Executives from pharmaceutical companies in Belgium are to be charged with knowingly supplying drug cartels with prescription drugs that were used to manufacture methamphetamine, prosecutors have announced. Seven top executives at three Belgian pharmaceutical giants are accused of providing several tons of ephedrine to the Mexican drug kingpin Ezio Figueroa Vazquez knowing it was going to be used in the production of crystal meth.
On Thursday, after the ECB's stunning announcement that it would for the first time start monetizing corporate debt, we joked - or so we thought - that "within 6-9 months we expect to add a chart showing Europe's junk bond market which will be next on the monetization menu, followed shortly after by equities and kitchen sinks."
As it turns out, this wasn't a joke, and overnight JPM's Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou explained what to "expect" next from the ECB:
Submitted by Alexander Grover
Current Situation
After an unprecedented surge in Chinese attempts to stimulate the economy in late 2015, mostly on the fiscal side, coupled with recent monetary easing by the PBOC which cut the banks' reserve ratio recently and unleashed a tsunami of new loan creation in January, many expected that this unprecedented credit impulse would translate into at least a modest rebound for the economy, prompting a stable pick up in spending for the economy which many are touting is now consumer-spending driven as opposed to export and production.
Submitted by Bill Bonner via InternationalMan.com,
Are you ready to pay to save?
Agora founder Bill Bonner explains why “negative interest rates” are spreading around the world…and could soon come to the U.S.
Like Doug Casey, Bill believes the worst is yet to come.