Israel

With US leaks about Israeli air strike on Syria, John Kerry stirring the civil war pot in Egypt, and the closure of US embassies across the Muslim world (Iraq, Afghanistan, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Yemen, UAE, Algeria, Mauritania, Sudan, Israel (Tel Aviv) and Jordan), it appears something is afoot. To add to the intrigue, the US State Department just issued a worldwide travel alert for US citizens.

*STATE DEPARTMENT WORLDWIDE TRAVEL ALERT EXPIRES AUGUST 31, 2013
*STATE DEPT ISSUES WORLDWIDE TRAVEL ALERT FOR U.S. CITIZENS

An Al-Qaeda threat has been posited but with no follow-up but we can't help but fear what we wondered about previously - the need for deficits to re-awaken (via some external event that no-one can 'un-patriotically' demur) providing more room for Bernanke to avoid his need for Taper.

Amid all the high-fives over stocks hitting all-time highs and Edward Snowden's temporary freedom hogging the headlines yesterday, State Department spokesperson Marie Harf quietly pointed out that, due to an "abundance of caution," an unspecified number of US embassies and consulates in the Muslim world will be closed this weekend (and diplomatic facilities maybe longer). House foreign affairs committee chairman Royce suggested this morning that this closure is 'Al-Qaeda-threat-related'; and, as AP reports, the last major warning came last fall when embassies warned American diplomatic facilities across the Muslim world of potential violence around Sept. 11. (and the disaster that was Benghazi). But we can't help but worry about the coincident 'leak' by US officials of Israel's airstrike on Syria (and the potential forced response from Assad this would seem to portend).

It seems 'someone' doesn't want the world knowing just how much of a 'long shot' Larry Summers is for the great-and-powerful-Oz position of Chairman of the Federal Reserve. As we showed just last week, PaddyPower showed Yellen as a strong 77% probability favorite with Summers lagging notably behind in the pack. Then comes this morning's comment from the second most powerful man in the world:

• *OBAMA SAYS LARRY SUMMERS BEING UNFAIRLY CRITICIZED: SHERMAN
• *REID SAYS SUMMERS IS A FRIEND, A `COMPETENT' MAN

And Goldman's Jan Hatzius' warnings that Summers is less 'enthusiastic' on using monetary policy than his competitor Yellen. And now - as the image below shows - PaddyPower has removed its betting on the next Fed head. We just wonder who got the tap on the shoulder?

Following OAO Uralkali's decision to break up a 'marketing venture' that controlled around 43% of global potash exports, the world's largest producer is breaking the cartel that many US fertilizer companies have enjoyed. This move signals prices will weaken as the Russian company tries to grab market share shifting sales to its own unit. As Goldman notes, such behavior by Belaruskali in a structurally oversupplied potash industry should push for stricter competition for end customers and result in a significant swift decline in pricing to a level of marginal cost production. This slashing of margins has crushed the fertilizer stocks with POT, MOS, and AGU all down significantly in the pre-market."Uralkali’s announcement completely turns the global potash market upside down," noted one analyst. "If previously global potash producers were acting like an oligopoly, working with the rule that benefited higher potash prices over shipped volumes, now the market will be fully competitive." Shock, horror!

A month ago we noted the out-squidding of Goldman Sachs as ex-JPMorganite Jacob Frenkel looked set to replace Fischer as the head of the Bank of Israel. Four weeks later and it seems the chairman of the all-important Group-of-30 has had enough, and when it comes to "squidding" into central banks, Goldman truly has no comparable.

• FRENKEL SAYS HE WITHDRAWS CANDIDACY FOR BANK OF ISRAEL CHIEF
• FRENKEL SAYS HE SUFFERED `AVALANCHE' OF ABUSE

Poor thing. And this is after his actual 'acceptance' was already agreed.

After a slow start in the week, there is a substantial pick up with announcements from the FOMC, ECB and BOE (as well as monetary policy updates from the RBI, RBA, Israel, and Czech Republic) with the possibility, if not probability, of a Fed update on tapering expectations. On Wednesday we get the much expected wholesale GDP revision which will boost "growth data" all the way back to 1929 and is expected to push current GDP as much as 3% higher, and on Friday is the "most important NFP payroll number" (at least since the last one, and before the next one), where the consensus expects a +183K print, and 7.5% unemployment. All this while earnings season comes to a close.

