United Kingdom

• Amtrak train in Philadelphia wreck was traveling at twice speed limit (Reuters)
• The engineer has no recollection of the crash and “no explanation” for what happened (WSJ)
• Taliban claim attack on Afghan guesthouse that killed 14 (Reuters)
• Chicago’s Junk Rating From Moody’s Puzzles Investors (BBG)
• House votes to end spy agencies' bulk collection of phone data (Reuters)
• Wesley Clark: The Penny-Stock General (BBG)
• AOL’s Armstrong to Leave $213 Million Richer After Verizon Deal (BBG)

Today’s Eurogroup meeting will be key in determining where Greece and its creditors negotiations currently stand. Over in the US today, it’s the usual post payrolls lull with just the labor market conditions data expected.

How this will not end badly and ugly is hard to see. As we quoted in an earlier article, the number of foodbanks in Britain went from 66 to 421 in the first 5 years of Cameron rule. How many more need to be added before people start setting cities on fire? Or even just: how much more needs to happen before the Scots have had enough? Very much like the Greeks, the Scots unambiguously voted down austerity. And in very much the same fashion, they face an entity that claims to be more powerful and insists on forcing more austerity down their throats anyway. It seems inevitable that at some point these larger entities will start to crack and break down into smaller pieces. As empires always do. Now, the EU was of course never an empire, there’s just tons of bureaucrats dreaming of that, and Britain is a long-decayed empire.

The politicians like the bankers and the central bankers, are happy to kick the can down the road and let their successors and future generations pick up the tab and pay for the economic mess that they refuse to address.

The British are ready to hang themselves yet again, with their General Election on Thursday 7th May 2015.

Quickly looking at the potential market moving events this week, US payrolls on Friday will be the clear focus. In terms of expectations, our US colleagues are expecting a +225k print which matches the current Bloomberg consensus, while they expect the unemployment rate to drop one-tenth to 5.4%. Elsewhere, Thursday’s UK Election will be closely followed while Greece will once again be front and center.

• The Fed Still Wants Easy Money (BBG) - you don't say
• ECB Is Studying Curbs on Greek Bank Support (BBG)
• Banks Paid to Borrow as Three-Month Euribor Drops Below Zero (BBG)
• Baoding Tianwei is first state-owned Chinese enterprise to default (Reuters)
• Major Chinese Developer Says It Can’t Pay Dollar Debts (BBG)
• Wall Street Has No Idea How Much Money Venezuela Has (BBG)
• Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley Find Different Paths to Profits (WSJ)
• Does the Collapse of a Chinese Developer Signal the Start of More Defaults? (BBG)
• Retail Traders Wield Social Media for Investing Fame (WSJ)

Explaining the catalysts that move the "market" overnight has become so farcical it is practically an exercise in futility and absurdism.

China is looking to succeed where the United States has failed. Beijing — which, as a reminder, claims it will not use its regional infrastructure development initiatives as a tool of foreign policy — is now set to facilitate the construction of nearly $50 billion in power plants, roads, and railways in neighboring Pakistan. The proposal, which will give China access to the Indian Ocean via the Gwadar port on the Arabian Sea, is part of President Xi Jinping’s ambitious “Silk Road” Economic Belt, and importantly, will likely include financing for the completion of the "Peace Pipeline," which will carry natural gas from Iranian gas fields across Pakistan.

While this week sees the peak of Q1 earnings season, it will be a generally quiet week on the macro economic front for both EM and DM, with the emphasis on the latest seasonally adjusted manufacturing sentiment surveys, US durables and Japan trade.

The conservative German daily Die Welt, well-known for its unflinching support for Israel, recently published an article stating “with near certainty” that the Federal Republic of Germany, or West Germany, helped finance Israel’s nuclear program in the 1960s. The Welt report comes after former Israeli President Shimon Peres (who was the head of Israel’s nuclear-weapons program at the time of its inception in the 1950s) denied that funding for Israel’s nukes came from Germany earlier this month.

Neither Russia nor China is an imminent threat to the US, but a cataclysmic event is looming in the economic front, one which will forever change the perception of America by the rest of the world; or how we, Americans, perceive ourselves. It’s back to what that great cartoonist (and sociopolitical commentator), Walt Kelly, told us a half century ago as America struggled during the Vietnam War:

“We have met the enemy and he is us.” 

The Russian President tops TIME's 100 most influential people list even as 60% of voters were Americans. Guess where President Obama landed...

While today's macro calendar is empty with no central bank speakers or economic news (just the monthly budget (deficit) statement this afternoon), it’s a fairly busy calendar for us to look forward to this week as earnings season kicks up a gear in the US as mentioned while Greece headlines and the G20 finance ministers meeting on Thursday mark the non-data related highlights.

Giving up the spotlight is never easy. The United States, like many aging celebrities, is struggling to share the stage with new faces, especially China. The upcoming meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank – two institutions dominated by the US and its Western allies – provide an ideal opportunity to change that. The US must come to terms with the reality that the world has changed. The longer the US remains in a state of denial, the more damage it will do to its interests and its global influence, which remains substantial, if more constrained than before.