Japan

The start of the Fed's most eagerly awaited two-day policy meeting in years has finally arrived with the market expecting Yellen to announce the first 25 bps rate hike in 9 years tomorrow with nearly 80% probability, and so far US equity futures are enjoying a last minute relief rally, while emerging market stocks rose for the first day in ten after the longest losing run since June. Europe's Stoxx 600 Index has also rebounded from a five-day losing streak, the worst in over four months.

Define irony: a world in which the past 7 years have been characterized by an unprecedented "search for yield." Well, now that junk debt is finally dumping, and yields are suging (over 8% blended average at last check) virtually nobody wants any of this so highly yielding junk.

With Nattie down 6% in early trading, the most in 2 months, pressing to new record lows and oil prices continuing their carnage, the energy complex is a mess. OilPrice.com's Nick Cunningham warns, while the glut in oil is expected to continue for the next year or so before balancing in late 2016, the pain for liquefied natural gas (LNG) could be just beginning...

While this may well be the most important week for capital markets in the past 9 years, when the Fed is widely expected to hike rates on Wednesday, precisely 7 years to the day since it cut rates to zero, here are the other key events to watch out for.

With just 72 hours to go until Yellen decides to soak up to $800 billion in liquidity, suddenly we have China and the Emerging Market fracturing, commodities plunging, and junk bonds everywhere desperate to avoid being the next to liquidate.

Following weakness in the middle-east and as WTI prices slide back into the red (on the heels of record speculative shorts in crude oil), Asia-Pac stocks are opening to the downside (but only modestly). On the bright side, the ZARpocalypse has been delayed briefly as the Rand is rallying on the back of Zuma hiring a new finance minister. On the dark side, offshore Yuan continues to plummet, down 6 of the last 7 days (down 14 handles!) and the Yuan fixed weaker for the 6th day in a ro wto July 2011 lows. and signaling more turmoil ahead of The Fed's decision. AsiaPac credit markets are gapping notably wider, EM stocks down 9th day in a row to 2009 lows, and EM FX is plunging.

We are nearing a crucial inflection point in the worldwide bubble finance cycle that has been underway for more than two decades. To wit, the world’s central banks have finally run out of dry powder. They will be unable to stop the credit implosion which must inexorably follow the false boom.

Calling for a moratorium on Muslim immigration “until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on,” Donald Trump this week ignited a firestorm of historic proportions. As all the old hate words - xenophobe, racist, bigot - have lost their electric charge from overuse, and Trump was being called a fascist demagogue and compared to Hitler and Mussolini. Why the hysteria? Comes the reply: Trump’s call for a temporary ban on Muslim immigration tramples all over “American values” and everything we stand for, including the Constitution. But is this really true? In fact, is this move a well thought out cunning plan?

"A flip to fiscal stimulus is the most likely catalyst for a Great Rotation out of “deflation plays” into “inflation plays”, undoubtedly the biggest investment decision of 2016. Sadly it took the New Deal and WW2 to end the dominance of “growth” over “value” in the 1930s."

While the world patiently waits for Janet Yellen to raise interest rates this month, the markets have been unable to decide as of yet whether such an event is good or bad thing.

It was a relatively calm overnight session in which European stocks wobbled modestly, Japan was up, China was down following its weakest fixing since 2011 as the PBOC continues to aggressively devalue since the SDR inclusion (stoking concerns capital outflows are once again surging), EM stocks stocks were weak and the dollar was unchanged ahead of today's retail sales data and next week's Fed meeting, and then suddenly everything snapped.

Americans have a broad and heavy bias away from unpleasant data. We are ready to be manipulated by vested interests in finance, economics, and climate change, whose interests might be better served by our believing optimistic stuff "that just ain’t so." We are dealing today with important issues, one so important that it may affect the long-term viability of our global society and perhaps our species. It may well be necessary to our survival that we become more realistic, more willing to process the unpleasant, and, above all, less easily manipulated through our need for good news.

at the beginning of the year Meyer's severance was worth $158 million. It has since declined to $60 million. During the same time the enterprise value of Yahoo's core operations, as valued by the market, has declined from negative $1 billion to negative $13 billion. Sounds like a fair trade.

While the headline import price figure suggested there is some hope that import prices will improve at the headline level in the coming months, something else has emerged which suggests that the real importing of others' deflation is only just starting. Or rather, someone else. China.

The U.S. is now experiencing the next stage of the great reset. Two pillars were put in place on top of an already existing pillar by the central banks in order to maintain a semblance of stability after the 2008 crash.  This faux stability appears to have been necessary in order to allow time for the conditioning of the masses towards greater acceptance of globalist initiatives, to ensure the debt slavery of future generations through the taxation of government generated long term debts, and to allow for internationalists to safely position their own assets.  The three pillars are now being systematically removed by the same central bankers. Why? They are simply ready to carry on with the next stage of the controlled demolition of the American structure as we know it.