In the UK, Bank of England rate-setters voted unanimously to leave QE unchanged at £375 billion for the first time since October last year and, in the US, Federal reserve chairman Ben Bernanke again hinted that money printing would be slowed later this year if the economy remains strong. However, both central banks were clear that the end of QE would not mean the end of monetary stimulus. Minutes to the Bank’s July rate-setting meeting showed that alternatives to QE are likely to be launched as early as August, prompting speculation that rates could be low until 2016.

At the Fed, Mr Bernanke stressed that “a highly accommodative monetary policy will remain appropriate for the foreseeable future” even if QE is tapered off. Jittery stock markets reacted calmly to the news, in contrast with the wild reaction when the Fed first hinted at “tapering” in June. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average edged 0.2 percent higher after Mr Bernanke’s testimony. In London, the FTSE 100 closed up 0.2 percent at 6,571.93 points.

Traders and economists expect the US to begin winding down its $85 billion-a-month QE programme in September and halt it completely in the middle of next year. But, Mr Bernanke was careful to say that the Fed will respond to the data, and could accelerate the programme if the economy weakened.

The latest remarks by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán are unlikely to improve his fractured relations with Germany or the EU. Speaking on Tuesday, he invoked the memory of World War II to warn against German leadership of the European Union.

"When a person reads about a rapprochement between Russia and an EU led by Germany, he looks out to see whether his children are still in the yard," Orbán said on Tuesday in remarks to an annual meeting of Hungarian ambassadors, according to the German news agency DPA. Orbán made the comment in answer to a question by one diplomat about relations between the EU and Russia.

Many people in Central and Eastern Europe are wary of any signs of closer ties between Moscow and Berlin because they remember the Hitler-Stalin non-aggression pact which carved up much of Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence.

One Israeli official described the new rule which will come into force on Friday, as an “earthquake” for EU-Israeli relations. The notice prohibits all 28 EU states from providing any “grants, prizes and financial instruments funded by the EU” that benefits anyone in the settlements. The settlements – effectively villages and towns – are Jewish communities built on what is internationally regarded as Palestinian land. They are considered illegal under international law.

The new regulation requires any new agreement to carry a clause guaranteeing that the settlements are not part of the arrangement, and also apply to the annexed Golan Heights. Mr Netanyahu, said: “As prime minister of Israel, I will not allow the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who live in the West Bank, Golan Heights or our united capital, Jerusalem, to be harmed. We will not accept any external diktats about our borders. This matter will be settled only in direct negotiations between the parties.”

While many in Israel deny it, the settlements are regarded by EU officials as one of the biggest obstacles to any lasting peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Paul Fisher, the Bank’s executive director for markets, told MPs on the Treasury Select Committee (TSC) that a QE programme may have been “manipulated” by gilt edged market makers (GEMMs) in October 2011. He passed the information onto the financial regulator, which is still investigating the case.

If evidence of attempted manipulation is found, he said: “It would be thoroughly reprehensible and appropriate actions would follow.” The claims follow the Libor rate-rigging scandal, which shamed the banking industry and saw several lenders fined hundreds of millions of pounds. Three bankers have been charged with fraud in the UK. The latest allegations relate to a “reverse auction” of gilts conducted by the Bank on October 10, 2011, shortly after QE2 started. On that day, one lender tried to sell gilts to the Bank at an inflated price. Officials spotted the sudden spike and pulled out of the deal.

The Bank then reprimanded the lender and passed the information to the Financial Services Authority, now the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), to investigate whether there had been market abuse. The subject was raised in Parliament later that month, when David Cameron said bankers caught trying to rig gilt prices should face the “full force of the law”.

A trans-Atlantic gap of 5.6 percentage points is unprecedented in modern times and appears to reflect the starkly different policies pursued by the two major blocs since the Lehman crisis. The OECD listed many measures that can help mitigate the effects of unemployment and ease the way for displaced workers to find new jobs but left no doubt that the real villain is the contractionary policy mix in Europe.

“The main policy priority must be to take action to underpin aggregate demand and boost consumer and investor confidence. Monetary policies have to remain accommodative. The speed of fiscal consolidation should be calibrated to avoid excessive tightening,” it said. Michael Darda, from MKM Partners, said the great difference between the US and Europe is that bold action by the US Federal Reserve has offset austerity, while the European Central Bank has chosen not to do so. “Monetary policy remains highly relevant,” he said.

This is not a recent phenomenon, but now there are several factors which are accelerating this trend. One of them is Obamacare. The truth is that Obamacare actually gives business owners incentive to cut hours and turn full-time workers into part-time workers, and according to the Wall Street Journal and other prominent publications this is already happening all over the United States. Perhaps this is part of the reasons why the US economy actually lost 240,000 full-time jobs last month.

In fact, if you can believe it, the second largest employer in the United States is now a temp agency. Kelly Services is actually the second largest employer in the country after Wal-Mart. Isn't that crazy? At this point, employees are increasingly considered to be expendable "liabilities" that can be dumped the moment that their usefulness is over.

At this point, the economic paradigm that the Federal Reserve has constructed only works if interest rates remain super low. If they rise, everything falls apart. Much higher interest rates would mean crippling interest payments on the national debt, much higher borrowing costs for state and local governments, trillions of dollars of losses for bond investors, another devastating real estate crash and the possibility of a multi-trillion dollar derivatives meltdown.

Everything depends on interest rates staying low. Unfortunately for the Fed, it only has a certain amount of control over long-term interest rates, and that control appears to be slipping. The yield on 10-year US Treasuries has soared in recent weeks. So have mortgage rates.

If interest rates rise, the US government could be looking at some very hairy interest payments very rapidly. For example, if the average rate of interest on US government debt just gets back to 6 percent (and it has been far higher than that in the past), the federal government will be shelling out a trillion dollars a year just in interest on the national debt.

