Overnight

Fallout or spillover takes different forms and the fact that the U.S. economy has been weaker than predicted or expected by those economic soothsayers came to light as Reuters noted overnight: U.S. gross domestic product increased at a 1.2 percent annual rate in the April-June period, less than a half of a 2.6 percent growth rate economists had expected.

"Investors have been shifting money to Asia, which is likely to be least affected by Brexit and as the U.S. Fed appears to be in no hurry to raise interest rates," said Yukino Yamada, senior strategist at Daiwa Securities. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS rose 1.1 percent, hitting its highest level in about a year. Asian markets showed limited reaction to a better-than-expected private survey on China's factory sector.

The Caixin/Markit Manufacturing Purchasing Managers' index (PMI) rose to a 1 1/2-year high of 50.6, beating market expectations of 48.7 and up from 48.6 in June. An official survey showed factory activity eased in July.

The Nikkei 225 was up0.30%, turning around an earlier loss; the Korean Kospi edged higher 0.6%; the Hang Seng rallied  nearly 1.4% and the Australian ASX 200 gained 0.79% while in China shares took a break with the Shanghai Composite falling 1.08% and Shenzhen Composite down almost 2%.

The U.S. dollar hovered near a three-week low against the yen after it's surge Friday following the BOJ's action disappointed investors who were hoping for more help. Up nearly 3% on Friday at 101.97, the yen settled lower overnight at 102.59 against the dollar. The dollar stood near a three-week low against the yen, which got a lift on Friday after the Bank of Japan's stimulus fell short of markets' expectations. Gold XAU= also hit a near three-week high of $1,355.1 per ounce on Friday and last traded at $1,351.5.

Meanwhile, NewYork Federal Reserve President William Dudley made some news, suggesting it was "premature" to count out any rate hikes this year if the economy suddenly improved. Dudley is close with Fed Chair Janet Yellen and viewed as a dove by many. He is, however, along with Yellen and one or two others the top dogs at this Fed  and his barking gets attention accordingly.

Stop At Nothing

Whom do you trust?

Well, if you're a German a fair question today is, do you trust Chancellor Angela Merkel when it comes to your safety?

Given recent events in Germany more and more Germans are saying no, they don't trust her, as the division about open borders spreads around the globe. Globalists want to criticize any and all who question them and their madness for one world government.

Here in the last two paragraphs of the Economist, a globalist-pushing magazine, is everything you need to know if you don't like that status qou and have any questions about the way the globalists have been running things.

They are from the latest issue

As for tactics, the question for pro-open types, who are found on both sides of the traditional left-right party divide, is how to win. The best approach will differ by country. In the Netherlands and Sweden, centrist parties have banded together to keep out nationalists. A similar alliance defeated the National Front’s Jean-Marie Le Pen in the run-off for France’s presidency in 2002, and may be needed again to beat his daughter in 2017. Britain may yet need a new party of the centre.

In America, where most is at stake, the answer must come from within the existing party structure. Republicans who are serious about resisting the anti-globalists should hold their noses and support Mrs Clinton. And Mrs Clinton herself, now that she has won the nomination, must champion openness clearly, rather than equivocating. Her choice of Tim Kaine, a Spanish-speaking globalist, as her running-mate is a good sign. But the polls are worryingly close. The future of the liberal world order depends on whether she succeeds. 

economist.com/news/leaders/21702750-farewell-left-versus-right-contest-matters-now-open-against-closed-new?

There is just about everything you need to know in those two paragraphs if you value personal liberty, sovereignty and free speech. It's also a testimony about how biased MSM is.

As for the Merkel situation, Germans are noted for their reportedly stubbornness. Merkel recently displayed her defiance and lack of concern for the voices of many of her citizens. Callousness is a clear characteristic of the elite class.

With Germany having gone through a surge of seemingly daily killings in the past two weeks when 15 people have died, including four assailants, leaving dozens injured since July 18, the result of two terror attacks and a third killing carried out by men who entered the country as refugees, no one has seen their reputation impacted as much as Angela Merkel. And yet, despite admitting several weeks ago that "terrorists were smuggled in Europe's refugee flow", Merkel has been unrelenting on her immigration policy. 

