Europe

Ahead of Angela Merkel's first official meeting with the new administration at the White House next week, Reuters reports that President Trump will ask the German Chancellor for her views on how the United States can help resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine when they meet next week, senior Trump administration officials said on Friday. Trump will reportedly also ask for Merkel's advice on how to deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin, advice which is pretty clear to anyone following the establishment German press over the past few years.

Via Dmitriy Sedov of The Strategic Culture Foundation,

The things European politicians have had to listen to from Recep Tayyip Erdo?an! Over the 14 years of his administration, this charismatic Turkish leader has managed to tally up a long list of the sins committed by the European Union and has often promised to make the EU pay a price for each of them.

Via Daniel Mitchell of The Foundation for Economic Education,

When I warn about the fiscal and economic consequences of America’s poorly designed entitlement programs (as well as the impact of demographic changes), I regularly suggest that the United States is on a path to become Greece.

Because of Greece’s horrible economy, this link has obvious rhetorical appeal.

Courtesy of Bill Gross' latest monthly letter "Show Me The Money", here are some perspectives on the only thing that has kept the global economy going since the financial crisis: debt, and lost of it.

Following the Trump presidential victory, two prominent macro strategists have undergone a significant change in their outlook: while David Rosenberg, who started off with a deflationary, and bearish outlook, then flipped to inflationary (and bullish), has recently once more "mean-reverted" and expects a further drop in yields as deflationary forces return, his SocGen peer, Albert Edwards - while still expecting a deflationary "ice age" in the longer-run (in case there is any confusion, he expressly states "make no mistake.