Europe

Joe Lieberman wrote a predictably tedious op-ed calling for American “leadership.” One interesting thing about it is that he repeated a claim that Sens. Sasse and Ernst made in their own appeal for hawkish “leadership” last week:

In a conversation with the leader of a European ally, some of us asked what the United States could do to be most helpful to him and his country. His answer was direct: “Elect a president who understands the importance of American leadership in the world.”

Submitted by Joao Peixe via OilPrice.com,

The Islamic State (ISIS) is taking on recruits faster than anyone can keep up with, and it’s heading towards Libya’s oil crescent, eyeing billions of barrels that a country at war with itself cannot protect - even with U.S. air strikes.

For Greece, Europe's worsening refugee crisis amounts to an "insult to injury" scenario.

Just six months after Angela Merkel and the Brussels cabal put Athens through round after round of "mental waterboarding" on the way to granting the country a third bailout and preventing Greece from marking a messy exit from the common currency, Alexis Tsipras now finds himself on the front lines of a mass Mid-East migration to Western Europe.

• Europe shrugs off pre-G20 China stocks slump, sterling steadies (Reuters)
• China Unveils Its Deliverables for G-20 -- And No Plaza Pact (BBG)
• Foreign Money Could Be Slow to Enter China’s Bond Markets (WSJ)
• China Urged to Stomach Much Higher Fiscal Deficit (WSJ)
• Trump's Momentum Has Republicans in Congress Confused and Cowed (BBG)
• Obama weighs Republican for Supreme Court (Reuters)
• Apple to boost customers’ iCloud encryption (FT)
• Sears Posts $580 Million Fourth-Quarter Loss as Retailer Shrinks (BBG)

After a burst of volatility in the developed market over the past month, one odd outlier was China, where after a surge of gut-wrenching moves in both its currency and equity markets (recall that it was China's troubles with marketwide circuit breakers at the start of January that may have catalyzed the global volatility wave), Chinese stocks remained relatively quiet and resilient, levitating quietly day after day. That all changed overnight when the Shanghai Composite plunged by 6.4% with the drop accelerating into the close.