Europe

Imagine a time when young people formed their relationships through lazy hours of aimless talk, not with any help from the omnipresence of smartphone screens but actually face to face with one another.

It may be unfathomable for a child of the 1990s or later, but such a time existed as recently as the ‘80s. Thanks to Boyhood writer/director Richard Linklater’s newest film, Everybody Wants Some!!, even millennials can get a taste of what life, and human conversation, entailed before technology took over.

As if Sweden wasn't troubled enough, The Local reports that another Green Party politician, who ignited a storm of controversy after refusing to shake hands with a female reporter on grounds that it violated his Muslim faith, announced on Wednesday that he was quitting politics. This follows the resignation of Sweden's housing minister following a week of mounting controversy over his contacts with Islamic organisations and Turkish ultranationalists.

Almost exactly one year ago, we wrote "Mario Draghi, Collateral Scarcity, And Why The ECB Will Soon Buy Corporate Bonds." 11 months later, the ECB confirmed this when for the first time ever, Mario Draghi said he would do purchase corporate bonds when he launched the ECB's Corporate Sector Purchase Programme (CSPP), confirming that with government bond collateral evaporating and the liquidity situation getting precariously dangerous and forcing moments of historic volatility (as in the April/May 2015 Bund fiasco), he had run out of other options.

In an interview posted on Swiss Finanz und Wirthschaft, Jeff Gundlach unleashes his deep ir, and in traditional style, offloads on both the Fed and all central banks, sayng that "negative interest rates are the dumbest idea ever", adding that the Fed has given up both trying to normalize interest rates as well as trying to actually stimulate the economy:

Earlier this week we described the personal come to non-GAAP Jesus moment of trading commentator Richard Breslow, who confessed in no uncertain terms that he has had it with endless central banking intervention: "a portfolio built to only withstand stress thanks to central bank intervention is one destined to blow-up spectacularly. The embedded flaw in this new logic is that central banks give investors perfect foresight.