Speaking in Berlin, Wolfgang Schaeuble said Greece's financial problems came from years of profligacy where the country "lived beyond its means" and failed get enough people to pay taxes. He also suggested that the radical Left government had faltered in its bid to secure financial aid from Russia for a much-vaunted gas pipeline deal. Greece managed to avoid defaulting on its creditors on Wednesday, making a €200 million loan repayment to the International Monetary Fund.

In a sign that talks over a reforms-for-cash deal were progressing, the ECB boosted its emergency cash (ELA) to Greece's banks by €2 billion on Wednesday - that largest single dose of funds since Syriza were elected in late January. This takes the total ELA limit to around €79 billion, and makes the latest dose almost double the 12 previous increments drip fed by the central bank. The ECB also refrained from increasing the collateral requirements on the country's stricken banks.

Germany's veteran minister said Europe was still willing to rescue Greece from the abyss of default, should Athens finally capitulate to creditor demands to raise revenues and cutback on spending promises.

We concluded that "It’s good to be TBTF" (to big to fail) because clearly no matter how many laws are violated and how much money is stolen (LIBOR was the reference security for nearly $1 quadrillion in global rate-sensitive derivatives) nobody ever goes to prison, there are absolutely no negative consequences, and the cost of running a criminal organization is tiny - the settlement usually amounts to far less than 1% of the gains reaped from years of illegal activities.

Frankly, at this point one should just sit back and watch in amusement, because until the revolution and/or war predicted by Paul Tudor Jones arrives and the guillotines start working overtime, nobody in a position of wealth or power will be held accountable.

Don't worry: former CFTC chief Gary Gensler will soon be US Treasury Secretary - then it will be his job to make sure no criminal with a net worth over a few million dollars ever has to face the US "judicial" system. In the meantime, the CFTC will never do its actual job and root out maniupulation and rigging in precious metal markets...

As for the piece de resistance:

“Deutsche Bank’s illegal conduct involved nearly a decade of lying, cheating, and stealing. This criminal conduct was pervasive and widespread, involving dozens of employees from Deutsche Bank offices including New York, Frankfurt, Tokyo, and London. Deutsche Bank’s traders engaged in a brazen scheme to defraud Deutsche Bank’s counterparties and the worldwide financial marketplace by secretly manipulating LIBOR. The conduct is appalling. It was a complete criminal fraud upon the worldwide marketplace.”

Are you really confused why "complete criminal fraud" by a bank goes unpunished? Here is a hint: go to OpenSecrets, type in Deutsche Bank, and you will find just who the German bank paid off to avoid any true penalty. To your great surprise you may even find that the biggest beneficiary of DB's generosity in 2014 is, drumroll, the Democratic National Convention...

British-made Tornado GR4 ground attack fighters and Eurofighter Typhoons are playing a central role in the Royal Saudi Air Force’s bombing campaign against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Saudi military sources say they have an estimated 100 combat warplanes taking part in bombing operations against Houthi positions on an almost daily basis. Of these about 50 per cent are British-made Tornados and Eurofighters that have been sold to the Saudis over the past 30 years as part of the controversial al-Yamamah arms deal negotiated with BAE Systems, which makes the aircraft.

The Saudis have also spent an estimated £2.5 billion upgrading their fleet of 73 Tornados, which have been at the forefront of the bombing campaign using their British-made Paveway IV and Storm Shadow bombs.

By contrast, British military experts estimate that the RAF, which has seen the number of front line combat squadrons cut from about 30 at the time of the First Gulf War to seven, could muster just 36 Tornado GR4 bombers if it had to undertake a similar air campaign.

In a government paper, Athens said “serious disagreements and contradictions” between the International Monetary Fund and its European partners were preventing the country coming to a long-awaited agreement to extend its bail-out programme

The paper suggested the IMF has refused to concede any ground to Athens on labour market reforms and pensions policy, while the European Commission was unwilling to provide any further relief on Greece’s €315 billion debt mountain or relax its fiscal targets on the country.

