Europe

Excerpted from Doug Noland's Credit Bubble Bulletin,

Credit is not innately good or bad. Simplistically, productive Credit is constructive, while non-productive Credit is inevitably problematic. This crucial distinction tends to be masked throughout the boom period. Worse yet, a prolonged boom in “productive” Credit – surely fueled by some type of underlying monetary disorder - can prove particularly hazardous (to finance and the real economy).

In case you haven’t noticed, Iran is on a roll.

Much to the chagrin of Israel and any number of GOP lawmakers in the US, the nuclear accord is a done deal and creates a $100 billion windfall for Tehran.

And that’s just the beginning of the story.

Excerpted from Satyajit Das' new book "The Age Of Stagnation",

If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth, only . . . wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair. C.S. Lewis

For credit investors, 2015 was bad a year (for energy bonds it may have been the worst on record) culminating with the gating and liquidation of several credit-focused mutual and hedge funds.

However, judging by these heatmaps, 2016 is shaping up to be even worse.

When it comes to geopolitics, all anyone wants to talk about is Syria. And understandably so.

When it comes to financial markets, all anyone wants to talk about is China - an equally understandable fixation.

To be sure, China was already a big driver of risk on/ risk off sentiment going into August of 2015. The “is it a hard landing or is it not” question very often dominated global macro discussions among those who enjoy debating such things.