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What happens when the "impartial and independent" media puts its relationship with advertisers (especially when said advertisers are admitted criminal consortiums among whose chief sources of revenue in recent decades has been facilitating tax evasion and "laundering the world's drug money") above the interests of its readers and the presentation of "imperatial and independent" facts? This: "The coverage of HSBC in Britain's Daily Telegraph is a fraud on its readers. If major newspapers allow corporations to influence their content for fear of losing advertising revenue, democracy itself is in peril."

Contrary to popular opinion, it is not “demand” from the world’s population which creates the mind destroying drug trade. Rather, it is the world financial oligarchy, looking for massive profits and the destruction of the minds of the population it is determined to dominate, which organized the drug trade. The case of HSBC underscores that point. Serving as the central bank of this global apparatus, is HSBC.

Whether this is more economic sabre-rattling or not, Germany's Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble is not making any Greek friends this morning. During a radio interview on Deutschlandfunk, Schaeuble exclaimed that he was against  a deal "just for the sake of a compromise," and lashed out that "I feel sorry for the Greeks. The new Greek government behaves irresponsible." As Reuters reports, Schaeuble remains "very sceptical" and nobody wants to give Greece any more money "without guarantees," which is odd because within the last year - trend-chasing asset managers had appeared willing to throw good money after bad at it until now.

With only a few short hours until the process of everyone's cards being revealed in Brussels begins, it is once again Greece' turn to remind the other players on the table that no matter the quality of cards it has, it is not bluffing. Which is precisely what anyone bluffing would say.  In a just released Op-Ed in the NYT (were there no European newspaper willing to accept the Greek finance minister's Op-Ed one wonders that he had to go all the way to the bastion of the left... in the United States) the new Greek finance minister says that not only is he not bluffing adding "that I have no right to bluff", but using recent military jargon says that "the lines that we have presented as red will not be crossed. Otherwise, they would not be truly red, but merely a bluff."

Just as we warned hours ago, it appears the capture of a nearby town was not the endgame and, as The Wall Street Journal reports, A group of Islamic State militants penetrated an Iraqi air base where U.S. military advisers are training Iraqi forces, the first time attackers have gotten beyond the outer perimeter of an Iraqi base being used by American trainers.

You know it's bad when... you start blaming speculators. Very reminiscent of the "it's not us, we have a solid balance sheet, it's the short selling speculators" bullshit in the days before and after the stock crashes of American Insurance Group, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch; mere days after his bank's bonds crashed, the CEO of Raiffeissen Bank (Austria's 3rd largest) has stated (unequivocally) that "panic was created artificially," blaming short-sellers for his bank's demise.

The current US approach will lead to inevitable confrontation with Russia and China.... Beginning with the global financial crisis in 2008, the U.S. decided to recover at the expense of others, including with the help of military adventurism and the destruction of full governments, employing the theory of ‘managed chaos.'

Since the anti-austerity Syriza party's victory in Greece's recent general election, the “Greek problem" is again preoccupying markets and policymakers throughout Europe. Some fear a return to the uncertainty of 2012, when many thought that a Greek default and exit from the eurozone were imminent.

• Methodology change sees Indian economy grow faster than China's (Reuters)
• Can Greek Businesses Even Survive? (WSJ)
• Putin to travel to Minsk talks raising hopes of a deal over Ukraine (Euronews)
• Ukraine contact group representatives deny ceasefire deal in Minsk (Reuters)
• Moar buybacks! Hedge Fund-Backed Investor Puts Himself Up for G.M. Board (NYT)
• Ukraine peace summit overshadowed by some of war's worst fighting (Reuters)
• Time for non-non-GAAP excluding China: Tesla CEO threatens firings after dismal China sales - sources (Reuters)
• Jon Stewart leaving Comedy Central's 'The Daily Show' (Reuters)

‘Coin bars’ is a bullion industry term referring to bars that were made by melting gold coins in a process that did not refine the gold nor remove the other metals or metal alloys that were in the coins. The molten metal was just recast directly into bar form. Because it’s a concept critical to the FRBNY stored gold, the concept of US Assay Office / Mint gold bar ‘Melts’ is also highlighted below. Melts are batches of gold bars, usually between 18 and 22 bars, that when produced, were stamped with a melt number and a fineness, but were weight-listed as one unit. The US Assay Office produced both 0.995 fine gold bars and coin bars as Melts. The gold bars in a Melt are usually stored together unless that melt has been ‘broken’.

“The Greeks are digging their own graves,” warns one EU official, according to MNI, with another exclaiming the Greek plan as “hopeless” and added “how can you have a plan when you make no payment obligation till the autumn and then you probably scrap that.” Simply put, speaking on condition of anonymity, an EU official described the situation as “berserk” adding “there is no plan.”

"We want to avoid further deterioration in relations between Russia and Europe," explained Cyprus' President Nicos Anastasiades upon reportedly signing an agreement to offer Russia military facilities on its soil (that we noted previously). The air force base at which Russian planes will use is about 40 kilometers from Britain's sovereign Air Force base at Akrotiri, on the south shores of Cyprus, which provides support to NATO operations in the Middle and Near East regions. As fault lines within the EU widen, Anastasiades said in his interview that Cyprus opposes additional sanctions against Russia by the European Union over Ukraine, "Cyprus and Russia enjoy traditionally good relations and that is not going to change."

Less than a day after the head of the SNB hinted at the possibility of capital control, the head of the largest Swiss cantonal bank, and the fourth largest Swiss Bank, the Zurich Cantonal Bank or ZCB, came out and explicitly said what so many fear (and which warning they would ascribe to as the case may be "yellow journalism"), namely that "lowering Swiss National Bank’s already negative interest rate further or implementing capital controls would be "dramatic" but "certainly possible."