Europe

'Good cop' Mnuchin appeared to play expectations-manager this morning in an interview with FOX's Maria Bartiromo. After confirming the Trump administration is "not touching" entitlement programs, and having said this week that tax reform is expected by August,  he appeared to walk back that hype by saying that President Trump "will be touching on tax reform" during his speech to Congress this week, which Reuters notes, is not an official "State of the Union" address.

Submitted by Erico Matias Tavares via Sinclair & Co.,

There's a cold war raging.

No, not the one between the US and Russia. That’s old news.

We're talking about the NEW cold war: the one for the soul of the West.

Submitted by Michael Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

Potential Eurozone disruption possibilities keep compounding.

For example, the Netherlands Parliament will now debate leaving the Eurozone.

In long-winded wording for a potential “Nexit”, Reuters reports Dutch relations with euro up for debate after lawmakers commission probe

One day after president Trump remarked in a speech at a conference that a friend thought
"Paris is no longer Paris" after attacks by Islamist militants, French President Francois Hollande fired back at Donald Trump on Saturday. During a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday, Trump repeated his criticism of Europe's handling of attacks by Islamist militants saying a friend "Jim" no longer wanted to take his family to Paris.

Western mainstream media’s anti-Russian propaganda links Moscow to the inundation of “fake news” on the web despite evidence suggesting otherwise. So, mainstream outlets like The New York Times among others make their cases with their own “fake news.” From Robert Parry: A grave danger from the Western mainstream media’s current hysteria about “fake news” is that the definition gets broadened from the few made-up stories that are demonstrably false – often fabricated by kids to get more clicks – to include reasonable disputes about the facts of a complex controversy.