"US lending to businesses is reaching record levels but banks are privately warning that the activity should not be seen as evidence of an economic recovery." And the stunner: "Much of the corporate lending is going to fund payouts to shareholders, finance acquisitions and fuel the domestic energy boom, bankers say, rather than to support companies’ organic growth."

In Reality, War Will Bring An End to the Petrodollar, and Impose Hardship on the Average American ...

"If you're not concerned, you're not paying attention" say Axel Merk, founder and Chief Investment Officer of Merk Funds (and former President of the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis and a former FOMC member). Like many, he sees today's excessive high-price, low-volume, zero-volatility markets as an unnatural and dangerous result of misguided intervention by the Federal Reserve... "Now, the capital base and the equity of the Fed is very small. Odds are that the losses would wipe out the equity at the Fed."

How in the world does the government expect us to trust the economic numbers that they give us anymore? For a long time, many have suspected that they were being manipulated, and as you will see below it appears we now have proof that this is indeed the case.

It wasn’t an edgy blogger but the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency that issued the warning.

Several months after it was revealed that Germany was able to only recover a miserable 5 tons of its gold in all of 2013 (under 10% of the 84 tons it was scheduled to repatriate), Germany appears to have given up entirely in its attempt to recover gold which simply is not there, and as Michael Krieger reports, citing Bloomberg, has decided to keep "it" (by "it" we don't mean the gold since that clearly has not been at the Fed for decades, but merely the paper promises of ownership: for more see China's gold rehypothecation scandal and how the unwind works) at the NY Fed after all. That is to say, in the "safe hands" of former Goldmanite Bill Dudley.

The NY Fed has been kind enough to just release a pic of the NY Fed's "Open Market Operations" team - i.e., its last line of defense tasked with preserving the American way of life - as it was first seen in the heat of World War II, some time in 1944. Because when one thinks of the veterans, one must not forget the men and women who quietly held it all together by BTFD.

An overview of the price action in the FX market and a look at US 10-year yields.  No ride on an ideological hobbie horse or axe to grind.  Just trying to make sense of the price aciton

If you had fallen asleep at your desk recently due to the absolute lack of anything noteworthy happening, this past week should have woken you up. A massive upset in the Virginia primary dethroned House Majority Leader Eric Cantor which sent moderate Republicans scurrying to shore up their voting bases. Al-Queda backed forces, ISIS, have advanced through Iraq and are not closing in on Baghdad which has sent oil prices rocketing higher this past week. Lastly, the mainstream media was completely baffled by the "sea of red" on their monitors which caused one anchor to quip: "Wow...stocks really can go down."

Just how badly is Generation X doing? Bad enough to turn around the entire concept of middle-class prosperity in America - one where every next generation should do better than the preceding one - on its head. "Only one-third of Generation X households had more wealth than their parents held at the same age, even though most earn more, The Pew Charitable Trusts found." And there, in a nutshell, is your so-called recovery: two thirds of an entire generation - one which is in its prime working years - doing worse than the one before them!

Henry Ford once said, “It is well that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.” We hope this brief discussion raises that 'understanding'.

• Canada Aims to Sell Its Oil Beyond U.S (WSJ)
• ECB Unanimity May Prove Fleeting (WSJ)
• Chinese military spending exceeds $145 billion, drones advanced: U.S. (Reuters)
• France to sell 10 warships to Russia next? BNP Executive Firings Sought by Top New York Bank Regulator Amid Probe (BBG)
• Vodafone says governments have direct access to eavesdrop in some countries (Reuters)
• Home Price Gains of 20% Vanish as Hottest Markets Cool (BBG)
• G-7 Heads Warn Moscow Before Facing Putin (WSJ)
• Barclays Fine Spurs U.K. Scrutiny of Derivatives Conflict (BBG)
• "Or Costs" - Obama Says Putin Running Out of Time Over Ukraine (BBG)
• Banca Monte Paschi Falls After Offering New Stock at 35.5% Discount (BBG)

Timothy Geithner is likely to go down in American history as one of the most dangerous, destructive cronies to have ever wielded government power. The man is so completely and totally full of shit it’s almost impossible not to notice. The last thing we’d ever want to do in our free time is read a lengthy book filled with Geithner lies and propaganda, so we owe a large debt of gratitude to former Congressional staffer Matt Stoller for doing it for us. Stoller simply tears Geither apart limb from limb, detailing obvious lies about the financial crisis, and even more interestingly, Geithner’s bizarre bio, replete with mysterious and inexplicable promotions into positions of power..."Geithner is at heart a grifter, a petty con artist with the right manners and breeding to lie at the top echelons of American finance..."

While the last 2 weeks have seen numerous Fed heads, most vociferously Bill Dudley, warning of 'complacency' in markets, fearsome of low volatility and worried about low risk spreads. Of course, investors don't care - don't fight the fed unless the fed tells you to sell, appears the mantra-du-jour. Fed communications are not working... and so they have left it to their mouthpiece - WSJ's Jon Hilsenrath - to explain that they are indeed concerned at just how risk-free markets have become..."Federal Reserve officials, looking out at mostly calm financial markets, are starting to wonder whether tranquility itself is something to worry about."

Long before Virtu was forced to pull its IPO due to the backlash against HFT frontrunners in party due to being stupid enough to post its perfect trading record of 1 trading day loss in 5 years which could only be the result of a grossly rigged market, we pointed out that another entity, one having little in common with your garden variety HFT parasite, namely JPMorgan, had a 2013 trading record which could be summed up on one word only: perfection. Yet while one could simply attribute the same kind of market rigging to JPM as one can (and should) to the average hi-freak, it seems there may be more here than meets the eye so used to seeing manipulation everywhere it looks. According to Australia's Sydney Morning Herald, "a technical support person who worked for JP Morgan in Australia claims the bank regularly misled its New York parent and the US Federal Reserve by failing to report losing trades."