Europe

Having kept a relatively low profile for the past month, suddenly anywhere you look, there's Jeff Gundlach - between his presentation at Ira Sohn, his recent appearance on Twitter, and his latest DoubleLine webcast, the bond king has something to say. Today, as his preferred medium, he picked Reuters, where he told Jennifer Ablan what he said previously, namely that European and emerging markets equities are more attractive than U.S. equities, he also opined on volatility, saying that the VIX is "insanely low."

Following yesterday's news that the White House had radically changed its strategy involving Syrian military intervention, and that it had decided to provide weapons to Kurdish militants in the region, we were curious to see just how livid Turkey would be when it inevitably responded to Trump's announcement. One day later we got the answer when the Turkish Defense Minister Fikri Isik was quoted by Reuters that the U.S. decision to provide weapons for Kurdish militants in the fight against ISIS "is a crisis" and warned it would not benefit the United States or the region.

Authored by Thorstein Polleit via The Mises Institute,

Emmanuel Macron is the new president of France. The 39-year-old political shooting star got 66.1 percent of the votes in the second round of the presidential election last Sunday. His opponent, Marine Le Pen, secured just 33.9 percent of the votes. 

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Now that the cheering over the French election has died down, reality will strike France and Germany like a cold bucket of water thrown in one’s face on a Winter’s day.

Germany was guaranteed to not like the result no matter who won. The final choice was between an anti-EU Marine Le Pen and a budget-comingling Emanuel Macron who needs EU treaty changes to get what he wants.

French Election A Catastrophe For World Peace

Paul Craig Roberts

Marine Le Pen’s defeat, if the vote count was honest, indicates that the French are even more insouciant than Americans.

The week before the election the Russian high command announced that Washington had convinced the Russian military that Washington intended a preemptive nuclear first strike against Russia. No European leader saw danger in this annoucement except Le Pen.