"When the Federal Reserve signalled that it would begin to raise interest rates, it changed the story. Since then there hasn't been a clear path," he said.

Major bond investors got burned by this turn of events and while their initial reaction was to instruct the banks to switch their portfolios -- prompting a rise in trading fees -- they are now reluctant to take big bets.

Joshi says the long-run trend for low inflation and low interest rates is about to reassert itself. This might mean a few more fees for the bank's bond departments as asset managers adjust their holdings again. But in the longer term, it means a loss of business as investors go back to just holding long-term positions.

Prosecutors also said efforts to extradite Martin-Artajo and Grout, respectively citizens of Spain and France, to face the charges have been "unsuccessful or deemed futile."

Acting U.S. Attorney Joon Kim in Manhattan asked a federal judge for permission to drop charges that included securities fraud, wire fraud and falsifying records. Martin-Artajo and Grout were indicted in September 2013.

...

He stressed that the bank's governing council were unanimous both on the decision to keep its guidance unchanged and to avoid setting a precise date for a discussion of future policy, noting only that it would occur in the autumn.

...

Still, the ECB is unable to kick the can down the road indefinitely as its asset buys are set to run until the end of the year and policymakers argue that a decision on an extension or a gradual wind down must be taken in September or October.

This has no doubt been a force behind gold and silver (and maybe bitcoin?) in the last day...

The community, which had been split on how best to make the cryptocurrency more manageable, rallied behind a code upgrade known as SegWit2x, which aims to increase the network's transaction capacity. That fueled a rally on in bitcoin's price against the dollar, which had plummeted from a peak in June as concerns grew about its future in what has been called a civil war.

...

More than 93 percent of miners who function as the backbone of the digital tokens network locked in support for BIP91, the first necessary step in implementing SegWit2x, according to Coin Dance, a website tracking adoption. Bitcoin's miners are independent groups that verify and process bitcoin's transactions by solving complex computational problems, in order to be rewarded by fees and creation of the digital currency.

When banks step back from an opportunity to make vast sums of money because they finally see the risks, it's the moment the music stops for these conglomerates. That's when debt cannot be refinanced or serviced anymore. That's when the whole multi-layered debt constructs come tumbling down, and when Chinese authorities come face to face with their own black-swan event.

...

If the City's euro-denominated clearing operations are relocated to the continent, there's a risk that other operations will follow in their wake. That could be a major problem for a country that has grown so dependent on the financial industry. Almost 2.2 million people work in financial and related services such as accounting and law, two-thirds of them outside London. They produce nearly 12% of the UK's GDP, 11% of its tax take, and a net trade surplus of £72 billion ($104 billion).

One of the glaring ironies of the Brexit debate is the extent to which the UK has benefited from the creation of the euro, despite not being a member. Since the creation of the single currency at the turn of the century, Britain's share of key financial markets has exploded. London is now home to almost one-half of the entire global interest-rate OTC derivatives market, compared to 35% in 2001. Its share of global forex turnover increased from 33% to 41% between 2001 and 2014. And its share of global hedge fund assets doubled, from 9% to 18%.

INTERESTINGLY, the very next minute, some entity BOUGHT 2,373 August paper gold contracts, nearly offsetting the amount of contracts sold.... The question I have is whether or not the flash crash sale was perpetrated to induce the hedge fund black algos to mechanically sell, assuming stop-losses were triggered, to enable the buyer to buy 2,373 contracts at a lower price.

...

Unfortunately, whoever decided to implement this operation strategically executed it one day AFTER the reporting cut-off date for Friday's COT report. It's a neat little maneuver the bullion banks have doing for years as a method of covering up their "tracks in the snow." It will be impossible to analyze what occurred overnight when the COT report a week from Friday is released. The "winds" will have blown snow over the tracks.

...

The ramifications of rising interest rates do not only apply to home prices, but also on virtually every aspect of the economy. As rates rise so do rates on credit card payments, auto loans, business loans, capital expenditure profitability, leases, etc... given the current demographic, debt, pension and valuation headwinds, the future rates of growth are going to be low over the next couple of decades until a "clearing" process is completed. (This is what the "Great Depression" provided.)

While there is little room left for interest rates to fall in the current environment, there is also not a tremendous amount of room for increases.

This is what the bond market continues to tell you if you will only listen. With the 10-year bond close to 2%, and the yield curve flattening, future rate increases are limited due to limited GDP growth due to "secular stagnation." Therefore, bond investors are going to have to adopt a "trading" strategy in portfolios as rates start to go flat-line over the next decade.