Asia

The month of February was a mixed to positive among a broad sample of assets.

Earlier today, the world's biggest fast food retailer spooked its investors when it briefly halted trading in its stock ahead of its annual investor day. However, instead of some dramatic M&A deal revelation, McDonalds had a far less exciting announcement: it had decided to go back to basis in an attempt to recover some 500 million U.S. orders it had lost over the past five years to competition as a result of failed attempts to widen its customer base.

Via Peter K of SovereignMan.com,

I’m visiting my brother in Indonesia right now.

Being a good host, he was fixing us vodka martinis, when he realized he ran out of olives.

Both of his drivers had finished for the day so I was expecting him to compromise on the olives.

No need.

He loaded up a mobile phone app and ordered a jar of olives.

An internal White House strategy review on North Korean options includes the possibility of both military force and regime change to counter the country’s nuclear-weapons threat, the WSJ reports, a prospect that has some U.S. allies in the region on edge. The review comes amid recent events have strained regional stability including last month's launch by North Korea of a ballistic missile into the Sea of Japan, and the assassination of the estranged half brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Malaysia.

Via Jim Goad of Taki's Magazine blog,

As far as I can tell, globalism is a scheme concocted by the rich to destroy the working and middle classes through worldwide financial imperialism.

I have a strong hunch that globalism is also a plot hatched to obliterate indigenous cultures and real human differences under the deceptive ruses of “multiculturalism” and “diversity.”