Europe

Authored by Don Quijones via WolfStreet.com,

But the IMF has suggestions on how to win the War on Cash...

In January 2017 the European Commission announced it was exploring the option of imposing upper limits on cash payments, with a view to implementing cross-regional measures as soon as 2018. To give the proposal a veneer of respectability and accountability the Commission launched a public consultation on the issue. Now, the answers are in, but they are not what the Commission was expecting.

Authored by John Mauldin via MauldinEconomics.com,

“The job of the central bank is to worry.”

– Alice Rivlin

“The central bank needs to be able to make policy without short-term political concerns.”

– Ben Bernanke

“… from the standpoint of the overall economy, my bottom line is we’re watching it closely but it appears to be contained.

– Ben Bernanke, repeatedly, in 2007

We didn’t need any more data to definitively expose the many shortcomings of the US-led global prohibition on narcotics – but we got one today, courtesy of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Turkey's President Recep Erdogan on Saturday celebrated the one year anniversary of the "failed coup" that aimed to oust him from power on Saturday in typical fashion, by threatening to "chop off the heads" of traitors.

In September, Russia will conduct its Zapad 2017 military exercise, the largest since the end of the Cold War, and one which is already sending shivers down the spine of NATO, which not only has "serious doubts Moscow is revealing the true extent of its military exercises", but because the last time such a major training exercise took place was just before the Crimea "annexation." One country, however, isn't taking chances: Russia's northern neighbor Finland, which as the WSJ reports, is "going underground."