Europe

In a historic first, earlier today ECB vice president Vitor Constancio (the same one who in October 2014 explained that the European stress tests refuse to consider a scenario with deflation  "because indeed we don't consider that deflation is going to happen" just a few months before Europe got its first deflationary print since the crisis) penned an official ECB opinion piece, some might call it a blog post, titled "In Defense of Monetary Policy" just hours after the ECB's historic "all in" gamble which included the first ever monetization of corporate b

Gold is up 19% year-to-date, by far the best performing asset-class, making this the best start to a year since 1974.

"Negative rates in Japan and Europe coupled with weak global growth have prompted a surge in interest," notes one trader as Gold-backed exchange-traded funds saw a record inflow of $7.2bn in February, surpassing the previous high set in 2009, according to BlackRock.

Submitted by MN Gordon via EconomicPrism.com,

“There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch,” is one of the essential axioms of economics.  No doubt about it, there’s no getting around this simple truth.  Everything has a price.

Julia Ioffe talked to some Russian officials and experts about the silly idea that refusing to attack Syria in 2013 encouraged Russian intervention in Ukraine, and this is what they told her:

“Wow, it’s kind of a revelation what you just said,” said a very surprised source from the Russian Foreign Ministry, who was not authorized to speak on the record, on hearing the question. “It’s not tied to any kind of reality. These things are not connected to each other in any way.”

As can be seen by the violently volatile markets themselves, over the past 24 hours there has been substantial confusion about the implications of the ECB's "all in" gamble, with the initial kneejerk euphoria leading to a rapid selloff and surge in the USD, followed by an overnight levitation in all risk assets as virtually the entire ECB move has now been faded on both sides.

Still, much confusion remains as can be seen by the following three reactions by financial pundits, two of whom even work for the same company.