Switzerland

"... judging from market-based implied measures of longer-term inflation expectations, the effectiveness of the ECB’s announcements has proved limited so far."

- Goldman Sachs

"The rise in household savings rates amid so much central bank support is paradoxical to us, and mimics what we highlighted in the credit market earlier this year. Companies in Europe are deleveraging, not releveraging"

Europe has unleashed yet another monetary panic, and nowhere is it more visible than in what happened today across the short end of Europe's government curve.  As the table below shows, more than half of European sovereign issuers just saw the yield on their 2 Year Notes trade not only below zero, but hit never before seen negative yields!

"The nightmare for the Riksbank board is maybe something like this: they are gathered in the south of Sweden, looking out over the Baltic Sea, when they see a giant wave of money coming in from the euro zone and try to fight it with a hose."

Over the next six months, Barcelona’s left-wing city council plans to roll out a cash-less local currency that has the potential to become the largest of its kind in the world. While the socialist mayor's official reasoning is 'to boost economic opportunities for local businesses', perhaps there are somewhat less altruistic motives behind the move, such as encouraging people to embrace cashless currencies. It appears the war on cash has moved from one of words to actions (as it is likely no coincidence that most of the local community currencies that have been launched so far are in purely digital format, as would Barcelona’s.)

Spain, France., Italy, Uruguay, have all begun implementing laws to ban physical cash for certain transactions. This is just the start.

If you thought we'd seen the depths of NIRP, think again because as Deutsche Bank notes, the ECB, Riksbank, SNB, and Nationalbank will likely dive further into the monetary Twilight Zone in the months ahead. Only when rates become negative enough to spark a depositor revolt will we have reached the "real" lower bound, but at that point, it will be far too late...

Gold can be useful as a hedge against inflation but it's been consistently so only in the long run.

Since either NIRP, or QE, or most likely both, are about to cross the Atlantic and make landfall in the US before the Fed is forced to launch the monetary helicopter, those who want to know what is really coming - no, not rate hikes - are urged to read this.

"Najib has tarnished the country’s image in the world and caused investors to lose faith in the government. Malaysians do not believe in this prime minister."

Much of the political thinking about violence in the United States comes from unfavorable comparisons between the United States and a series of cherry-picked countries with lower murder rates and with fewer guns per capita. This is, in turn, supposed to fill Americans with a sense of shame and illustrate that the United States should be regarded as some sort of pariah nation because of its murder rate. However, politically, historically, and demographically, the US has little in common with these nations.

Bernanke and now Yellen have created an environment just like the Roaring Twenties. What came next wasn't pretty

Capital Economics "expects gold could hit $1,200 before the end of this year, rising to $1,400 by the end of 2016”

• Playboy to Drop Nudity as Internet Fills Demand (NYT)
• Stock futures fall on weak China trade data (Reuters)
• Any Hall is down 20% YTD (WSJ)
• Global Stocks Slide With Metals After Chinese Imports Tumble (BBG)
• Clinton's tack to the left to be on display in Democratic debate (Reuters)
• Switzerland Said to Impose 5% Leverage Ratio on Big Banks (BBG)
• AB InBev, SABMiller brew up $100 billion deal (Reuters)

For the past two weeks, the thinking probably went that if only the biggest short squeeze in history and the most "whiplashy" move since 2009 sends stocks high enough, the global economy will forget it is grinding toward recession with each passing day (and that the Fed are just looking for a 2-handle on the S&P and a 1-handle on the VIX before resuming with the rate hike rhetoric). Unfortunately, that's not how it worked out, and overnight we got abysmal economic data first from China, whose imports imploded, then the UK, which posted its first deflation CPI print since April, and finally from Germany, where the ZEW expectation surve tumbled from 12.1 to barely positive, printing at just 1.9 far below the 6.5 expected.