Europe

We are one step closer to another full-blown return of the cold war.

Yesterday, during a briefing in Latvia's capital Riga, NATO Gen. Philip Breedlove said that NATO and the United States are switching their defense doctrine from assurance to deterrence in Eastern Europe in response to a “resurgent and aggressive Russia."

The comments by Breedlove come a day after the Pentagon said it would begin continuous rotations of an additional armored brigade of about 4,200 troops in Eastern Europe beginning in early 2017.

Via Mint's Bill Blain's Morning Porridge,

”A common mistake when trying to design something completely fool-proof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools..” 

Russia has criticised US plans to position troops, tanks and other armored vehicles full time along NATO’s eastern borders, and said that Moscow is preparing a “completely asymmetrical” response to the deployments. Alexandr Grushko, Russia’s Ambassador to NATO said on Thursday that Moscow would not act like a “passive observer” but would rather undertake all those military measures needed to counter the “totally unjustified increased military presence.” Press TV reports: “Of course, our response will be completely asymmetrical.

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For Japan, the post "Shanghai Summit" world is turning ugly, fast, because as a result of the sliding dollar, a key demand of China which has been delighted by the recent dovish words and actions of Janet Yellen, both Japan's and Europe's stock markets have been sacrificed at the whims of their suddenly soaring currencies. Which is why when Japanese stocks tumbled the most in 7 weeks, sinking 3.5%, to a one month low of 16,164 (after the Yen continued strengthening and the Tankan confidence index plunged to a 3 year low) it was anything but an April fool's joke to both local traders.