The Traderszone Network

Wall Street is emerging as a particularly dominant funding source for Republicans and Democrats in the presidential election, early campaign-finance reports filed with the Federal Election Commission show. In the 2012 election, donations from the financial-services sector made up roughly 20% of the $845 million raised by super PACs, or political-action committees, and other independent campaign groups. In the 2004 election, Wall Street and other financial groups were responsible for just $2.4 million of the money collected by political-action committees.

Simon Johnson says the Trans-Pacific Partnership wouldn’t boost the economy very much, but the TPP would increase inequality and put more Americans at risk of losing their jobs to trade.
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The discussions on overhauling the U.K.’s relationship with the European Union are still “at the starting point of the process,” the EU’s executive said Monday.
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Oilman Boone Pickens said U.S. crude hit bottom, and based on history, prices should double. He also said prices will rise to at least $52 per barrel.

Brian Abrahams of Jefferies, who has one of the best track records on Wall Street, just upgraded a biotech stock.

As we anxiously await the results out of Iowa, where we’ll get the first real test of whether “protest” candidates Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have a legitimate shot at upending America’s political establishment, Hillary Clinton is fighting to convince the electorate that the scandal involving her use of a private e-mail server to transmit state secrets is largely a distraction dreamed up by the GOP to derail what might otherwise have been a largely uncontested run for The White House.

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Puerto Rico on Monday announced it had made an exchange offer to financial creditors to reduce a $49.2 billion chunk of its debt to $26.5 billion.