Seaking at an annual summer press conference in Berlin on July 28, a defiant Merkel ignored critics of her refugee policies and insisted there would be no change to her open-door migration stance. She also said she bears no responsibility for a recent spate of violent attacks in Germany. "We are doing everything humanly possible to ensure security in Germany," she recently said but added, "Anxiety and fear cannot guide our political decisions." Merkel said the goal of jihadists was to "divide our unity and undermine our way of life. They want to prevent our openness to welcoming people. They want to sow hate and fear between cultures and also among religions." The chancellor said she knows that Germans are worried about their personal safety: "We are doing everything humanly possible to ensure security in Germany," she noted, but added, "Anxiety and fear cannot guide our political decisions."
Merkel concluded by refusing to budge: "For me it is clear: we stick to our principles. We will give those who are politically persecuted refuge and protection under the Geneva Convention." She added: "I cannot promise you that we will never have to take in another mass wave of refugees."

The problem for Merkel is that increasingly less of her countrymen share her sentiment. A recent poll found that two-thirds of Germans oppose a fourth term for Merkel. Only 36% of respondents said they wanted Merkel and her CDU to lead the government after federal elections in 2017.
* * *
It got even much worse for Merkel yesterday when Bavaria's premier, a key coalition ally for Merkel's CDU, whose state bore the brunt of recent attacks in Germany, took aim at Chancellor Angela Merkel's open-door refugee policy on Saturday by rejecting her "we can do this" mantra, withdrawing his support over this key aspect of Merkel's domestic policy.

blacklistednews.com/Thousands_Of_Germans_Demand_Merkel's_Resignation.

The people of California several years ago voted on a referendum to tamp down on its borders. The measure passed by a good margin. What did the status quo do, they took it to the judicial system where it's reportedly still tied up. This is what the entrenched think of your right to vote. It's a titular right in every definition of that term.The recent Brexit outcome is still another example as those who opposed the leave results yelled and stomped for another vote owing to the closeness of the outcome or for invoking a system of their elitist checks and balances to correct ignorant rabble mistakes.

As more and more voters in states like California went to referendums to correct government abuses of power, just what you'd expect happened, the call for limiting referendums irrespective of the difficult qualifications necessary to get them approved. Understand, you might be middle management, professional, blue collar, a successful business owner or, heaven forbid, an academic, brown, back, white or the color of a barber pole, it doesn't matter. To these elites you're just rabble.

They want what they want and will stop at nothing to get it.

Not So Fast

More air, please.

All due apologies to Tom Brady.

When in doubt, things looking frail, spirits down, pump more air into the balloon. That balloon goes by the name consumer confidence. MSM has been pushing the pedal for it friends at the Fed that the economy is on more terra firma owing to strong consumer spending. But as one television personality like to chortle, Not so fast.

In an environment where the Fed recently described household spending as "growing strongly," we have often questioned why consumer delinquencies would continue to grow (see "Subprime Auto Delinquencies Soar Past Crisis Levels, Now Highest In 20 Years" and "Subprime Snaps: Largest US Subprime Auto Lender Delays Earnings Due To "Accounting Matters"") if household financial conditions were truly improving.  It turns out that UBS pondered the same question and agrees that deteriorating lending standards just might have something to do with it.  Matthew Mish of UBS, recently updated his strategy piece on the health of the US consumer and the results are less than stellar with Mish concluding that consumer incomes are not expanding in line with consumer credit and therefore "consumer delinquencies...will not fall in coming quarters, consistent with our broader thesis that the credit cycle is in the later innings".  Mish found a growing divide between consumers that are financially sound and those at the lower end of the earnings spectrum where financial conditions are deteriorating.  So while aggregate data may suggest improvement in the consumer overall it's unlikely to impact deteriorating delinquency rates on consumer loans. Per Matthew Mish of UBS:

Our analysis of the consumer lending environment and stressed US consumer fundamentals seems to support the thesis that while lending is extending to riskier consumers, the finances of those consumers are not materially improving. The recipe is likely to result in consumer delinquencies that will not fall in coming quarters, consistent with our broader thesis that the credit cycle is in the later innings as ebbing fears about a corporate earnings recession are offset by rising concerns over higher delinquencies and tighter credit availability.

.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-30/consumer-lending

The Fix Is In

Here are two stories both about Reuters, owned by the New York Times, that should tell you something about so-called objective journalism.

