Following the July 21st comment from Bernanke that “the economic outlook remains unusually uncertain,” John Chambers of CSCO followed up last night with “we are seeing a large number of mixed signals in both the market and from our customers’ expectations, and we think the words ‘unusual uncertainty’ are an accurate description of what is occurring.” Greece, the poster child for sovereign concerns, printed their 7th q/o/q GDP decline in a row, this time by 6% annualized and worse than expectations of a drop of 4.4%. Their unemployment rate is at 12%. Ireland, which saw selling in its debt yesterday due to worries of the cost of bank bailouts, sold 6 and 9 mo paper at yields about 100 bps above last month. With the Yen near 15 yr highs, the Japanese Finance Minister said he doesn’t like it. After their miserable failure of intervention in ’04, jawboning will be their main tool to weaken it.
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