggered could take longer than expected) but 1Y CDS are holding at 4600bps (equivalent) - a 52% probability of default. Paul singer continues to defend himself (and the holdouts) from claims they are "dangerous fundamentalists" hell-bent on making it impossible for foreign sovereigns to restructure their debts.

With the NY Fed already warning of "significant operational risk," and former Fed officials proclaiming Deutsche Bank is "horribly under-capitalized," along with Barclays 'dark pool' and gold manipulations, it is perhaps not a total surprise that, as WSJ reports, New York's banking regulator is pushing to install government monitors inside the U.S. offices of Deutsche Bank and Barclays as part of an intensifying investigation into possible manipulation in the foreign-exchange market. These two banks were selected because they had the 'greatest potential problems' based on a preliminary investigation.

We have been warning for years that as a result of the Fed's disastrous policies, America's middle class is being disintegrated and US adults are surviving only thanks to insurmountable debtloads. But not even we had an appreciation of how serious the problem truly was. We now know, and it is a shocker: according to new research by the Urban Institute, about 77 million Americans have a debt in collections.