16Sep2016 Market Update: Wall Street Lower, US Rig Count Up, WTI Crude Prices Down Sharply, US Dollar Touching 96, Gold Slipping

Here is the current market situation from CNN Money

North and South American markets are mixed. The IPC is higher by 0.34%, while the Bovespa is leading the S&P 500 lower. They are down 1.35% and 0.54% respectively.

Wall Street hit as Deutsche Bank fine triggers bank rout

(Reuters) – U.S. stocks were lower Friday afternoon as Deutsche Bank’s mammoth $14 billion fine weighed on financial stocks, especially on the big Wall Street banks.

U.S. House committee to hold hearing on Wells Fargo sales practices

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. House Financial Services Committee has opened a probe into Wells Fargo’s sales practices and plans to call the company’s chief executive before lawmakers at a hearing later in September, the committee chairman said on Friday.

Deutsche Bank to fight $14 billion demand from U.S. authorities

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Deutsche Bank said it would fight a $14 billion demand from the U.S. Department of Justice to settle claims it missold mortgage-backed securities, a shock bill that raises questions about the future of Germany’s largest lender.

Bayer in $66 billion bet that farmers will back linked-up supplies

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Bayer’s $66 billion purchase of Monsanto amounts to a long-term bet that farmers will grow to trust combinations of seeds and pesticides rather than continue to pick from ranges of separate products.

U.S. inflation stirring as healthcare, housing costs surge

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. consumer prices rose more than expected in August as healthcare costs recorded their biggest gain in 32-1/2 years, pointing to a steady build-up of inflation that could allow the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates this year.

New York AG investigating Exxon’s accounting practices: source

(Reuters) – New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is investigating Exxon Mobil Corp’s accounting practices and why the oil major hasn’t written down the value of its assets in the wake of a slump in oil prices, a person familiar with the matter said.

Central banks confirm formed task force on payments fraud

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A committee of the world’s major central banks said on Friday it has launched a task force to examine cyber security in cross-border banking and to ensure interbank payments are protected, confirming an earlier Reuters report.

Trump’s Mexico plans reignite Banamex questions for Citigroup

(Reuters) – For Citigroup Inc executives, being asked why they won’t sell their Mexican bank subsidiary Banamex is as annoying as the yapping of a Chihuahua. But the question keeps coming up.

Lively debate and ‘hawkish hold’ seen from Fed

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The Federal Reserve is set for a lively debate in the coming week and could give a clear signal of an interest rate rise to come even if it follows market expectations for a pause this month.

88% Probability We Just Entered Recession

Submitted by Thad Beversdorf via FirstRebuttal.com,

My last piece “The Matrix Exposed” generated a bit of a stir. And as per usual the PhD’s had some fairly colourful things to say to me regarding the notion that more money and more credit may actually stall an economy. But look I’m not trying to be offensive to anyone. I’m simply making a case that when consumer credit becomes the basis of growth, well you have a real problem. And that is a pretty reasonable argument even without the hoards of data backing it up.

But so allow me an attempt to mend some bridges. Let’s start by looking at the various existing frameworks that drive economic policy. We have Monetary policy (the banks), Fiscal policy (Congress), Microeconomic policy (Corporations). So let’s look at each.

Let’s begin with Fiscal policy.

The very first issue that should jump out to everyone is that Congress has been utterly ineffective for almost 2 decades now. That is because the partisanship has become so intense that there simply seems no room for compromise in an effort to get any reasonable piece of legislation done. What we are left with is a slew of outdated fiscal policies. Perhaps most detrimental is a corporate tax rate nearly twice that of many other developed nations.

The problem with relatively (to other nations) high corporate tax rates is it means that any domestic investment, everything else equal, has a significantly longer breakeven point. Said another way, the return on domestic investment is …

What’s The FBI Hiding That Triggered A Congressional Subpoena?

Submitted by Andrew Napolitano via LewRockwell.com,

Earlier this week, Republican leaders in both houses of Congress took the FBI to task for its failure to be transparent. In the House, it was apparently necessary to serve a subpoena on an FBI agent to obtain what members of Congress want to see; and in the Senate, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee accused the FBI itself of lawbreaking.

Here is the back story.

Ever since FBI Director James Comey announced on July 5 he was recommending that the Department of Justice not seek charges against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as a result of her failure to safeguard state secrets during her time in office, many in Congress have had a nagging feeling that this was a political, not a legal, decision. The publicly known evidence of Clinton’s recklessness and willful failure to safeguard secrets was overwhelming. The evidence of her lying under oath about whether she returned all her work-related emails that she had taken from the State Department was profound and incontrovertible.

And then we learned that people who worked for Clinton were instructed to destroy several of her mobile devices and to remove permanently the stored emails on one of her servers. All this was done after these items had been subpoenaed by two committees of the House of Representatives.

Yet the FBI — which knew of the post-subpoena destruction of evidence and which acknowledged that Clinton failed to return thousands of her work-related emails as she had been ordered by a federal judge to do, notwithstanding at least three of her assertions to the contrary while under oath — chose to overlook the evidence of not only espionage but also obstruction of justice, tampering with evidence, perjury and misleading Congress.

As if to d …

How Deutsche Bank Will Be Hurt by Mortgage Fines

The German lender faces demands to pay $14 billion. But, while that won’t be the final number, the penalty still looks damaging.

Why Fireworks in Bonds Haven’t Sparked Special FX

Key foreign-exchange rates have been remarkably stable in September, unlike the turmoil in stock and bond markets.

New iPhone Could Be Bad News for Wireless Industry

The success of Apple’s latest smartphone could spell the end of record-high wireless margins.

The Fed: Here’s how the Fed’s doves and hawks will use the new inflation and sales data

The latest economic data gives fresh arguments to hawks and doves going into next week’s Fed meeting

Capitol Report: Hello self-driving cars, goodbye 4.1 million jobs?

When the self-driving-car revolution firmly takes hold, there will be carnage, according to Wolf Richter of the Wolf Street blog. Not the car-crash kind — though that is a prevalent fear — but on the employment front.