Goldman Sachs

• Developed-Country Growth Slows, OECD Says (WSJ)
• Charter Agrees to Buy Time Warner Cable for About $55 Billion (BBG)
• Dollar hits one-month high as periphery woes weigh on Europe (Reuters)
• IMF Says Yuan No Longer Undervalued Amid Reserve-Status Push (BBG)
• Hanergy secured $200m loan ahead of solar group stock tumble (FT)
• Congressional Inaction Threatens NSA Spy Program (WSJ)
• Germany sees progress on Greece, EU officials to confer on Thursday (Reuters)
• Hayes ‘motivated by greed’, prosecutor says in Libor case (FT)
• Whistleblowers Find SEC Rewards Slow and Scarce (WSJ)

The music industry was the first entertainment business to confront the digital transition, although, as Goldman notes, it was not exactly a willing pioneer... It wasn’t until 2004 when Apple iTunes debuted that consumers grew more and more primed to free music; and after a small bump in sales in 2004 from the launch of iTunes, the declines resumed as the double whammy of album unbundling and a 30% wholesale price cut took its toll. From 2004 to 2014, US music unit and dollar sales declined cumulatively by another 50%, erasing US$5 bn in annual sales.

"I would be more than happy to see the cradle of democracy put the imperial autocrats and financial kleptocrats in their place, teaching them a thing or two about enlightened self governance."

On such a 'patriotic' weekend, we thought it appropriate to consider who is the 'MVP' superhero of our time. Captain America? No. How about Ironman? No. What about Superman? Nope... The most valuable superhero of our time is a dark, deranged masked-human dressed in black...

Spoiler alert: these are not the requirements of an "everyday American"...

Along with the privilege of leadership, comes responsibility.  The entire financialized abominNation is a national disgrace.

China is building the world’s greatest economic development and construction project ever undertaken: The New Silk Road. The project aims at no less than a revolutionary change in the economic map of the world. It is also seen by many as the first shot in a battle between east and west for dominance in Eurasia. For the world at large, its decisions about the Road are nothing less than momentous. The massive project holds the potential for a new renaissance in commerce, industry, discovery, thought, invention, and culture that could well rival the original Silk Road. It is also becoming clearer by the day that geopolitical conflicts over the project could lead to a new cold war between East and West for dominance in Eurasia.

Last Thursday, it was Avon that was cheated higher after a fake takeover filing provided just enough momo juice for the machines to destroy any and every short in the stock instantly. Today, it was Quest Diagnostics turn to be manipulated.

The highlight of the overnight newsflow may have been the BOJ's preannounced statement that it is keeping its QE unchanged (which comes as no surprise after a few weeks ago the BOJ adimitted it would be unable to keep inflation "stable" at the 2% in the required timeframe), but the highlight of overnight markets was certainly China, where the Banzai Buyers have reemerged, leading to another whopping +2.8% session for the Shanghai Composite which has now risen to a fresh 7 years high.

Janet Yellen at the Federal Reserve believes that the partying on Wall Street and in the financial institutions may “lead to trouble”.

The big news overnight was neither the Chinese manufacturing PMI miss nor the just as unpleasant (and important) German manufacturing and service PMI misses, but that speculation about a rate hike continues to grow louder despite the abysmal economic data lately, with the latest vote of support of a 25 bps rate increase coming from Goldman which overnight updated its "Fed staff model" and found surprisingly little slack in the economy suggesting that the recent push to blame reality for not complying with economist models (and hence the need for double seasonal adjustments) is gaining steam, and as we first suggested earlier this week, it may just happen that the Fed completely ignores recent data, and pushes on to tighten conditions, if only to rerun the great Trichet experiment of the summer of 2011 when the smallest of rate hikes resulted in a double dip recession.

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.

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 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)

Germany throws its support behind a Greek referendum on euro membership while Putin invites Athens to join BRICS Bank. Meanwhile, Yanis Varoufakis has a plan for resolving Greece's debt problem — and he imagines the ECB chief is terrified of it.