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The only remarkable macroeconomic news overnight was out of Japan where we got the Q1 GDP print of 2.4% coming in well above consensus of 1.6%, and higher than the 1.1% in Q4. Did it not snow in Japan this winter? Does Japan already used double, and maybe triple, "seasonally-adjusted" data? We don't know, but we do know that both Japan and Europe have grown far faster than the US in the first quarter.

During the Iraq war more than 4,000 U.S. soldiers died, countless others were severely injured, and the total cost to U.S. taxpayers was more than 2 trillion dollars.  But now whatever the U.S. military accomplished during that war is being completely undone by ISIS.  On Monday, we learned that ISIS had fully taken control of the strategically important city of Ramadi.  Despite nine months of airstrikes by the U.S. military, ISIS continues to move forward and take new territory.  So what will the U.S. do if ISIS actually takes control of the entire country?

It’s no secret that the protracted negotiations between Athens and its creditors are taking a toll on the Greek economy in general, on the Greek banking sector more specifically, and on Greek citizens most tragically. Now, thanks to a new report from the Hellenic Confederation of Commerce and Enterprises, we can quantify the daily economic toll of failed negotiations.

Less than a week ago, fresh from the aftermath of the recent dramatic six-sigma move in German Bunds, one of Europe's largest banks openly lamented that so far the ECB's QE had done absolutely nothing: "two months of QE for nothing." And lo and behold, as if on demand, overnight the ECB confirmed it had heard SocGen's lament when just before the European market open, ECB executive board member Benoit Coeure delivered a speech at the Brevan Howard Centre for Financial Analysis (appropriately named after a hedge fund) at Imperial College Business School (not to be confused with the July 26, 2012 Mario Draghi "whatever it takes" speech which also took place in London) in which he said that the ECB intends to "frontload" i.e., increase, its purchases of euro-area assets in May and June ahead of an expected low-liquidity period in the summer.

The exuberant bounce of last week's IMF default/IMF payment workaround is fading fast as peripheral European bonds and the euro are being sold aggressively this morning, after headlines continue to suggest Greek bank collateral is dropping faster than the pressure in Patriot's footballs. Most notably, bunds are eeerily stable - almost as if some central planner figured out German bonds were the world's flashing red indicator and decided to suppress volatility some more.

With equities having long ago stopped reflecting fundamentals, and certainly the Eurozone's ever more dire newsflow where any day could be Greece's last in the doomed monetary union, it was up to gold to reflect that headlines out of Athens are going from bad to worse, with Bloomberg reporting that not only are Greek banks running low on collateral, both for ELA and any other purposes, that Greece would have no choice but to leave the Euro upon a default and that, as reported previously, Greece would not have made its May 12 payment had it not been for using the IMF's own reserves as a source of funding and that the IMF now sees June 5 as Greece's ever more fluid D-day. As a result gold jumped above $1230 overnight, a level last seen in February even as the Dollar index was higher by 0.5% at last check thanks to a drop in the EUR and the JPY.

It is unlikely that we would ever be called upon to give a speech to graduating students. But if we were, we would say the following: Congratulations, Class of 2015: You chumps! 

The Wall Street Journal reports that you are the most indebted generation in history. The average graduate with student debt has a little more than $35,000 of it. The whole bill for student debt this year is expected to reach $68 billion – a tenfold increase over the last 20 years.  But student debt is like the foul smell of gangrene: It testifies to a deeper, inner corruption...

Explaining all that is wrong with the fraudulent US "jobs recovery" using the case study of Japan.

We need to wake up....and FAST!!!

"To critics who warn that pumping trillions of dollars into the economy in a short period is bound to drive up inflation, today's central bankers point to stagnant consumer prices and say, 'Look, Ma, no inflation.' But this ignores the fact that when money is nominally free, strange things happen, and today record-low rates are fueling an unprecedented bout of inflation across asset prices."

• The fake: Avon-Offer Hoax Shows It’s Easy to Put One Over on SEC’s Edgar (BBG)
• And the real: US buyout group TPG snaps up UK discounter Poundworld (FT)
• El Niño near-certain to last through summer: U.S. climate center (Reuters)
• Oil Sands Land Becomes Alberta’s Hot Real Estate as Oil Rebounds (BBG)
• SEC a stumbling block in banks' forex guilty pleas: sources (Reuters)
• Pimco’s Stocks Chief Maisonneuve to Leave as Funds Closed (BBG)
• Bank of America’s Woes Test ‘Fixer’ CEO (WSJ)
• Puerto Rico Governor, Lawmakers Agree on Revenue Proposal (BBG)

Was that it for the "reflation" aka Bund-rout trade? One look at German bonds this morning and the sharp, panic selloffs seen in recent days are completely gone making one wonder if the ECB is done selling Bunds the CTAs who were riding the momentum train have all been squeezed out of their long positions and now the trend back to -0.20% can resume only to be followed by another abrupt 6-sigma move as the ECB once again sells inventory to buy itself more monetization runway. As a reminder, the ECB has to buy debt until September 2016 and it won't be able to if the 30-Year Bund is at -0.20% in a few months (or weeks).

While massive binges in stock buybacks and accounting gimmicks have continued to blur the actual profitability of businesses, the decline in jobless claims suggests that there is little room from further reductions in body counts. However, that does not mean that businesses must begin rapidly increasing employment and wages. Businesses are indeed hiring, but prefer to hire from the "currently employed" labor pool rather than the unemployed masses. The "bad news" is that for those unemployed, full-time employment remains elusive, and wages remain suppressed due to the high competition for available work.