It should also tell you just how bad the status quo wants a Hillary win in November. If possible, forget who wins for a second and try as hard as it might be to ask yourselves about the state of MSM. Read both depictions of what Reuters just did and see if you feel there is anything wrong here when it comes to journalistic integrity.

This is much like the elites who bitched after the Brexit vote came in saying we'd extended this phony democracy they toss around too far and need to put in checks and balances to over-ride rabble stupidity. In other words, overturn your vote because they don't like your choices.This is hardly new. But what is new is just how blatant it is.

Unfortunately, tragically, human life these days is cheap. But your vote is cheap today too because you can see firsthand how they denigrate and disrespect it. The fix for November is in.

zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-29/why-reuters-tweaking-its-presidential-poll

zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-30/clinton-lead-over-trump-surges-after-reuters-tweaks-poll

Vote Like It

We had no idea when we wrote our two recent pieces about Morgan Stanley global strategist, Ruchir Sharma, he would don the cover of our Saturday morning copy of Barron's.

But here's a guy who apparently keeps tossing out a lazy jab that just cries out to be countered. In his Barron's interview, "Global Thinker," he notes, discussing Brexit, Trump and the global populist uprising: Particularly in emerging market countries, populists leaders, once in power, often turn into demagogues who end up pursuing income-retributive policies that can burn down entire economies. Right-wing populists who now control Poland and Hungry, rarely deliver long-term economic growth because, without the checks and balances of a democracy, strongman rule eventually devolves into cronyism and poor decision-making,

After reading that a couple of times ask yourself these questions:

1. What has occupied the White House these past eight years other than a strongman deliberately trying to expand executive power?

2. Income-redistributive policies sound a lot like the Fed's monetary madness of pumping up asset prices the wealthy not the rabble mostly profit from?

3. Artificially tamped and stomped down interest rates that practically wiped out a whole class of people around the globe living on pensions and fixed incomes?  That sounds like redistribution.

4. Where is and has been the long term economic growth of the status quo, things like wages, benefits and income equality?

5. Cronyism: has it not been alive, well and blossoming under the status quo? What was Graham-Dodd all about, supposedly cronyism.

6. What democratic checks and balances? Does he mean, the ones the elites want to instill now to counteract any so-called foolish voting mistakes the rabble might make by voting for policies or candidates the status quo disdain?

It's no coincidence he mentions Poland and Hungry. At least one of those leaders has made the MSM's major misstep of being complimentary to Trump. Sharma then lists his 4Ds--depopulation, deglobalization, deleveraging and de-democratization. Two of his four, deleveraging and de-democratization are shams. Global debt levels, as he point out, are astronomical and in need of a huge economic global enema. It ain't going to happen without a cataclysmic event. War is one. See Italian banking and Matteo Renzi. Who wants to be the first to bite the economic bullet? The European Union has been arrogantly discriminatory in its policies against its smaller members.

Mr.Sharma conveniently skips over one of the real causes of de-democratization--PC. The policy makers, regulators and power elite create more de-democratization a year that a whole gaggle so-called populists could in decade.  It's cute stuff, he proffers. The trade agreements have benefited the few and, as is often the case with the status quo, harmed the many. The left-wing controlled U.S Senate has threatened China to strengthen its currency for years. See Chuck Schumer. Sounds like a beggar-thy-neighbor tactic to us.

The Federal Reserve is an incompetent, out of control bully and has been, allowing the U.S. to put its political proboscis where it doesn't belong. That's spells industrial-military complex. Sharma does have the decency to admit he's been wrong in the past. We say decency because it might just be the plain  absence of arrogance, a trait that usually never arrives until one has been publicly skinned to the bone without benefit of clergy.

Sharma then notes an interesting category he breaks down into good and bad billionaires. The good ones, of course, are in America and the bad ones places like Russia and Mexico. Let's take the bad first. He classifies them as, Barron's notes, making their fortunes "largely the result of  chicanery, family connections and payoff." Apparently, for all his worldliness he hasn't paid much attention to American politics.

The good ones he cites, pretty much all first or second generation American immigrants, are "self-made who created their wealth by developing unique products and services that boosted jobs and economic growth."  Obviously, to Sharma, payoffs and such are not a part this group. He studies those who inherit their wealth as if what many in this country seek to make a crime and associates it with "wealth achieved through other than honest means."

