Europe

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has lashed out at mounting Western criticism of his clampdown on free speech and journalism in Turkey. Speaking at a meeting of the Turkish Red Crescent in Ankara, Erdogan criticised the U.S. and Europe as being hypocritical in their condemnation of Turkey’s apparent lack of human rights. “Those who attempt to give us lessons in democracy and human rights must first contemplate their own shame,” the Turkish leader said.

Jackson Diehl tries to blame Trump for waning Georgian interest in NATO membership:

The rhetoric from Trump has given a boost to pro-Russian parties in Georgia’s campaign. Their argument, said [President] Margvelashvili, has been consistent: “You might want NATO. You might want Europe. But it is not going to happen.” Until now, it hasn’t been a persuasive argument. Georgia’s president, and leaders like him across Eurasia, can only hope this U.S. political season does not make it so.

While much of the media has been focusing on the Panama Papers allegations surrounding "close friends" of Russian president Vladimir Putin, one person who has been directly named as implicated in offshore tax scandal is Ukraine's billionaire president, Petro Poroshenko.

This is what the ICIJ had to say about this specific involvement:

Submitted by Giulio Melli via The Gatestone Institute,

• Among young European Muslims, support for suicide bombings range from 22% in Germany to 29% in Spain, 35% in Britain and 42% in France, according to a Pew poll. In the UK, one in five Muslims have sympathy for the Caliphate. Today more British Muslims join ISIS than the British army. In the Netherlands, a survey shows that the 80% of Dutch Turks see "nothing wrong" in ISIS.

Back in the summer of 2014, when the ECB first unveiled NIRP, many were concerned that this submersion into the monetary policy twilight zone would first crush Europe's money markets. However, at least until now, European MM funds have proven relatively resilient,

The story in Japan is different.

When the Bank of Japan announced they were instituting NIRP back in January, they intended to spur lending and push inflation up. As often is the case with central planners, their academic theory was much different than the economic reality.