Europe

Global stocks have started Friday the 13th on the wrong foot, with not only Hong Kong GDP unexpectedly tumbling by 0.4%, the worst print in years while retail sales fell for a thirteenth straight month in March, the longest stretch since 1999 as the Chinese hard landing spreads to the wealthy enclave, but also following a predicted collapse in Chinese new loan creation, which will reverberate not only in China but around the globe in the coming weeks.

When Crimea's secession to Russia was accepted by Putin, the logical next phase of the process was to cut off Crimea's reliance on Ukraine for energy, and fully integrate it into Russia's supply network. That phase has now been completed, as the fourth and final line supplying electricity from mainland Russian to the Crimean peninsula has been completed according to RT...

by Keith Weiner

In my testimony in support of the gold legal tender bill this year, I discussed failing pension funds. Retirees who count on their pension checks are being told that their monthly check will be reduced by up to 60%. This is devastating to them, obviously. What isn’t obvious is the cause. In the news coverage of this, the angry pensioners are blaming the union, the fund manager, and Wall Street in general.

Turkey have threatened to send migrants back to Europe if the EU Parliament don’t grant visa-free travel to Turkish citizens.  The Erdogan regime issued a stern warning to EU officials, saying that “The European Parliament will discuss the report that will open up visa-free travel in Europe to Turkish citizens.

Russia have accused America of risking nuclear war by installing a long-awaited missile defense system in Europe.  Moscow have said that the American-built system put Russia’s security in danger, suggesting that the country hosting the system, Romania, could be reduced to “smoking ruins” as a result. Nytimes.com reports: “We have been saying right from when this story started that our experts are convinced that the deployment of the ABM system poses a certain threat to the Russian Federation,” the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, told reporters in a conference call.