Quick Overview

• Banks stress test, Fed meeting, flood of earnings, potential Swine flu quarantines are some of the headwinds facing the market this week.
  

• China and Taiwan sign agreements to allow investment across the Taiwan Strait in the latest sign of improving ties.
  

• Oil could approach the record prices of last July as the global recession halts investment in exploration and energy projects the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries Opec warned
  

• Students at a New York City high school were confirmed to have been sickened by the same strain of swine flu that has killed people in Mexico. The World Health Organization warned that this was a health event “of international concern”.

• China has bought 454 tonnes of gold in the past six years as its foreign-exchange reserves surged, bringing its total holding of the metal to $US31 billion.

Germany's slump risks 'explosive' mood as second banking crisis looms
"The Americans are ahead of the curve. European banks are exposed to US commercial real estate and to problems in Eastern Europe and Spain, where the situation is turning dramatic. We think the Spanish savings banks are basically bust and will need a government bail-out," said Mr Jeggli.

Quick Overview

• U.S. durable goods orders fell 0.8% in March
  

• MoM U.S. new home sales fell 0.6%.The inventory of new homes is at a 10.7 month supply.
  

• China has nearly doubled its gold reserves in the last five years as it diversified its foreign exchange reserves away from US dollar assets. China now holds 1,054 tons of gold in reserve.
  

• U.K. retail sales rose 0.3% MoM and 1.5% YoY
  

• German business confidence rose from 82.2 to 83.7.
  

• GDP in South Korea rose 0.1%.
  

• Spain's unemployment rate rose to 17.4%.
  

• MoM China’s coal imports from Vietnam and Canada surged by 138.9%.
  

Gaza farmers fear for their lives, watch as crops die
A Palestinian farmer feeds flowers to young cattle in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on March 23. The flower farmer, whose exports are crippled by an Israeli blockade on the Hamas-run Strip, disposed of part of his crop as animal feed.

Quick Overview

• (Reuters) - The pace of sales of existing homes in the United States fell 3.0 percent in March to a much lower-than-expected annual rate of 4.57 million units, the National Association of Realtors said on Thursday.
  

• U.S. jobless claims rose 27,000 last week to 640,000.
  

• Canada's retail sales rose 0.2% in February
  

• Industrial new orders in the Euro area fell 0.6% in February.
  

• Euro area composite index of services and manufacturing increased from 38.3 to 40.5
  

• The USDA said as of last week, 2008-2009 exports of:
  Corn rose from down 37% to down 36% YoY.
  Soybeans remained up 12% YoY.
  Wheat fell from down 19% to down 20% YoY.
  Cotton remained down 2% YoY.
  

Quick Overview

• MoM U.K.'s unemployment rate rose to 6.7% from 6.5%

• YoY Japan's exports fell 45.6% in March
  

• Australia's consumer prices rose 2.5%
  

• Canada’s leading indicators fell 1.3% in March
  

• The Federal Housing Finance Agency said U.S. home prices rose 0.7% MoM, but fell 6.5% YoY.
  

• The USDA said there were 593.2 million pounds of frozen pork in inventory, down 10% YoY.
  

• The USDA said there were 73.3 million pounds of frozen bellies in inventory, down 26% YoY

• The U.S. DOE said:
  Supplies of crude oil rose 3.7 million barrels to 370.6 million barrels
  Supplies of unleaded gasoline rose 800,000 barrels
  U.S. refineries operated at 83.4% of their operable capacity
  Gasoline demand fell 0.4% YoY
  Distillate demand fell 9.4%. YoY.

Quick Overview

• YoY U.K. consumer prices rose 2.9% in March
  

• Investor confidence in Germany rose from -3.5 to +13.0 in April
  

• Canada’s wholesale sales fell 0.6% in February
  

• The USDA said:
  5% of corn was planted, down 14% YoY.
  6% of spring wheat was planted, down 21% YoY.
  11% of cotton was planted, down 14% YoY.

Quick Overview

• Americans need to sharpen their financial know-how to help them best use their money, especially during the current economic crisis, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Monday.
  

• U.S. leading indicators fell 0.3% in March, the ninth consecutive month of decline.
  

• Australia's producer prices fell 0.4%.
  

• The International Coffee Organization reduced its estimate of the 2008-2009 world coffee crop from 127.8 to 127 million bags
  

• German Chancellor Angela Merkel struck an upbeat note on the economy on Monday, saying the downturn may have bottomed out.

Funds try to spot the great oil rebound
Crude at $50 does not square with the failure of the big oil companies to replace reserves over the last five years, or with the lack of coal and nuclear plants to plug the gap. It takes 10 years or so to put a nuclear power station into service.
Nor is it compatible with the breakneck industrialisation of Asia. China expects to have 140m cars on its roads by 2020, up sevenfold in a decade.

Bamboo shoots of recovery THE Chinese consider eight to be a lucky number because it sounds like the word meaning “prosperity”. And luck, combined with a massive fiscal stimulus, may yet help the government to achieve its growth target of 8% in 2009. Earlier this year, most economists thought such growth was impossible at a time of deep global recession, but some are now nudging up their forecasts.

