Europe

Throughout 2017, America’s control of NATO policymaking has become more evident than ever, with the sole objective of war-making against Russia. NATO and Russia continue to build up arms, equipment, and troops along the eastern region of Europe, but there is a new development that has NATO worried.

Germany’s operational readiness of its entire submarine fleet is dead in the water.

Yes, you heard that correctly, Germany’s prized submarines are currently on maintenance calls or in desperate need of repairs.

Here we go again...

Authored by Chris Hamilton via Econimica blog,

Many economists suggest China is on the cusp of significant growth in domestic consumer demand. 

That this rising domestic demand coupled with continued growth as the global exporter will push the global economy further.  However, I'll briefly show why neither of these outcomes is remotely likely.

Problem #1- China as Consumer:

One of the traditional push backs against attempts to predict "black swan" events is that they are by default unpredictable, rendering the entire exercise moot. However, for the second year in a row, Nomura's Bilal Hafeez has found a loophole, or rather loop-animal: the grey swan.

Two weeks ago, as part of our continuing coverage of the Steinhoff fiasco in which it emerged that the ECB was the mystery and (not so) proud buyer of just issued Steinhoff (now junk) bonds (maturing in 2025 but set for bankruptcy much sooner) and which lost more than half of their value overnight when it the company announced it was caught in what may be a terminal accounting fraud scandal, we said that ", it seems virtually guaranteed that the banks will suffer steep haircuts on their Steinhoff exposure" and "so will the ECB, which on Friday was rumored it was considering selling