Europe

One month ago, Citi's credit team laid out its outlook for the coming year in what - in our opinion - was one of the gloomiest reports for the coming year, and included the following fascinating revelation according to which central bankers appears to have lost control: "That seems to be a growing fear among a number of central bankers that we have spoken to recently. In our experience, they too are somewhat baffled by the lack of volatility and concerned about the lack of response to negative headlines....

Do you know Binomo?” the impersonator asked. “They have declared independence. They had elections, and we suppose Russians had its intervention.”

“Yes, of course they did, absolutely,” Haley confidently replied.

Authored by Finian Cunningham via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Fighting terrorism is now morphing into clamping down on human migration, as far as the European Union is concerned.

France’s President Emmanuel Macron is leading the charge, claiming at a conference in Paris last week that terrorism and human trafficking are part of the same problem, requiring the deployment of a military force spread across Africa.

The melding of the two concepts provokes serious legal and moral questions.

Authored by Chris Hamilton via Econimica blog,

Authored by Valentin Schmid via The Epoch Times,

Seven was the line in the sand.

But the Chinese yuan never crossed that line vis-à-vis the U.S. dollar. It only crept up to 6.96 yuan per dollar on Dec. 16, 2016, before starting an impressive comeback, down to 6.5 in the middle of this year.

Last year was a bad one for the Chinese economy. Growth was slow, and the world was worried China would finally land the hard way, as many have been predicting for years.