West Texas Crude Oil flirted with $26.00 per barrel today before recovering toward $27.00.

General Janet Yellen went up the hill to discuss the un-discussable with a body of politicians who have made her job impossible – a nine on a scale of ten, ten being most difficult.

She began by commenting on the fairly obvious.

U.S. equities dodged the bullets that shot down European indexes and the Nikkei today. The latter was down not quite 5.5% on the session.