Morgan Stanley

People are already freaking out that Greece is just days away from defaulting on a $1.72 billion loan payment.  Just wait till the margin call on the $370 billion margin debt in China's stock markets. 

For the first time since October, 2008, China cuts both the benchmark lending rate and RRR on the same day, in a frantic attempt to sustain the country's equity bubble after stocks collapsed to the edge of bear market territory on Friday.

Following yesterday's furious market drop in Chinese stocks, just before the overnight open, Morgan Stanley came out with a much distributed report urging investors "Not to buy this dip", and so they didn't. As a result, the Shanghai Composite imploded, at one point trading down 8% while the Chinext and Shenzhen markets crashed even more. This was the single biggest Shanghai Composite one-day drop since 2007, and with a close at 4192.87 the SHCOMP is now on the verge of a bear market, down 19% from its June 12 highs. China's second largest market, Shenzhen, is now officially in a bear market.

Is it time to step in and buy the dip in Chinese mainland shares after last week’s harrowing 13% decline on the SHCOMP? Absolutely not, Morgan Stanley says.

*CHINEXT PLUNGES 8.3%, BIGGEST ONE-DAY LOSS EVER (down over 27% from highs)

Ron Paul, former congressman for Texas, laid plain the absurdity of central policy towards the markets in a recent interview with Amanda Diaz on CNBC. He believes a day of reckoning is in the cards because the central banks “can’t print money forever.”

With a DoJ probe having predictably gone nowhere, a group of pensioners and retirement funds are suing Wall Street and Markit for colluding to monopolize the CDS market. Amusingly, Citadel has been subpoenaed to discuss how it was shut out of creating a CDS trading platform by the "oligopolistic" activities of TBTF banks, even as the firm looks set to dominate the market for IR swaps.

While China is rather proud of the fact that it hasn't yet implemented outright QE, Beijing has now put in place a bewildering hodge-podge of hastily construed easing measures that can't seem to get out of their own way.

“If you distort markets for long periods of time and then you remove those distortions, you’re subject to unanticipated volatility,” TCW's Jerry Cudzil tells Bloomberg, adding that the firm is "as defensive as [it's] been since pre-crisis.”

"Starr alleges in its own right and on behalf of other AIG shareholders that the Government’s actions in acquiring control of AIG constituted a taking without just compensation and an illegal exaction, both in violation of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.... Having considered the entire record, the Court finds in Starr’s favor on the illegal exaction claim. As the Court noted during closing arguments, a troubling feature of this outcome is that the Government is able to avoid any damages notwithstanding its plain violations of the Federal Reserve Act. "

-  U.S. Court of Claims Judge Thomas Wheeler

European shares remain lower, close to intraday lows, with the banks and autos sectors underperforming and food & beverage, retail outperforming. Tsipras hardens Greek stance after collapse of bailout talks. The Italian and Swedish markets are the worst-performing larger bourses, the U.K. the best. The euro is weaker against the dollar. Greek 10yr bond yields rise; Spanish yields increase. Commodities decline, with copper, nickel underperforming and natural gas outperforming. U.S. Empire manufacturing, net TIC flows, NAHB housing market index, industrial production, capacity  utilization due later.

And just like that, Goldman wins again.

Approximately two years ago, a commentary was published entitled “The One Bank”. The empirical foundation for the article (and the paradigm) was an extensive computer model, produced by a trio of academics at a university in Switzerland, and originally reviewed in an article from Forbes.

• Razor-edge U.S. Congress vote to decide fate of Obama Pacific trade pact (Reuters)
• EU Readies for Default as Tsipras Drives Greek Finances to Brink (BBG)
• Greece Can’t Plan a Barbecue, Let Alone a Currency, Nielsen Says (BBG)
• IMF quits Greece talks amid ‘air of unreality’ as deal unravels (FT)
• Greece Counts Cost of One Man's Gamble (BBG)
• Merkel urges Greece and creditors to keep pushing for deal (Reuters)
• Fearful ECB starts countdown on Greek funding lifeline (Reuters)
• Greek stocks suffer further pummelling (FT)

Amid slumping export growth and the second-largest MERS outbreak on record, the Bank of Korea overnight cut its benchmark policy rate by 25bps to 1.5%, a record low.