Testimony

Greece has already collapsed, and the only real question is whether the ECB will give Greek depositors time to withdraw some of the €120 billion in deposits it holds hostage with the frozen ELA, or if the ECB will admit the truth about the Greek insolvent banking system risking Eurozone contagion. A better question is just what is the purpose of the IMF whose intervention in Greece can be described in one word: disaster. It can also be described in eleven, as the creator of the Taylor Rule, John Taylor, has done in a blog post which can be summarized as follows: IMF Loans To Greece Bailed Out Banks And Worsened The Situation.

The Shanghai Composite Index had dropped as much as 3.8% to a 4 month low before the news that the cops were going to arrest anyone who was caught "maliciously shorting stocks", when everything suddenly took off, and the SHCOMP closed  a "Dramamine required" 5.8% higher, the biggest daily increase since March 2009! Stocks around the globe followed, with US equity futures wiping out much of yesterday's losses and up 1% at last check.

When it comes to Greece, and Europe in general, "hope" continues to remain the driving strategy. As Bloomberg's Richard Breslow summarizes this morning, "if you were looking for a word to describe the general feeling of equity markets today, you might well pick hopeful. U.S. equity futures opened higher and have been up all day. European bourses opened cautiously     higher as they await word, any word, from the European finance ministers or more importantly, Chancellor Merkel. Equity markets will continue to be very reactive to European headlines, but so far, no news has been taken as a reason for hope." Which incidentally, has been the general investment case for the past 6 years: "hope" that central banks know what they are doing.

What investors will focus on in the week ahead

While it remains unclear if the Holy Spirit was behind these trades, one thing is for sure: When Charles Erickson's investors opened their recent statements, they said, "Holy $hit!"

According to the IG's deputy Timothy Camus, two "lower-graded" employees at the IRS center in Martinsburg, West Virginia, erased 422 computer backup tapes that contained as many as 24,000 emails to and from former IRS official Lois Lerner.  It gets better: the tapes were erased in March 2014, months after congressional investigators requested all of Lerner's emails, and months after Zero Hedge, among many others, said to simply track down the server back ups. And the punchline: according to George, the workers might be incompetent, a lead investigator said Thursday, but there is no evidence they were part of a criminal conspiracy to destroy evidence.

With the US equity market jerking around on every headline (having jumped on DOE inventories?!), reports from MNI that the FOMC majority is not prepared to wait indefinitely for market participants to be fully on board, appear to have taken the shine off the exuberance. It seems yesterday's warning from Jerome Powell that there will be 2 rate hikes this year did not stall the stock bubble enough and so more "officials" leaked more information today.

In what can only be described as a shocking testimony, Greece’s former representative to the IMF, Panagiotis Roumeliotis, in front of the special parliamentary committee on the Greek debt, said that several Greek journalists were “trained” in Washington D.C. in order to support the positions of the IMF and the European Commission in Greek media.

Update: Dylann Roof, the suspect identified as the Charleston church shooter has been caught by authorities in Shelby, North Carolina

The FBI has identified the suspect in the shooting that killed 9 at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina on Wednesday evening. One eyewitness has offered a chilling first-hand account.

The US is playing a dangerous game of nuclear brinkmanship. Robert Scher, undersecretary of defense, has even floated the idea of a nuclear first strike against Russia. Claiming that Russia has violated the INF Treaty by testing a banned ground-launched cruise missile, Scher laid out possible options in testimony before Congress...

If you still think that the establishment Republicans in Congress represent real opposition to President Obama’s policies, you’re either extremely brainwashed or extremely stupid. Honestly, we wonder what it will take for some people to wake up. How many times do you need to be used, abused and conned by slimy politicians before you can shake off your political Stockholm Syndrome? Today's example is from chief ObamaTrade proponent Paul Ryan who gaffed Pelosi-like when he admitted (with regard to the super-secret TPP) "It’s declassified and made public once it’s agreed to," in other words - “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”

The infestation of cowardice, anti-intellectualism and fear has permeated almost every nook and crany of American life, including academics. So much so, that a college professor has just penned an article titled: I’m a Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Terrify Me. Even more worrisome, he felt the need to write it under a pseudonym due to the fear of backlash... This is more or less how politics functions in the U.S. today. Fake and superficial narratives take position at center stage, while the really big existential issues are never addressed, or merely brushed under the rug.

In an exclusive interview with Al Jazeera, a former al-Qaeda informant for the Ali Abdullah Saleh government claims Abdullah Saleh and his lieutenants not only turned a blind eye to AQAP operations in the country, but in fact played a direct role in facilitating al-Qaeda attacks even as the government accepted anti-terrorism financing from the US.

If there were any remaining questions about China’s maritime resolve, they were answered unequivocally on Tuesday with the release of the country’s 2015 defense white paper which indicates that Beijing is set to increase its “open seas protection” after countries with “ulterior motives” have busied themselves “meddling in South China Sea affairs.” Adding insult to injury for the US, China went on to broadcast a groundbreaking ceremony for two lighthouses Beijing is building on its new islands