Archive - Jul 5, 2014

The biggest congressional leakage scandal in the past year is the most recent one to cross the rabit hole of all-out absurdity: According to Reuters, the Ways and Means panel said on Friday it should not have to comply with a federal regulator's demand for documents sought for an insider-trading probe involving the staff director of a subcommittee and a lobbyist. The House Ways and Means Committee argued in a court filing that U.S. District Judge Paul Gardephe in New York should deny the Securities and Exchange Commission's attempt to subpoena documents from the committee and its healthcare subcommittee staff director Brian Sutter.

Until now, whenever Warren Buffett's preferred mode of industrial transportation - that would be trains - derailed, it would usually involve spilling generous amounts of oil into the surrounding area, far more than any hypothetical pipeline disaster to date would have resulted in. Then, in an apparent first, overnight a train derailed in Montana and spilled fuselages of Boeing 737 airplanes into the Clark Fork River. One wonder if all of these airplane orders had been funded by the Ex-Im bank.

Dispassionate overview of the price action in the foreign exchange market in the context of the funamental developments.    

Not even we anticipated this particular "unintended consequence" as a result of the US multi-billion dollar fine on BNP (which France took very much to heart):

• NOYER: BNP CASE WILL ENCOURAGE ‘DIVERSIFICATION’ FROM DOLLAR

And, the biggest irony of all is that in "punishing" France for dealing with Russia, that core country of the Eurasian alliance of Russia and China, the US just accelerated the graviation of France (and all of Europe) precisely toward Eurasia, and away from the greenback.