CDS

And now the real shocker: there is over US$100bn in gross financial exposure to Glencore. From BofA: "We estimate the financial system's exposure to Glencore at over US$100bn, and believe a significant majority is unsecured. The group's strong reputation meant that the buildup of these exposures went largely without comment. However, the recent widening in GLEN debt spreads indicates the exposure is now coming into investor focus."

In the real world, any casino (legal or otherwise) which refused to pay when the “house” lost would quickly be driven out of business

In a furious race to shore up as much liquidity as possible, Glencore - which a month ago announced a dramatic deleveraging plan - and its peers have been quietly scrambling to raise billions in secured funding. Case in point none other than Glencore's biggest competitor and the largest independent oil trader in the world, Swiss-based, Dutch-owned Vitol Group, whose Swiss unit Vitol SA earlier today raised a record $8 billion in loans.

Following Friday's disastrous payrolls report, which confirmed all the pre-recessionary economic data and signaled that instead of approaching "lift-off" and decoupling from the rest of the world, the US economy is following the emerging markets into a slowdown in what may be the first global, synchronized recession since 2008, the market saw its biggest intraday surge since 2011 and the sharpest short covering squeeze in history, we are happy to announce that the "market" is now solidly back in "bad news is good news" mode.

Never have markets carried so much risk. And never have markets been as vulnerable to an abrupt change in perceptions with regard to central banker competence, effectiveness and capabilities. At the minimum, global markets will function poorly, but risk is now high for a disorderly – Party Crashing - "run" on financial markets, as faith in central banking begins to wane.

Late last week, after looking at Valeant soaring default risk as measured by the price of its blowing out CDS, soaring to over 30% even as its stock prices was surging, we wondered - does someone know something? It appears someone may have known that this weekend, the same Andrew Pollack whose NYT article exposing Turing's 5000% price increase resulted in Hillary Clinton promising to cap specialty biotech prices if elected, has come back for round two and after taking aim at Shkreli and Turing, much to the chagrin of Bill Ackman, Pollack is now taking aim at the biggest culprit: Valeant Pharmaceutcals.

US financials' stocks are tumbling as 'investor' hopes for a rate-hike (and some dream about better earning potential for banks) drag XLF (Financials ETF) back to Oct 2014 lows. However, as have noted before, it is the message of the credit markets that has been correct all along (and stocks continue to catch down) as today's jobs data (and Glencore asset sales) poke Financials credit spreads to their highest since Oct 2013.

As Bloomberg reports, "JPMorgan Chase & Co. is set to pay almost a third of a $1.86 billion settlement to resolve accusations that a dozen big banks conspired to limit competition in the credit-default swaps market, according to people briefed on terms of the deal."

The signs of deflation are now flashing all over the globe and the possibility of an associated financial crisis is now dangerously high over the next few months. Our preferred model for how things are going to unfold follows the Ka-Poom! Theory, which states that this epic debt bubble will ultimately burst first by deflation (the "Ka!") before then exploding (the "Poom!") in hyperinflation due to additional massive money printing efforts by frightened global central bankers acting in unison. First an inwards collapse, then an outwards explosion.

While the company's stock price may have rebounded strong today after tumbling by 25% in the past few days, hoping the worst is behind it the company's Credit Default Swaps sing a different tune, and as of moments ago, with the CDS spread blowing out to 440 bps, suggested Valeant default risk is now a whopping 33%.

convincing equity that company is viable is one thing (and the company and its sellside cheerleaders sure are trying).  Convincing the far more skeptical bond market, which is desperately trying to figure out the counterparty risk, will be far more difficult...

It was a tale of two markets overnight: Asia first - where all commodity hell broke loose - and then Europe (and the US), where central banks did everything they could to stabilize the already terrible sentiment.