European Union

Submitted by George Shapiro and Jacob Shapiro via MauldinEconomics.com,

What will the year ahead look like for Europe? 2017 will be another chapter in the European Union’s slow unraveling… a process that has been underway for over a decade.

The EU is a union in name only. The transfer of sovereignty to Brussels was never total, and member states are independent countries… each with their own interests at stake.

Here are the major forces at work.

1. The Italian Crisis

Global shares were mixed, equity futures, the dollar and crude rose as investors focused their attention on today's inauguration of Donald Trump as U.S. president. While the early tone is well bid, some traders anticipate a volatile session, with speculation that a bout of "sell the inauguration" could cap the aging Trump rally, which started with his inauguration.

Submitted by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

I’m trying, I swear, to get into the fold, but I just can’t NOT find this hilarious. On the eve of his presidency, Donald Trump tells European leaders, by not telling them diddly-squat, that he doesn’t think they matter all that much. It’s not just that his vision of the EU, and its importance, is very different from theirs, he also remembers very well what many of them have said about him in the run-up to his election for the presidency.

This article was orignally posted at www.disobedientmedia.com
Abstract

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other Europhile politicians have pushed forward with an aggressive campaign to militarize the European Union. These plans have at times been kept from European citizens in certain states. The new EU Army appears to be supplied at least in part by NATO which is currently being affected by corruption scandals and the death of its Chief Auditor under suspicious circumstances.

Having been extensively leaked overnight so as to prevent "market surprises", Theresa May has just begun her speech calling for a "clean Brexit" from the EU. Watch it live below.