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"Moody’s, which in 2013 began using a lower rate than governments do to calculate future liabilities, has estimated that the 25 largest U.S. public pensions alone have $2 trillion less than they need", Bloomberg reports.

In an rare convergence of Greek and German viewpoints, overnight former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis told the BBC that "economic reforms imposed on his country by creditors are "going to fail", ahead of talks on a huge bailout. At the same time, Germany's most noted Eurosceptic, Hans-Werner Sinn, in an interview with the newspaper "Passauer Neue Presse" also earlier today warned that any new aid would be "totally worthless" and "would never come back." Meanwhile, the Greek PM, who is facing an economic abyss  "does not eat, does not sleep, but he has no choice -- he has a debt to the people who put their faith in him" his mother Aristi Tsipras, 73, told Parapolitika weekly.

Last week, former Secretary of Education and US Senator Lamar Alexander wrote in the Wall Street Journal that a college degree is both affordable and an excellent investment. He repeated the usual talking point about how a college degree increases lifetime earnings by a million dollars, “on average.” That part about averages is perhaps the most important part, since all college degrees are certainly not created equal. In fact, once we start to look at the details, we find that a degree may not be the great deal many higher-education boosters seem to think it is.

Would you rather have one “Share” of the S&P 500 at $2,124, or 41 barrels of crude oil, or 1.86 ounces of gold? Yes, they are all worth the same amount at the moment, but the price relationship between the three has shifted over the decades.

The last time these criteria were met... stocks plunged over 90% over the next 24 months.

While the Ukraine civil war, which just last summer was the biggest market-moving event and media discussion topic, has faded into the collective subconsciousness, for residents on both sides of the proxy conflict it continues to be an all too real and tragic event, and none more so perhaps than for Anatoliy Lyubimov, a resident of central Ukraine's Kozyatinskiy district, who recently received a draft notice mobilizing him to join the Ukraine army in its ongoing war with the Donetsk separatists. The reason: Anatoliy is disabled and has no arms.

The preposterous Gong Show in Brussels over the weekend was the financial “Ben Tre” moment for the Euro and ECB. That is, it was the moment when the Germans - imitating the American military on that ghastly morning in February 1968 - set fire to the Eurozone in order to save it. In short, Greece will become an outright debtors’ colony and its government will function as page-boy legislators for the Troika occupiers. Needless to say, political and social upheaval will erupt when the full extent of the Tsipras surrender becomes evident, and the resulting political contagion will spread throughout the length and breadth of Europe as Greece implodes. In due course, the euro will collapse and the baleful Keynesian money printers’ regime in Frankfurt will be repudiated and dismantled. But not before European democracy has a brush with death, and European prosperity is extinguished for a generation.

The coming few months will prove challenging for the sector, and some small and medium U.S. producers may start missing their debt repayments or even file for bankruptcy. Quicksilver Resources and American Eagle Energy are two of the six U.S. based companies that have filed for bankruptcy in 2015 so far. Sabine Oil and Gas Corp. is the latest, and the biggest, U.S. producer to file for bankruptcy so far. Even mergers and acquisitions have slowed down considerably for the U.S. oil and gas industry in 2015. If the present trend persists, companies will have no choice but to cut their workforces even further to remain competitive and reduce their rising overheads. If oil prices remain in the range of $50 per barrel for longer than expected, even big operators such as Exxon Mobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips (who have so far not made any major layoffs) could start downsizing their workforce.

With Puerto Rico missing a payment on a bond overnight "due to non-appropriation of funds" but denying that this constitutes anything close to a default, the territory may be about to retake the limelight as Greece is now "fixed." As Peter Schiff explains, this is far from over... As in Greece, the Puerto Rican economy has been destroyed by its participation in an unrealistic monetary system that it does not control and the failure of domestic politicians to confront their own insolvency. But the damage done to the Puerto Rican economy by the United States has been far more debilitating than whatever damage the European Union has inflicted on Greece. In fact, the lessons we should be learning in Puerto Rico, most notably how socialistic labor and tax policies can devastate an economy, should serve as a wake up call to those advocating prescribing the same for the mainland. 

Last Sunday, Eurozone countries submitted yet another ultimatum to Greece: implement a whole round of reforms, from eliminating early retirement over scrapping exemptions from sales tax to opening shops on Sunday, and we’ll start negotiations on providing a new bailout of possibly €86bn from the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), the Eurozone’s bailout scheme, which will carry yet another series of strings attached. As Finland’s Foreign Minister Timo Soini said this week about the idea of a third Greek bailout round: “the Finnish public can’t understand that this is allowed to continue”. Can anyone else?

Even as Greek banks, severely depleted of cash and eligible collateral they can post with the ECB, stand to fight another day (and potentially face more withdrawals as soon as the Greek banks reopen supposedly on Monday) thanks to another €900 million liquidity infusion, investors in Greek bank shares will be less lucky: "to ensure a new bailout, investors in the country’s banks faced the prospect of their holdings being "wiped out" under the terms of a €25 billion recapitalization plan."

Having surged on Tuesday when the Iran "deal" was confirmed and tumbled yesterday despite inventory draws and production decreases, WTI crude is re-slumping back to a $50 handle this morning as traders cite more Iran concerns (flattening the curve) and a Genscape report that indicates inventory builds at Cushing once again...

Back in February, when the ill-fated Greek attempt to renegotiate its existing bailout (instead culminating with a new, €86 billion bailout program 5 months later) was launched, Eurogroup chief Jeroen Dijsselbloem rejected a request for a short-term financing agreement to keep the country afloat while it renegotiates the terms of its bailout program. "We don’t do bridge loans, Dijsselbloem told reporters in The Hague", when asked about Greece’s request. Turns out "we do" after all.

Today, an unholy alliance was born when Blythe Masters, the mother of the credit default swap and former member of the fabled "Morgan Mafia" was named chairman of Santander Consumer, the largest subprime auto lender in the US.