There are many in this country we would classify in the bad category, the whole gaggle of billionaire climate change nuts who are using their funds to force feed others who question them; the billionaires right and left who attempt to buy election outcomes. He states most of the bad guys loiter in the rent-seeking categories like real estate, energy and mining. In his his rent-seeking category he omits governments themselves. How many Americans became billionaires off their government connections, he fails to mention.

Sharma is an elitist talking down to you. Globalization is your banker's friend not yours. If this or any other government were serious about closing  the income gap they would pass term limit legislation immediately with no possibility of return. That would level the playing field a bit. Bring back a sound, sovereign currency would also help. One nearly billionaire off government connections is running for president.

Meanwhile, hold not your breath or imbibe the Street's favorite pablum.You're on your own. Walk like it, talk like it and vote like it.

Out Of Sync

Apparently, the left hand and the right hand at Morgan Stanley are not in sync. We recently noted a WSJ Opinion article, "The Dollar--the Fed--Still Rule," by Morgan Stanley global strategist Ruchir Sharma who claimed the dollar's demise had been greatly overstated and the economy is all right.

 See financialspuds.blogspot.com/2016/07/the-only-thing-new.

The dollar is set to fall 5 percent in the next few months, the Federal Reserve isn’t raising interest rates anytime soon and U.S. economic data is only going to get worse. That’s what Morgan Stanley chief global currency strategist Hans Redeker told clients in a note published Thursday, citing in-house indicators showing U.S. domestic demand is set to fade in the coming months. It didn’t take long for markets to prove him prescient. The greenback fell 1.3 percent Friday, capping its worst week since April, after the Commerce Department said U.S. second-quarter gross domestic product advanced at about half the rate economists had forecast.

www.wsj.com/articles/the-dollar and-the-fedstill-rule

 
“We are quite pessimistic about, first, the outcome of the U.S. economy,” Redeker said in an interview on Bloomberg Television Friday, before the GDP report’s release. “When you look at our internal indicators, which capture domestic demand very well, they are suggesting that the demand strength is going to fade from here.”

The greenback had rallied in recent weeks on mounting speculation the Fed will hike rates in the coming months following better-than-expected data on jobs, retail sales and industrial production. Dollar bulls’ hopes were dampened Wednesday after a lukewarm policy statement from Fed officials that signaled only a gradual pace towards tighter monetary policy. They were dashed after Friday’s GDP print, which showed a 1.2 percent annualized increase in the April-June period, less than the 2.5 percent median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg.

Derivatives traders are now betting there’s only about a 1-in-3 chance of a rate hike this year, down from more than 50 percent at the beginning of the week. July data on payrolls and manufacturing, set for release next week, will give investors a clearer read on the path of Fed policy through the end of the year.

Further dollar strength will be limited as policy divergence between the U.S., Japan and Europe slows, according to Steven Englander, global head of Group-of-10 currency strategy at Citigroup Inc.

bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-30/morgan-stanley-warns-currency-traders-worst-to-come-for-dollar 
  
As we said in our post cited above, Sharma's article was about dismantling Trump not really about the dollar or the Fed except to keep up the charade about the importance of the Fed and it's role for keeping the status quo of globalization going.

Getting Rid Of Debt

 
Once upon a time it was the Russians are coming. Now it's the Russians who are pushing Donald Trump. Who says paranoia doesn't run deep and wide in the Democrat party.

The media, one and all, have decided that the DNC hack was the work of the Russian government, and the Democrats have taken this one step further and declared that Moscow is pushing the candidacy of Donald Trump due to his oft-stated hope to “get along” with Vladimir Putin. And US government officials have added their voices to this chorus, with the New York Times reporting that unnamed members of the “intelligence community” believe “with high confidence” that the Russian state is behind the hack, Justin Raimondo over on Stockman's Contra Corner reports 

We love MSM and their attribution skills, a source close to my kid sister's mother-in-law who knows one of the janitors whose uncle works in the intelligence community believes with high confidence the Russians did it. Trump says he wants to get along with Putin and now he's in cahoots with them and a possible collaborator. A real Richard Quisling amongst us. This from that pathetic excuse for an objective newspaper, the New York Times. We have another suspicion, a well known CNN broadcaster who got carried away dancing while toasting Hillary's acceptance speech. Booze does some strange things to one's head.

