Europe

Tensions continue to escalate between the US and Russia. As a reminder, Russia conducted several close encounter fly-bys when first a Russian Su-24 "buzzed" the US missile destroyer USS Donald Cook in the Baltic Sea, and just days later flew within 50 feet of a US recon plane also flying over the Baltic Sea. The U.S. quickly responded and complained vocally to Russia, followed quickly by the first deployment of US F-22 stealth fighter to Romania, in close proximity to both the Black Sea and 400 km from the Russian military stronghold of Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula.

When JPM quant Marko Kolanovic released his latest report today, we were expecting him to read his latest insight on the positioning of quant funds, on the relative imbalance of risk parity, or perhaps whether market gamma was suggesting that the market is poised for an inflection point, either lower or higher.

The last word that Donald Trump would use to describe himself is “humble.” But if you look past that word, there’s a lot of continuity between the foreign policy that Trump outlined in his speech at the Center for the National Interest, and the foreign policy that George W. Bush claimed to advocate when he was running for President.

From The Archive: MH-17

Paul Craig Roberts

Not long ago I wrote that every American institution, public and private, is corrupt. And every week Robert Parry’s reports prove the truth of my statement.

Trump’s foreign policy speech yesterday veered between a few sensible comments and a large number of contradictory and worrisome assertions. Like previous Trump statements on foreign policy, this speech was all over the map. While he insisted on the importance of a coherent foreign policy, he demonstrated that he does not have one. The speech offered his supporters and detractors material to justify their earlier opinions of him, but offered too few specific commitments to give us a clear idea of how Trump would handle a wide range of international issues.