Europe

Submitted by James George Jatras via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

After barely two weeks in office Donald Trump has stunned the world with his «shock and awe» campaign to keep promises made when he was a candidate. The mere fact of a politician doing what he said he would do seems to have unsettled the nerves of his opponents. What is called «Trump Derangement Syndrome» is already reaching critical proportions.

With a Russian ship sailing in very close proximity to the primary east coast submarine base, and tensions between the US - and perhaps the Trump administration - and Russia, once again rising it seems like an odd moment to organize a meeting between the top US military general and his Russian counterpart on Thursday in Azerbaijan, the first such meeting between the two since military cooperation between the two nations was suspended in 2014 following the hostilities in Ukraine.

Submitted by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

The always entertaining Nigel Farage was on fire again today in European Parliament. Farage correctly warned EP members about their desire for “more Europe” when citizens of nearly every country are fed up with the policy.

The global "risk on" melt-up continues.

After a modestly hawkish Yellen warned that every meeting is live, and refused to take March off the table, sending the dollar and yield higher and the S&P to fresh record highs, world stocks rose hitting a 21-month high on Wednesday with the dollar rising for the 11th straight day, the longest positive streak since July 2015.

Submitted by Don Quijones via WolfStreet.com,

Spain’s three biggest banks, Banco Santander, BBVA and Caixa Bank, have got off to a flying start this year having issued €8.6 billion in new debt, seven times the amount they sold during the same period of last year. The last time they rolled out so much debt so quickly was in 2007, the year that Spain’s spectacular real estate bubble reached its climactic peak.