Archive - Apr 19, 2013 - Story

The chaos continues. Die Welt is reporting that a suspected letter bomb was intercepted today in a routine mail control at the residence of the Germany President Joachim Gauck in Berlin.

• *POLICE DESTROYED SUSPECTED LETTER BOMB TO GAUCK, ARD SAYS
• *LETTER BOMB CONTAINED HMTD HIGH-EXPLOSIVE POWDER: WELT

The suspect mail has been safely neutralized according to police.

Update: The Honda has been found in Boston

NYC UPDATE *ALERT TO POLICE* Lookout for Honda CRV, MA Plate #36ES9 - Poss heading to #Manhattan Male white may be wearing suicide vest

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) April 19, 2013

While the first alleged terrorist bomber, 19 year-old Dhjokar Tsarnaev, born in Kyrgystan, is on the loose currently somewhere in Boston and is the target of a massive manhunt, his brother, 26 year-old, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, born in Russia and legal US resident since 2007, died overnight in a shootout with the local police. It appears he was a boxer, studied at Bunker Hill Community College, was very religious, didn't drink or smoke, wanted to become an engineer, and his favorite movie was Borat. His YouTube page can be found here: on it can be found videos of Islamic preacher Feiz Mohammad. Most informative is a captioned photo narrative by Johannes Hirn showcasing the older brother's boxing pursuits and a glimpse into his history and philosophy.

UPDATE: Boeing cuts 747 production 12.5% on lower demand (BA -0.5%, Dow futures slide 25 points)

Thanks in large part to G-20 comments, JPY has resumed its devaluation path and dragged risk-assets higher with it as S&P futures are up 8 points. However, this 'artificial' exuberance appears to hide the simple reality of individual stocks as IBM is trading down 4.5% in the pre-market and for now Dow futures are down around 40 points from the cash close.

• Police Searching for 19-Year-Old Boston Bombing Suspect (BBG)
• Mayhem Erupts in Boston After MIT Campus Officer Slain (BBG)
• Elvis Impersonator Accused of Ricin Letters Sowing Fear (BBG)
• Blackstone Pulls Out of Dell Bid on Rapidly Falling PC Sales (BBG)
• Before Texas plant exploded: What did regulators know? (Reuters)
• Aso Says Japan Policy Unopposed at G-20 Meeting as Yen Falls (BBG)
• Bipartisan pair target $2.5tn US savings (FT)
• Plan for new Cyprus vote casts uncertainty on bailout (Cyprus Mail)
• Ireland picks through debtors’ lifestyles (FT)

While one of the shootout suspects, who have turned out to be brothers of Chechen origin, has been killed, the other one is still on the loose, is said to have had military and weapons training, and is the reason for the lockdown of Watertown and increasingly bigger parts of Boston. His social webpage on the service VK.com has been revealed, where the last log in attempt was at 5:04 am. Hopefully this is Chechnya Standard Time.

With the entire world's attention focused on Boston, the FX carry pair traders knew they had a wide berth to push futures, courtesy of some EURUSD and USDJPY levitation overnight, which started following news out of Japan that the G-20 would have no objection to its big monetary stimulus - of course they don't: they encourage it: just look at the levitation in the global wealth effect stock markets since it started. The Friday humor started early: "Japan explained that its monetary policy is aimed at achieving price stability and economic recovery, and therefore is in line with the G20 agreement in February," Aso told reporters. "There was no objection to that at the meeting." "We explained (at the G20 meeting) that we're convinced that the measures we're taking will be good for the global economy as they will help revive Japanese growth," Aso said. And by global economy he of course means stocks. Shortly thereafter, when Europe opened, the real levitation started as someone, somewhere had to offset what would otherwise be a 100 point plunge in the DJIA just on IBM's miserable results alone. Sure enough what better way to do that than with a wholesale market "tide" offsetting one or two founder boats.

In a series of bizarre if morbid events, things in Boston have gone from bad to surreal. According to Reuters, police killed one suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing during a shootout and were engaged in a house-to-house search for the other on Friday in the Boston suburb of Watertown. The suspects, incidentally, as AP reports, are reportedly brothers and originally from the separatist Russian region of Chechnya, who lived in the US for at least 1 year and were Cambridge residents at the time of the incident. The night started off in a just as dramatic fashion, with the violence beginning around 10:30 p.m., with the robbery of a 7-11 in nearby Cambridge, authorities said. The two men then fatally shot an MIT campus police officer and carjacked a Mercedes sport-utility vehicle at gunpoint, keeping the vehicle's owner hostage for about a half-hour, police said. The owner was released at a gas station in Cambridge, authorities said. He wasn't injured. Police pursued that car to Watertown, where explosives were thrown from the car at police and gunfire was exchanged, the statement said. "During the exchange of the gunfire, we believe that one of the suspects was struck and ultimately taken into custody. A second suspect was able to flee from that car and there is an active search going on at this point in time," Colonel Timothy Alben, superintendent of the Massachusetts State Police, told a news conference.