From Asia to the US

A lot has happened overnight, here's a list of some of the headlines.

China...

There are fear in China as their stock market hit 30 day lows, the fears are centered on inflationary and property concerns. In response, Crude Oil was down on fears of China tightening economic policy.

Other Asian Governments...

Other regional governments in Asia are already moving to fight inflation.

Europe

The Euro got a slight boost as some European/German economic reports came in better then expected.

That's about all the good news out of Europe this morning.


European Union President Herman Van Rompuy said "we are in a survival crisis" with Ireland/Portugal on the brink, but that's not nearly the whole story.


Austria says enough to Greek lies about their financial condition and refuses to give more money to their bailout.


Finland opposes aide to Ireland-Eurozone coming apart?

In the US...

US retail sales rose 1.2%, but there are inflationary pressures coming right in time for the holiday season-more coming.


Ny Fed president Dudley says they are not trying to kill the dollar but remove treasuries from the market and force investors into other asset classes.

Commodities...

The CME raises gold margins by 6%, it doesn't sound like a lot, but they also just raised silver margins again from 6500-7250 (originally at 5000) making it clear they will raise margins at any time they feel necessary.

Because of the rise in cotton prices, retailers may soon be hit with a 30% price increase on cotton products (i.e. clothes) just in time for the Holiday season. Along with that increase comes the likelihood of Chinese clothing exporters facing a tougher environment, one that may shut down their factories.

So inflationary pressures may not be registering as alarming in today's economic data, but it seems they are coming. Furthermore, tightening across Asia is going to have some repercussions, remember I talked about retaliation for QE2, retaliation or not, the effects will be the same and not good.

Some of the most alarming news for the E.U. is the members that are backing away from "helping thy neighbor" and the possibility of a collapse in the Euro and possibly the Union itself. The E.U. president is surely not feeling good about it right now.

So we'll see about POMO shortly and how the macroeconomics around the world which are developing in a micro economic amount of time may influence the US markets and economy. There's not a whole lot to be bullish about this morning.