We just had a Hillary advisor, a white dude, tweet in one of those hacked DNC files he hates stupid white people, especially those who support Trump. Do you think the Russians know who Mitch Stewart is yet? That sounds like hate speech to us. We know one thing it most likely wasn't Paul Krugman who conjured up this doozy. This is beyond his level. But it could've been Al Franken. He's a Harvard man with a sense of humor. He might be the only one in the Democrat party. Someone needs to promptly find out who the real culprit is before Joe plagiarizes the whole malarkey and turns it in to a future convention speech. Another good possibility is that politician who hates super-sized sugar drinks. Maybe the Russians were overdosed on them. Naw! That's too linear. It couldn't have been any of these people. It's got the earmark of brilliance.

The Russians did it. They're a convenient target. The neocons want to start a Third World War anyway and if you check around the globe today you'll see their ramping the rabble up for one. The problem with that theme is be careful what you wish for. Just outright defaulting on all that debt might be a kinder, more gentle way of getting rid of it since you have not been successful so far inflating it away. Your game plan from the first time you heard someone say: Ben Bernanke.

But it has to go, so they can get on with the next round of globalizing. Man, those Russians, they think of everything. Some of them must be bankers. 
davidstockmanscontracorner.com/who-hacked-the-dnc

Really?

Sell the house, sell the car, sell the kids, sell everything. That from big time bond guru Jeffery Gundlach in a recent interview.

The stock market might be bouncing around recent record highs but real economic growth is weak and by some lights getting weaker. Lies about corporate profit get bigger almost daily. If you're looking for bargains, try an old fashioned bargain basement store. There are still plenty who will site this market has much room to run and they will roll out all their last-time-this-happened data. Cheerleaders come in all shapes and sizes especially in today's PC-heavy times.

Noting the recent run-up in the benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 index while economic growth remains weak and corporate earnings are stagnant, Gundlach said stock investors have entered a “world of uber complacency.”

The S&P 500 on Friday touched an all-time high of 2,177.09, while the government reported that U.S. gross domestic product in the second quarter grew at a meager 1.2 percent rate.

“The artist Christopher Wool has a word painting, 'Sell the house, sell the car, sell the kids.' That’s exactly how I feel – sell everything. Nothing here looks good,” Gundlach said in a telephone interview.

Anybody can be right and anybody can be wrong. But being prepared, now that's another thing. 

businessinsider.com/r-sell-everythingdoublelines-gundlach-says-2016-7?

The Only Thing New

The apologists for the Fed keep coming out of the financial woodwork, usually telling us how good a job they've done, rescuing the globe and all of its unappreciative, benighted lessors from the financial precipice of economic hell.

Another one, Ruchir Sharma, global strategist at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, displayed his computer keyboard skills with "The Dollar--the Fed--Still Rule"--in the Wall Street Journal. The article begins with what is apparently one of the Journal's editorial page requirements, the usual screed against Donal Trump.

To many readers this article would appear to about The Fed. It isn't. This is about Trump, his followers and anyone contemplating voting for him and their backward ways and inward  turning views that are spreading around the globe. As you might expect, according to this apologist, it's happening at the wrong time. Which should leave you with a fair question: When is the right time, sir? We think we know the answer to that.

What follows is a weak defense of the Fed's incompetence and a not so subtle plea for expanding their mandates. They have screwed up the main two things they claimed they were responsible for, employment and inflation, and now because the interconnectedness of the globe they need to expand their mandate.

"The Fed has been forced to recognize it can no longer focus on America alone," Sharma writes.  He then notes in early 2015 the Fed officially announced for the first time it was considering "international development" into it decisions. The financial crisis began in 2008. This is a real prescient group of non-elected bureaucrats.

"Though Mr. Trump argues that America must tend to its own affairs because it is weak, the Fed's evolving role shows the limits of this argument."  Sharma sets up his straw man with this next line. "The U.S. may have slipped as an economic superpower, falling to 23% of global GDP from 60% in 1960. But as a financial superpower Washington has never been more influential. Forecasts of the dollar's downfall have completely missed the mark."

