Europe

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

Not even during the worst parts of the last recession did things ever get this bad for the U.S. retail industry. 

The U.S. Senate on Wednesday approved new sanctions to punish Russia for "meddling" in the 2016 election.

The bipartisan legislation, which passed with an overwhelming 97-2 vote, slaps new sanctions on Russia and restricts President Trump from easing them in the future without first receiving congressional approval. The only two senators to vote against the measure were Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Rand Paul (R-KY), while Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) abstained. 

Disappointing inflation and retail sales data has sparked a surge in safe-haven demand for bonds and bullion, and left stocks confused this morning ahead of The Fed statement and press conference this afternoon...

A disastrous morning for US macro data - and yet we are assured by The Fed that a hike is overdue and everything is awesome...

It's not!

Gold and Bonds are well bid...

Pushing 10Y yield to its lowest since Nov 10th...

And Nasdaq jumped on the dovish-inspiring data dump...

With last Friday's "tech wreck" now a distant memory, this morning the "FOMC Drift" described yesterday, which "guarantees" higher stock prices and a lower dollar heading into the Fed announcement is in full effect, with European and Asian stocks rising for a second day, led by rebounding tech shares, while S&P futures are modestly in the green and stocks on Wall Streets hit a record high overnight.

Authored by Federico Pieraccini via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

In a climate of outright confrontation, even the Gulf monarchies have been overtaken by a series of unprecedented events. The differences between Qatar on one side, and Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain on the other, have escalated into a full-blown diplomatic crisis with outcomes difficult to foresee.