Lee Jones explains why economic sanctions aren’t a very useful tool. Here he addresses whether sanctions helped produce the nuclear deal:

A statue of German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler has sold for a record 17.2m (£11.9m) at a New York auction house. The figure far exceeded estimates for the wax and resin sculpture of the Nazi leader by artist Maurizio Cattelan.  International Business Times reports: Entitled Him, the sculpture appears to be a small child kneeling in prayer when approached from the rear but when seen from the front the viewer is confronted with the unmistakable likeness of the Nazi dictator. It was sold at the start of a week-long sale of modern, post-war and contemporary art at Christie’s and Sotheby’s in New York.

I’m late to the much-discussed New York Times Magazine profile of Ben Rhodes, the 38-year-old White House staffer who is President Obama’s “foreign policy guru.” This paragraph early in the piece lets you know (you might think) what an arrogant piece of work is Ben Rhodes. Emphasis mine:

Gartman has done it again. From his letter as of this morning.

British prime minister David Cameron has warned that peace in Europe could be at risk if Britain votes to leave the European Union He believes that Europe is keeping UK safe and pleaded for Britain to stay in the EU to help prevent the continent being ripped apart by another conflict. The Tory leader warned that many threats to stability still remain, from a “newly belligerent Russia” to the so-called Islamic State and the migration crisis. “Our threat level is now at severe, which means a terrorist attack is highly likely.