First we had Schordinger markets in which value is either zero or whatever the Fed says it is; then we got Schrodinger economies when China was both expanding and contracting at the same time; now we have Schrodinger military coups which are both a coup and not a coup, at least as far as the US is concerned. According to AP: "The Obama administration will tell lawmakers Thursday that it won't declare Egypt's government overthrow a coup, U.S. officials said." So why will the US claim the obvious military overthrow of Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood was a "democratic" process? Simple: it will allow the United States "to continue providing $1.5 billion in annual military and economic aid to the Arab world's most populous country." And why will the US continue providing Egypt with $1.5 billion in annual military aid? Simple: so Egypt can continue buying more Made In Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter jets to spread the Nobel Peace Prize winner's diplomatic agenda in the middle east. Because one must always think of the children GDP.

Overnight there has been a flood of viral reports that 'there was a fire at JPM's gold vault' based on a self-made video showing a barrage of fire trucks located on Broad Street between Wall Street and Exchange Place, further subsantiated additionally by a @FDNY tweet around 6:30 pm on Saturday which indeed confirmed there had been a "commercial fire in a vault." So did a sweeping fire "take place" (in broad daylight and in front of video camera armed streetwalkers) provide the fire brigade a pretext to abscond with JPM's gold, or merely give JPM an alibi to say it's gold is "gone... all gone" or rather "burned... all burned" (leaving aside the propensity of a fire to propagate in the confined oxygen constraints to be found on top of the Manhattan bedrock and far below street level)? No.

One of the prime reasons why the Middle East holds such importance to the West is partiality because it is the main supplier of oil and natural gas to countries in the West. Over the past several decades Western countries had few, if any, options other than to purchase its oil and gas from Middle Eastern oil producing nations despite the headaches that came with it. Headaches, for example, that’s included political unrest, turmoil and strife. But now with the newly found fields of oil and gas in Central Asian countries that are only the beginning of what may lie in these vast oil fields of the steppes and the Caucuses, there may be options.

If indeed the administration had floated a trial balloon with Larry Summers' Fed Chairman candidacy, it appears to have been full of lead. Moments ago Fed mouthpiece Hilsenrath just undid the disturbance in the farce with an article that promptly crushes Larry's chances as Bernanke's replacement, instead putting Janet Yellen up as the "front-runner for the top fed post."

“There is no cure for high prices, like high prices.” This is why the Middle East can never truly have a prolonged supply shortage. They will price their customers out of the market!

As the death count rises - last night's actions in Alexandria and Cairo appear to be more escalations by the pro-Mursi supporters - AFP reports that Israel has given Egypt the go-ahead to deploy two battalions to the Sinai to tackle militants in the sensitive region where deployments are restricted by treaty. The Egyptian army is preparing to go on the offensive against Islamist militants in the Sinai who have escalated attacks since the 'coup' on July 3. Over the past two weeks, militants have launched almost daily attacks on troops and police in the peninsula, killing several members of the security forces and two Egyptian Christians. A senior Egyptian military official confirmed that the army "will carry out an operation" in the Sinai, without giving further details.

While the (chemical) dust over Syria has yet to settle, one country is not waiting around before in tried and true fashion it kicks the proverbial hornets nest. Only this time the recipient of Israeli aggression is not some small country that can hardly afford to defend itself against made in the US, state-of-the-art weapons: it is Russia, if only indirectly. Last Friday, July 5, in the fog of the Egyptian coup, a contingent of 50 Russian-made Yakhont P-800 anti-ship missiles at the Syrian port-city of Latakia was destroyed. It has since become clear that the attack was launched by none other than an Israeli Dolphin-class (German-made) submarine according to a report in the British Sunday Times, which in turn contradicts a previous report that the attack had been the work of the Israeli air force. Fast forward one week when we learn that in a perfectly unrelated event, a massive military drill involving naval forces, strategic bomber aircraft, missile-defense teams, tactical and strategic missiles, infantry, and armored vehicles took place in Russia's far east: a perfectly unrelated exercise that just happened to be the largest  in the post-Soviet period.

"This nigger wants to fight me!" the belligerent man yelled, cops said....  Reddish knocked him out with a blow to the face.

With the situation in Egypt continuing to border on sheer chaos, many wonder what approach the US will take, so far having demonstrated its inability to decide how to swallow the humiliation of having a US-backed regime get swept away in a military coup while it continues supporting the country with both money and weapons. But while the State Department dithers, its head busy boating somewhere off the coast of Massachussetts, the US military is not wasting much time, and appears to be amassing a naval presence just off the coast of Egypt. No need to worry, though: Egypt's Ahram reports that "the US Embassy in Egypt denied Saturday that US naval vessels near Egypt's shores are sent in preparation for military action. A top Marine Corps general said Thursday that two US marine vessels approached Egypt's Red Sea shore, raising concerns in the Egyptian media about an imminent military move." "We deny false claims in the Egyptian press that US naval ships are in the vicinity of the Arabian Peninsula and the Suez Canal to militarily invade Egypt," read a statement issued on the US embassy's website.