So much for QE as the answer to the EU’s problems.
In 2012, during the depth of the EU banking crisis which nearly took the entire EU financial system down, Mario Draghi stated that he would do “whatever it takes” to hold the EU together.
One week after Austria was shocked by the news that its right-wing, anti-immigrant Freedom Party, had swept the competition, gathering over 35% of the vote and leaving the other five candidates far behind, Europe's anti-immigrant juggernaut just added to its momentum when neighboring Germany's populist AfD party adopted an anti-Islam policy on Sunday in a manifesto that also demands curbs to immigration according to AFP. The biggest surprise however, is that the three year-old party is now also Germany's third strongest party.
Helicopter money may be on the horizon, but if Deutsche Bank has its way, there is at least one intermediate step.
According to DB's Dominic Konstam, now that the benefits QE "have run their course", it is time for the next, and far more drastic step: "the ECB and BoJ should move more strongly toward penalizing savings via negative retail deposit rates or perhaps wealth taxes. With this stick would also come a carrot – for example, negative mortgage rates."
Submitted by George Friedman via MauldinEconomics.com,
Chinese President Xi Jinping recently announced that he would take command of all of China’s armed forces, including the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
Xi is already chairman of the Central Military Commission that oversees the army. He is now taking a more direct role as head of the new Joint Operations Command Center, which puts him in operational command of the PLA in times of war.
Submitted by Justin Raimondo via AntiWar.com,