Europe

The Russian Deputy Foreign Minister has said that the increase in NATO’s military presence near Russia’s borders will not go unanswered. “The Russian side has repeatedly stated that the buildup of the NATO military presence near Russian borders violates the spirit of the basic Russia-NATO pact and cannot be left unanswered by our country,” Aleksey Meshkovan told an international conference in Moscow. RT reports: The comments came soon after NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg spoke at Warsaw University, where he said that the bloc planned to station even more military forces in Europe.

By now it is a well-known fact that corporations have no real way of generating organic profit growth in this economy (the recent plunge in Q1 EPS was a stark reminder of just that), so they are relying on two things to boost share prices: multiple expansion (courtesy of central banks) and debt-funded buybacks (also courtesy of central banks who keep the cost of debt record low), the latter of which requires the firm to generate excess incremental cash.

Submitted by Gail Tverberg via Our Finite World blog,

$50 per barrel oil is clearly less impossible to live with than $30 per barrel oil, because most businesses cannot make a profit with $30 per barrel oil. But is $50 per barrel oil helpful?

I would argue that it really is not.

When oil was over $100 per barrel, human beings in many countries were getting the benefit of most of that high oil price:

In a somewhat stunning warning, The US State Department has issued a travel warning for Europe for the next 3 months due to the risk of "potential terrorist attacks." We can only imagine what Europe's tourism ministers will have to say about this...

Via The State Department:

Submitted by Michael Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

In a stark warning as to what will happen if Chancellor Angela Merkel allows Turkish citizens visa-free travel throughout Europe, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says "Contraception is Treason, Women Not Equal to Men, Muslims Must Multiply Descendants ."

Please consider Turkey’s Erdogan Warns Muslims Against Birth Control.