He shrewdly covers a lot of ground there. So let's break it down piece by piece. On the contrary, the evolving Fed role proves Trump's view. The Federal Reserve is a powerful institution being used to spread U.S. hegemony via the political and military industrial complex at the expense of its citizenry. Another globalist tip is "Washington has never been more influential."  In some corners that would labeled a blatant lie. We will be nice and just call it deceptive. Apparently, Mr. Sharma hasn't been following this administration's foreign policy record very close.

Forecasts about the dollar's lack of weakness is a backhanded shot at gold. It's an attempt to reassure and keep whatever confidence is left in the fiat money world from further decay. Without their printing presses central bankers are nothing more than a group of overpaid bureaucratic eunuchs, cautiously probing their way around on their hand and knees for their dropped set of keys when the power suddenly went out.

"The Fed is caught in a trap," he says. "Every time the U.S. economy starts to perk up, the Fed signals it's intent to start to return interest rates to normal. But the signal sends shock waves through a heavily indebted global economy and back to American shores. (We wonder how long he struggled to come up with that "back to American shores" phrase.) So the Fed delays rate increases as it did in June and again this week."

To begin with, nobody--not the Fed, this author or us--knows what and where normal interest rates are. Only the market can determine normal interest rates. And that won't happen and can't happen because a bunch of bureaucrats, mostly who've never had real jobs, can't fathom the unfathomable. He mentions heavy global indebtedness but fails to suggest who and what caused it. Some how the term politicians isn't mentioned. We were probably asleep at the outhouse, but we'll ask the question anyway: How many times has the U.S. economy started to perk up in the last decade?

The real truth is this gentleman is a globalist, maybe even a neocon, like his editorial friends at the Journal. The Fed is part of the problem. The status quo crowd are trembling weekends in their under ground getaway caves and never is the only good time for the change that is badly needed, the change in part Trump represents but most probably won't achieve if elected.

The only thing new and it isn't new. But we all know history tells us what that is. Like the words of an old song slightly rearranged: The only thing different, the only thing new, he's got your picture and I'm stuck here with you. For now.

Overnight

The WSJ reported that "The Bank of Japan announced an extra dose of monetary stimulus Friday, joining fresh efforts by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to reboot the economy.

The central bank said it would buy ¥6 trillion worth of exchange-traded funds annually, up from ¥3.3 trillion previously, in an attempt to stoke inflation and economic growth. It said it would leave its asset-purchase target at ¥80 trillion a year.
 
The monetary policy board voted approved the expansion of ETF purchases by a vote of 7-2.
The BOJ left unchanged its purchases of Japanese government bonds, which comprise the bulk of its asset buying, underscoring concerns about whether the program would be sustainable if JGB buying were expanded. It already owns more than a third of all outstanding JGBs, with its balance sheet ballooning to 85% of gross domestic product as of May.

The central bank also left a key interest rate on bank reserves unchanged at minus 0.1%. It dropped the rate into negative territory in February to drive yields lower and spur lending and investment, but the move delivered limited results while provoking a backlash from banks and the Japanese public."

As Asian shares hit a one-year high overnight and the yen touch a two-week high as they waited for the BOJ's announcement, but as reported: Japan shares whipsawed and the yen surged after the Bank of Japan threw markets a smaller-than-expected bone in keenly watched decision on Friday. While the BOJ eased its monetary policy further by increasing its buying of exchange-traded funds (ETFs), it didn't change interest rates or increase the monetary base. 
 
Reuters reported the BOJ will increase its ETF buying so that its holdings rise at an annual pace of 6 trillion yen, compared with 3.3 trillion yen previously. The BOJ left its base money target unchanged, said Reuters. The Japanese yen surged against the dollar after the announcement, with the dollar/yen pair falling as low as 102.85, compared with around 103.75 immediately before the decision. The yen was already volatile before the announcement, touching a session high of 105.33.

 The Nikkei 225 traded between gains and losses after the decision, tumbling as much as 1.66 percent immediately after the announcement, before quickly retracing all of its losses to trade up 0.16 percent.On  other markets, Australia, South Korea and China traded mostly flat after the BOJ announcement while Hong Kong's Hang Seng index was down 0.82 percent. Owing to concerns  about oversupply, oil prices fell to three-month lows, with U.S. benchmark now down more than 20 percent from this year's peak.