The result, say the Greeks, are “red lines everywhere: pension reforms, labour reforms, and the primary surplus”. “Under these circumstances there can be no compromise. The responsibility belongs exclusively to the institutions and their weakness of communicating with each other.”

German courier workers have been affected by the strikes, meaning many cash machines have struggled to get stocked this week. The strikes come as embattled Athens is ready to impose a surcharge on all cash machine withdrawals, in a desperate bid to stop money fleeing the banking system.

Greece has also been forced to raid the coffers of its government hospitals, universities and pensions in order to keep paying out its public sector wages. The Syriza government has also proposed hitting the wealthiest 500 Greeks with a one-off levy to generate funds.

The European Central Bank, which is ultimately responsible for making sure that no eurozone bank goes under, is due to have its say on Greece today.

The company did not give a figure for the investment in the factory, but said its production capacity could reach a value of 2 billion yuan (US$322 million) annually. Robots are set to take over in many factories in the Pearl River Delta, the area of southern China known as the ‘world’s workshop’ because of the huge export manufacturing industry there, as labour shortages bite and local authorities face the need to spur innovation to counter the economic slowdown.

Since September, a total of 505 factories across Dongguan have invested 4.2 billion yuan in robots, aiming to replace more than 30,000 workers, according to the Dongguan Economy and Information Technology Bureau. By 2016, up to 1,500 of the city’s industrial enterprises will began replacing humans with robots.

Officials believed the trees will continue to die as summer approaches. “It is almost certain that millions more trees will die over the course of the upcoming summer as the drought situation continues and becomes ever more long term and as bark beetle populations continue to expand,” he said.

William Patzert, climatologist for Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has told the Los Angeles Times that Calfornia's dwindling snowpack and warmer temperatures pose an extreme fire danger in the state's forests. Warmer temperatures are rapidly drying out the state, he said. Traditionally by spring, the forest is green and lush due to a substantial rainy season. But four years of drought and warm temperatures have taken their toll.

Early last month we warned that California’s drought was approaching historic proportions and that if climatologists were to be believed, the country may see a repeat of The Dirty Thirties as experts cite “Dust Bowl” conditions. Governor Jerry Brown has called for statewide water restrictions aimed at reducing consumption by 25%.

Now, the conservation calls are getting much louder as the state’s water regulators have approved “unprecedented” measures aimed at curtailing the crisis.

Iraq, South Sudan, Syria, Democratic Republic of Congo and Nigeria had the most newly displaced people. Jan Egeland, the NRC's secretary general, said the figures should act as a wake-up call to political leaders. "Global diplomats, UN resolutions, peace talks and ceasefire agreements have lost the battle against ruthless armed men who are driven by political or religious interests rather than human imperatives," he said in a statement.

The NRC's annual Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) report said Syria had the highest number of internally displaced people - people who remain in their homeland, as opposed to refugees, who cross borders. It said 7.6 million people had left their homes because of the conflict, now in its fifth year - at least 35% of the population.

The robot weighs 140kg and it is powered by specially designed software and advanced actuators (a type of motor that controls mechanisms). SeppuKuma (“Suicide Bear”) also offers 23 very different methods one can choose to end their life, including Everlasting Sleep (lethal injection), Pillow Kisses (suffocation), Peaceful Breath (helium asphyxia) and Sleepy time Hug which is where the robotic bear strangles its partner until their pulse stops for 15 minutes. All of these attributes enable the SeppuKuma to give its patient the power to choose how they get to end their own life.

The researchers have been working to develop a robot to assist with patient suicide since 2009. The first version was Robot for HAIRAKUMA which could lift a weight of up to 61kg. The second incarnation, HAIRAKUMA-II, weighs 230kg and can carry a weight of up to 80kg. The HAIRAKUMA-II was recalled immediately from test markets after a glitch in the AI Systems vital sign monitor left the bodies of 12 beta testing patient’s bodies horribly disfigured but still alive.