But while current prices and technical charts may leave some with the feeling that gold’s Bull Run is over and the bubble has popped, others are scooping up as much yellow and silver metal as they can find, and in some cases they’re doing it by the tens of thousands of ounces.

According to recent data from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, private investors are rapidly exchanging their paper holdings and turning them into deliverable physical assets, an indication that the purported ‘free market’ price for gold on global exchanges is grossly undervalued.

If we are to believe that investors are losing interest in precious metals, then how is it possible that major gold retailers like JM Bullion were reporting weeks-long delivery delays citing “astounding volume” from the retail sector? Even the US Mint has seen such high demand (118% increase year-over-year) that they have actually suspended the sale of some of their gold American Eagles because they are unable to source the gold blanks required to strike the coins.

Obviously what mainstream analysts are reporting and what is happening in the real world are two different things, as evidenced by the large-scale physical deliveries being reported around the globe.

It opens the way for the first legally recognised same-sex weddings to take place in England and Wales by next summer and brings the centuries-old understanding of marriage as being solely between a man and a woman to an end.

Peers gave their assent to the third reading of the Government’s same-sex marriage bill without a formal vote after a short debate in the Lords, also backing plans for a review of pension arrangements for gay couples. Unless MPs object to the bill at the eleventh hour during a short Commons debate set to take place on Tuesday, it is expected to receive royal assent within days.

Baroness Stowell, the Government spokesman who steered the bill through the Lords, told a chamber packed with peers wearing pink carnations, that it was an “historic” achievement.

The “public debt subject to limit” - as the Treasury calls the portion of the federal debt that is legally limited by Congress - first hit $16,699,396,000,000.00 at the close of business on May 17. Up to that point in fiscal year 2013, according to the Daily Treasury Statement, the Treasury had already redeemed approximately $4,776,995,000,000.00 in US debt instruments (bills, notes and bonds) that had matured. At the same time, the Treasury had issued $5,354,508,000,000.00 in new debt instruments. That means that, on net, as of May 17, the part of the federal government’s debt publicly circulated in instruments like bills, notes and bonds had increased $577,513,000,000 for the fiscal year.

Thus, over the past 56 days, the net value of US Treasury Securities circulating in the public has increased by $51.586 billion ($629,099,000,000 minus $577,513,000,000). How could the value of extant US Treasury Securities increase by $51.586 billion during a 56-day period when the federal government’s debt subject to the legal limit set by Congress has remained constant at $16,699,396,000,000.00 - just $25 million below the legal limit?

On May 18, the day after the debt began its long stay at $16,699,396,000,000.00, Treasury Secretary Lew sent a letter to House Speaker John Boehner. In the letter, Lew said the Treasury would begin implementing what he called “the standard set of extraordinary measures” that allows the Treasury to continue to borrow and spend money even after it has hit the legal debt limit. How many days did Lew think he could keep the debt just under the debt limit while the Treasury continued to borrow money?

Many on Wall Street probably assumed that the Fed had an unlimited ability to pull the wool over the eyes of the American public. Yet the reaction with interest rates concludes an interesting chapter in American central banking policy. The Fed can no longer preach for a lower interest rate. After the brutal reaction, the Fed has softened its rhetoric on the “taper” of quantitative easing even though there is really no evidence showing the Fed is tapering anything at all.

The quick reversal in interest rates signifies a strong reaction by the market. It is fascinating to see how much outside money is now flowing back into the US to purchase stocks, real estate, and other real tangible goods. In other words, global investors are now demanding payment for all that cheap credit lent out. The era of cheap debt is now reversing and the piper is demanding to be paid.

From Wilder: ...[Xia] said Beijing needs to stop using bland rhetoric about "stabilizing the economy" and focus on tackling a debt burden whose interest payments alone tally nearly CNY6 trillion a year. Although monetary printing presses have kept the worst of the crisis at bay, the central government needs to face up to China's debt problem and brace the market for a deep and painful adjustment, he told a forum here at the weekend.

"We need to find ways to let the bubble burst and write off the losses we already have as soon as possible to avoid an even bigger crisis," Xia said. Wilder notes interest payments now total nearly CNY6 trillion a year.

A broad agreement for the "economic corridor" was among eight pacts signed following a meeting in Beijing between Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. The transport link was described as a "long-term plan" to connect the Chinese city of Kashgar to the port of Gwadar, more than 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) away across the towering Karakoram mountains and Pakistan's lawless Baluchistan province.

Another agreement will see a fiber optic cable laid from the Chinese border to the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi that will boost Pakistan's access to international communications networks. China is to provide 85 percent of the financing for the three-year project's $44 million budget, with Pakistan covering the rest.

Last week, in the Syrian port city of Latakia, several pre-dawn explosions were reported to have destroyed Russian missiles that had recently arrived and were being temporarily stored at the port. A spokesman for the opposition Free Syrian Army, describing the July 5 attack, said Tuesday that “It was not the FSA that targeted this. It is not an attack that was carried out by rebels.”

The FSA spokesman, Qassem Saadeddine, went on to say “This attack was either by air raid or long-range missiles fired from boats in the Mediterranean.” The suggestion is that Israel was behind the attack. The Russian-made Yakhont anti-ship missiles, it is speculated, could have been considered a threat to Israel’s naval forces.

Israel has not commented on the attack. In May, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon commented that Israel “will know what to do” in the event that Russian missiles were delivered to Syria. Israel has carried out previous airstrikes in Syria, including an attack upon vehicles carrying weapons towards the Lebanese border. This massive military alert is seen as a response to the disclosure Friday to CNN, by unnamed US officials, that the destruction of the Russian missiles in Syria was a result of Israeli airstrikes.