Quick Overview

• General Electric earned $2.74 billion in Q1, down from $4.3 billion YoY -- better than expected.
  
  

• YoY Canada’s consumer prices rose 1.2% in March
  

• Construction output in the Euro area fell 1.8% MoM and 11.8% YoY.
  

• The Environmental Protection Agency is considering increasing the ethanol blend in gasoline from 10% to 15%.
  

• The USDA said that there were 11.152 million head of cattle on feed April 1, down 4.6% YoY.
  

Obama Orders Release of Secret Memos But Strongly Signals That He Will Block Any War Crimes Investigation It is also a curious position for the Attorney General who is saying that he will not allow people to be investigated for the commission of federal crimes despite his oath to enforce those very laws without political manipulation or interference.

Are We Organisms Or Living
Ecosystems?
There's a growing consensus among scientists that the relationship between us and the 100 trillion bacterial microbes in our bodies (outnumbering our human cells 10 to one) is a two-way street

Quick Overview

• U.S. jobless claims fell 53,000 last week to 610,000
  

• U.S. housing starts were at an annual rate of 510,000 in March, down 10.8% MoM and down 48.4% YoY
  

• The Philadelphia Federal Reserve's regional index of manufacturing rose from -35.0 to -24.4 in February.
  
  

• Canada's manufacturing sales rose 2.2% in February
  

• Industrial production in the Euro area fell 2.3% in February and 18.4% YoY
  

• Growth of China's GDP slowed to 6.1% in the first quarter of 2009, the weakest since 1992
  

• The USDA's expects beef exports to be down 4% in 2009.
  

• The USDA expects pork exports to be down 13% in 2009
  

• The number of idle containerships worldwide has fallen from 1.42 million to 1.31 million TEU the first drop since September.
  

A 'Copper Standard' for the world's currency system?
Hard money enthusiasts have long watched for signs that China is switching its foreign reserves from US Treasury bonds into gold bullion. They may have been eyeing the wrong metal.

Why is Goldman Sachs So Scared of Mike Morgan?
MW: What is the nature of the relationship between G-Sax and the political establishment in Washington?
Morgan: If I answered that question I would need to increase the thickness of my Kevlar body suit.

Quick Overview

• U.S. CPI fell 0.1% in March and 0.4% YoY. Excluding food and energy, prices rose 0.2% MoM and 1.8% YoY.
  

• The New York Fed's regional index of manufacturing rose from -38.2 to - 14.7
  

• U.S. industrial production fell 1.5% in March.
  

• The U.S. DOE said:
• Supplies of crude oil rose 5.6 million barrels to 366.7 million barrels
  Supplies of unleaded gasoline fell 900,000 barrels
  Supplies of heating oil fell 700,000 barrels.
  Refinery use fell from 81.8% to 80.4%.
  Gasoline demand fell 0.4% YoY
  Distillate demand fell 6.7% YoY.

• Coal stocks at U.S. power plants rose 1% WoW and 17.1 YoY. Electric companies had 164.3 million short tons of coal stockpiled, compared with 162.7 million tons reported last Tuesday and 140.2 million tons the same week last year.
  

• Russia’s Gazprom estimates its end-2008 reserves at 217.3 billion barrels of oil equivalent, the company said, representing an increase of 11% from 2007, when Gazprom's reserves were 196.4 billion.
  

• UBS , raised its shareholdings in China Shipping Container Lines to 6.97% from the previous 4.5%.
  

• Chinese manufacturers at Asia’s biggest export fair say orders are starting to recover.

• Ukrainian industrial production fell 30.4%, the eighth consecutive decline.

• Zinc rose to the highest level in six months on speculation demand is increasing in China.
  

Cross Your Fingers and Carry On I just don’t get it. Let’s assume that there is only a 10% chance that the International Energy Agency and everybody else predicting that global oil supplies will soon peak or plateau are right. That still makes peak oil about 100,000 times more likely than a smallpox outbreak in the United Kingdom.

Quick Overview

• U.S. producer prices fell 1.2% in March and 3.5% YoY.
  
  

• U.S. retail sales fell 1.1% in March vs. expected 0.2% rise
  
  
  

• Bernanke sees signs economic decline leveling out.
  
  

• Undeterred, Somali pirates hijacked three more ships.

• Germany joins France, Austria, Hungary, Greece and Luxembourg in banning the cultivation of GM corn, claiming that Monsanto’s MON 810 is dangerous for the environment.

• The world could run out of oil in 20 years. This grim scenario is not the prediction of environmentalists, but of Michel Mallet, the general manager of French energy giant Total's German operations.
  
  

Cash Beats Stocks for First Time in U.S. Survey
Investors had a record 45 percent of assets in cash, including money-market investments, and a record-low equity allocation of 41 percent in March, according to the survey data. Historical averages are 25 percent and 60 percent, respectively.