Europe

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.

Presidents have more latitude in foreign affairs than in domestic policy, and the trend over the past two administrations has been for presidents to be more hawkish than their campaign pledges led voters to expect. George W. Bush promised a “humble foreign policy.” Instead, he gave us the Iraq War. Barack Obama was elected in part to end Bush’s wars. But he too pursued regime change, with Pyrrhic success in Libya and abortively in Syria.

"Everybody should be worried.. and be prepared," warns legendary investor Jim Rogers, as he sees the market "facing a bigger collapse than in 2008," and the central banks will be unable to kick the can much longer. "This is the first time in recorded history where you have Central Banks & governments setting out to destroy the people who save & invest," Rogers exclaims and "the markets are telling us that something is wrong - we're getting close."