“The very sleek and friendly look is aimed at radiating an atmosphere of strength, forgiveness and cleanliness at the same time,” research leader Tsuneki Suko said. “We voted for this design among options presented by our designer. We hope to commercialize our suicide robot in the not too distant future.”

Timothy Adams, the chief executive of the IIF, which represents the world’s biggest banks, described liquidity as the “top issue” at high level meetings of central bankers, chief executives and other financial institutions.

He warned that the raft of regulation introduced in the wake of the 2008 crisis could potentially cause market gyrations larger than last October’s “flash crash” in US Treasuries. While Mr Adams supports tougher rules that have made the banks more resilient, he said a complex web of regulatory reform may have left banks less able to respond to the next crisis.

“There’s just less capacity for making markets,” he said. “Officials will say: we expect some volatility and this was part of this broader scheme of regulatory reform. But for the private sector there is this issue of: is the total effect of all of these various regulatory changes likely to produce outcomes larger than each individual regulatory reform and its consequences? The cumulative unintended result could end up being much larger than the one-off intended - we just don’t know.”

Nobel Prize–winning economist Robert Shiller has added a new chapter to his bestselling book in which he argues that bond prices are “irrationally high”. The global bond bubble has ballooned to more than 76 trillion dollars, and interest rates have never been lower in modern history. In fact, 25 percent of all government bonds in Europe actually have a negative rate of return at this point.

There is literally nowhere for the bond market to go except for the other direction, and when this bull market turns into a bear it will create chaos and financial devastation all over the planet. For years, ultra-low interest rates have enabled governments around the world to go on a debt binge unlike anything the world has ever seen.

Showing very little restraint since the last financial crisis, they have piled up debts that are exceedingly dangerous. If interest rates were to return to historical norms, it would instantly create the greatest government debt crisis in history.

The irrational global financial bubble that investors have been enjoying for the past few years has stretched on far longer than it should have. But that is the way irrational bubbles work – they just keep going even when everyone can see that they have become absolutely absurd. However, eventually something always comes along and bursts them, and once that happens markets can crash very, very rapidly.

"Over the past few weeks, my office has been inundated with calls referring to the Jade Helm 15 military exercise scheduled to take place between July 15 and September 15, 2015," Gohmert said in a Tuesday statement. "This military practice has some concerned that the US Army is preparing for modern-day martial law. Certainly, I can understand these concerns."

"When leaders within the current administration believe that major threats to the country include those who support the Constitution, are military veterans, or even 'cling to guns or religion,' patriotic Americans have reason to be concerned," Gohmert wrote.

The congressman took particular issue with the layout and labels of the Pentagon map for the exercise. "Once I observed the map depicting 'hostile,' 'permissive,' and 'uncertain' states and locations, I was rather appalled that the hostile areas amazingly have a Republican majority, 'cling to their guns and religion,' and believe in the sanctity of the United States Constitution." Gohmert called on the Pentagon to change the map, the names on the map, and said "the tone of the exercise needs to be completely revamped so the federal government is not intentionally practicing war against its own states."

Only members of the House and Senate are currently allowed to view the text of the deal, and even they are forbidden from discussing what it contains. As a new report from Politico published Monday details, "If you’re a member who wants to read the text, you’ve got to go to a room in the basement of the Capitol Visitor Center and be handed it one section at a time, watched over as you read, and forced to hand over any notes you make before leaving."

As for the public, a few unauthorized leaks of the text have previewed a deal that would "dramatically expand the power of corporations to use closed-door tribunals to challenge — and supersede — domestic laws, including environmental, labor, and public health, and other protections."

The lack of transparency over the trade agenda has become a central argument for a growing number of opponents, who see the deal as a corporate power grab and "feel they are being treated with disrespect and condescension," as Politico's Edward-Isaac Dovere explains.